| --- |
| title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011477)" |
| source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)" |
| sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein" |
| date: "2026-01-01" |
| category: "House Oversight" |
| eftaNumber: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011477" |
| ocrPages: 1 |
| ocrChars: 2652 |
| ocrElapsed: 0.0 |
| parseTier: "external-legacy" |
| engine: "engine undisclosed (ep-nov-12.greg.technology mirror)" |
| externalSource: "greg-ep-nov-12" |
| externalLicense: "not granted" |
| externalCredit: "ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| externalUrl: "https://ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| --- |
| |
| Jordan River from the West Bank, from which a fledgling group called Fatah, |
| under the command of Arafat, had been staging a series of raids. In one of their |
| most recent attacks, they'd planted land mines, one of which destroyed an |
| Israeli schoolbus, killing the driver and one of the teachers and injuring nearly a |
| dozen children. The so-called Battle of Karameh was our single most significant |
| operation since the 1967 war. In pure military terms, it succeeded. But at a |
| price: more than two dozen Israeli soldiers dead. It also had a major political |
| impact. It caused shock among many Israelis, still wrapped in a sense of |
| invincibility from the Six-Day War, as well as a feeling in the Arab world, |
| actively encouraged by Arafat and his comrades, that compared to the great |
| armies Israel had defeated in 1967, Fatah had at least shown fight. Fatah had |
| drawn blood |
| I had just turned 26 years old. I was finishing my studies in math, physics |
| and economics at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and had joined my |
| Sayeret Matkal comrades the night before the assault. It was a huge operation: |
| ten battalions, including crack infantry units. Our own role was relatively minor. |
| We were to seal the southern entrance to the town. But it proved a tough slog |
| just to get there. Our vehicles got bogged down in mud. By the time we arrived, |
| Fatah fighters, although many were in civilian clothes so we couldn't be sure, |
| were racing past us in the other direction. One of them, we were later told, was |
| Yasir Arafat. On a motorcycle. |
| It would be nearly three decades before the two of us actually met - shortly |
| after the assassination of my longtime comrade and friend Yitzhak Rabin, when |
| I had become Foreign Minister under Shimon Peres. But in the intervening |
| years, Arafat was rarely off of my radar. By the early 1970s, he and his fighters |
| had been expelled by King Hussein's army from Jordan and were re-based in |
| Lebanon. Arafat was becoming a significant figure on the Arab and world |
| political stage, and an increasingly uncomfortable thorn in Israel's side. I was |
| head of Sayeret Matkal by then. Over a period of months, I drew up a carefully |
| constructed plan - a raid by helicopter into a Fatah-dominated area in |
| southeastern Lebanon, during one of Arafat's intermittent, morale-boosting |
| visits from Beirut - to assassinate him. My immediate superior, the army's head |
| of operations, was all for our doing it. But the chief of military intelligence said |
| no. Arafat, he insisted when we met to discuss the plan, was no longer the lean, |
| mean fighter we had encountered in Karameh. "He's fat. He's a politician. He is |
| not a target." |
| 6 |
| HOUSE |
| _OVERSIGHT_011477 |
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|
