Page 300 - Encyclopedia Of Terrorism

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280———Palestine Liberation Front–Abu Abbas Faction

ship as it sailed toward Israel. They held hundreds of sea. In five speedboats, PLF operatives traveled to
passengers hostage for two grueling days, during which beaches near Tel Aviv and Ashdod. Israeli defense
the hijackers demanded the release of 50 Palestinians forces stopped the attack before it began, killing four
held in Israel and threatened to blow up the ship. As the PLF members and arresting 12 others. Although
ship sailed along the Syrian coast, the hijackers shot Arafat quickly asserted that he had played no part in
and killed a U.S. citizen, Leon Klinghoffer. The men the raid, Washington terminated its 18-month discus-
then threw his body overboard. sion with the PLO.
During the hijacking, the PLF accepted responsibil- Under pressure from the United States, Libya later
ity for the attack. This caused confusion in the press expelled more than 100 PLF members and closed down
and illustrated just how splintered the Palestinian several of the group’s training camps. Abbas claimed
national movement had become, as reporters attempted that the aborted raid was in retaliation for the killing of
to pin down which faction of the PLF—pro-Syrian, Palestinian workers in Tel Aviv by an Israeli gunman.
pro-Libyan, or pro-PLO—was responsible. Some spec- Israeli officials countered that the raid had been
ulated that the attack had been a Syrian attempt to sab- planned for a long time and could not be a response
otage Arafat’s progress toward diplomatic agreements. to the workers’ deaths. An Israeli military court later
After the ship docked in Cairo, Egyptian officials tried the captured PLF members and sentenced them to
granted Abbas and his men safe passage to Tunisia in 30 years in prison for attempted murder, membership in
return for the hostages’ release. However, U.S. Air a terrorist group, and possession of firearms.
Force fighter jets forced the EgyptAir plane carrying Abbas left the PLO a year after the failed raid.
the PLF members to land in Sicily, where Italian However, he moved the PLF toward the mainstream in
authorities arrested three of the hijackers. These same 1993 when he supported the Oslo Accords and pub-
officials refused to turn Abbas and two colleagues over licly embraced the peace process in 1996. Two years
to the Marines; instead, they helped the men flee to the later, Israeli officials allowed him to enter the country
former Yugoslavia. and travel to the Gaza Strip, where, in a Palestinian
Although an Italian court later tried him in absentia National Council meeting, he voted to revoke the parts
and sentenced him to life in prison, Abbas was never of the PLO’s charter that call for Israel’s destruction.
imprisoned. The press teemed with stories of his nar- He then returned triumphantly from exile to estab-
row escapes from the law. After the Italian conviction, lish himself and the PLF in Gaza City, commuting
the U.S. Department of Justice dropped its inter- between Gaza and his old base in Baghdad.
national warrant for Abbas’s arrest, saying that the Although Abbas has said that the new path of the
prosecutors did not have enough evidence to try him PLF is a political one, in November 2001 Israeli
in a U.S. court. In many interviews, Abbas has main- security forces arrested at least 15 PLF members sus-
tained that the hijacking was a mistake and that he had pected of plotting further attacks. According to Israeli
instead plotted for his men to travel incognito aboard officials, the men were planning to plant bombs at
the Achille Lauro and then invade Israel when the ship Ben-Gurion Airport and in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
docked at the Israeli town of Ashdod. He did, however, The U.S. Department of State considers the PLF to be
later admit that his operatives had killed Klinghoffer. a terrorist group.
The PLF moved its base of operations to Iraq fol-
See also ABU ABBAS; ACHILLE LAURO HIJACKING; PALESTINE
lowing the Achille Lauro hijacking. Like Arafat, Abbas
LIBERATION ORGANIZATION; POPULAR FRONT FOR THE
supported Iraq’s Saddam Hussein during the Gulf
LIBERATION OF PALESTINE–GENERAL COMMAND
War (1990–1991), declaring “my enemy’s enemy is
my friend.” (Hussein has threatened to attack Israel Further Reading
many times, famously stating that Iraq could “burn
Abukhalil, Asad. “Arab Israeli Conflict.” In The Middle
half of Israel.”)
East. Ninth ed. Edited by Robin Surrat. Washington,
DC: Congressional Quarterly, 2000.
NEGOTIATIONS THWARTED Associated Press. “Abbas Interview in Algeria.” New York
Times, May 21, 1986, A12.
In May 1990, in the midst of diplomatic negotiations Berger, Joseph. “Hijacking at Sea: Even With a Name, It’s
between the PLO and the United States, a 17-member Hard to Know Who the Hijackers Are.” New York Times,
PLF squad once again attempted to invade Israel by October 9, 1985, A9.