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Israel: When Arafat�s Ship Sailed
Netty C. Gross
Eli Marum had just returned from a five-month study stint in the U.S. to take over as the Israel Navy�s chief of operations when, last December, naval intelligence got wind of a strange shipment -- possibly containing arms -- en route to Palestinian territory. The decision to intercept the Karine A was auto-matic, government approval was swiftly secured, and planning and training for the mission began immediately. Commandos from the navy�s elite Flotilla 13 were selected -- "the usual guys, nothing special," says Marum.
In the predawn hours of January 3, the force boarded the 4,000-ton cargo ship in the Red Sea, between the coasts of Saudi Arabia and Sudan, about 500 kilometers (310 miles) south of Eilat. It turned out to be carrying 50 tons of Iranian weapons, valued at $15 million. The stunned crew -- Captain Omar Akawi, a lieutenant-colonel in the PA�s Coastal Police and a senior member of Yasser Arafat�s Fatah organization, and 12 others -- surrendered without a fight.
Aboard an adjacent vessel, commanding the operation -- which involved air force and navy units as well as the actual boarding party -- was Marum, himself a former head of Flotilla 13, the local equivalent of the United States Navy SEALS. "The whole thing took less than eight minutes. Quicker than we expected," he recalls matter-of-factly during a rare interview.
A few weeks ago, the army command presented Marum, whose role in the operation has received minimal publicity, with a Kalashnikov rifle from the Karine A haul, varnished and mounted on a wooden plaque. "With deepest gratitude," notes the accompanying brass marker. "How risky was it?" I ask as we stand before the gun, now hanging on the wall of his spacious office, in the naval section of the Defense Ministry complex in central Tel Aviv. "A mission of a lifetime," he grins.
Rear-admiral Marum, 47, believes the Karine A operation was a "great milestone in this conflict." Not only did it deny the Palestinian Authority a significant amount of weaponry, but it also highlighted its role in weapons smuggling, punching "a giant, if not fatal, hole" in Arafat�s credibility, he says. The PA initially accused Israel of "fabricating" the whole affair. Next, it said the shipment was heading for Lebanon. Finally, Arafat said he was "stunned" to hear about it but couldn�t control "everyone" in his regime -- a claim dismissed by analysts who say so large an outlay of cash could only have been approved by the PA leader himself. Says Marum: "For the first time Arafat was unmasked as a liar and a smuggler. On December 16 he had gone on TV and announced a cease-fire. That was six days after the Karine A, acquired by his chief purchaser, set off."
It was pure coincidence, Marum says, that news of the interception broke the day before U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni was meeting with Arafat. But, he goes on, Arafat and Zinni wound up watching together on TV as Israel unveiled the haul, and the affair and its timing profoundly impacted on the Bush Administration�s attitude to the PA leader. "I think it changed the whole world�s perception of the man," says Marum.
He notes that the ship itself was purchased from a Lebanese seller for $400,000 last October -- after Arafat had made his post-September 11 pledge to fight terror -- by Adel Mughrabi, a senior PA figure close to Arafat. Another Arafat confidant, Fouad Shubaki, chief procurement and finance officer of the PA, handled payment for the weapons. Marum says it is "outrageous" that Shubaki is being held in a PA facility in Jericho. "He ought to be tried in a proper court of law."
The shipment filled 80 custom-made submersible containers, which were to be tossed overboard off the Gaza coast and washed ashore or picked up by fishing boats and other small vessels. The haul included 700,000 rounds of small-arms ammunition; 735 hand grenades, 311 anti-personnel mines and 211 anti-tank mines; 345 long- and short-range Katyusha rockets and 10 launchers; 29 mortar tubes and 1,545 shells; six Sagger wire-guided anti-tank missile launchers and 10 missiles; 51 RPG-7 anti-tank missiles and 328 rockets; 30 high-powered Dragonov telescopic rifles; 212 Kalashnikov assault rifles, over 2,000 kilograms of explosives, and two speedboats with powerful Yamaha engines and a range of diving equipment. Much of this weaponry is prohibited from the PA under the Oslo Accords.
Although there was no question that the Karine A would be stopped, deciding where and when to intercept it was complicated, says Marum. The ship left the port of Ajiman in the United Arab Emirates, near the Iranian coast, on December 10. Avoiding the territorial waters of the various countries along the route was one consideration, he notes, detailing some aspects of the operation for the first time. Further complicating matters were rough Red Sea weather conditions and busy shipping lanes. Marum says the mission had to be rearranged when the ship developed engine trouble and was holed up in the Yemeni port of Hodeida for a week. "The weather was worsening, and yet we knew we had to intercept before the ship reached Egyptian territorial waters," he says. "Time was running out." A brief spell of good weather after the Karine A sailed from Hodeida "gave us the window of opportunity."
Marum says when the first commandos boarded the ship at 4 a.m it was dark and "the crew was fully surprised. They did not anticipate that we would strike so far out into the Red Sea."
Once the Karine A was in Israeli hands, Marum boarded and encountered captain Akawi and his lieutenant, Riad Abdullah, another high-ranking member of the Palestinian Coastal Police, and two other Palestinian Coastal Police officers of "less importance" Salam Eanbar and Ahmed Khari -- all of whom are now awaiting trial. There were also five Egyptian and four Jordanian sailors, "simple people, not entirely sure what was being transported." (The nine were detained on charges of illegal entry and aiding the enemy, and law enforcement authorities decided in favor of deportation rather than criminal prosecution. But in mid-August, Interior Minister Eli Yishai, ignoring demands for their release from Egyptian and Jordanian embassies, granted a request from the General Securities Service to delay repatriation "pending further investigation.")
Had the arms reached Palestinian gunmen prior to April�s Operation Defensive Shield, says Marum, the impact "would have been lethal. We would have seen a great many more Israeli fatalities. The katyushas we captured have a range of 20 kilometers; I�m sure they would have been used -- then and since. Rockets and mortars could have been flying into every point in Israel."
The nature of the weapons, he asserts, also laid bare Arafat�s intention to "cause many Israeli casualties. We found two tons of C-4 explosives -- a material used by suicide bombers -- on board. Why would the PA need C-4? To build roads?"
Crucially too, he says, the operation exposed the PA-Iran connection -- a point, he says, which did not go unnoticed by Arab regional powers. "Iran has been trying to influence this area for some time and the Iranian-Hizballah-Palestinian triangle gave the conflict a new, disturbing facet."
The Karine A was not the first Palestinian arms shipment intercepted during the intifada. Marum will not comment on reports published by New York Post journalist Uri Dan, a long-time confidant of
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, that the navy has intercepted and even sunk other gun-running ships, their details still undisclosed. But as commander of the Haifa Naval Base, Marum was directly involved in the May 2001 apprehending of the Gaza-bound Santorini -- captured in the Mediterranean and found to be carrying anti-aircraft missiles, anti-tank missile-launchers, mortar shells and artillery rockets. The shipment, some of which originated in Iran, had been loaded in Lebanon by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine -- General Command. Marum says several other fishing boats have been intercepted with arms aboard, and intimates that some shipments may have got through.
Operations such as the interception of the Karine A are, Marum says, "part of the navy�s primary mission -- to protect the shores of Israel." And while, he says, "we suffered many attacks from the sea in the past," there hasn�t been anything major since a jet-ski attempt at the shore north of Rosh Hanikrah on October 9, 1993, when a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was killed as he tried to slip through a cordon of navy boats. "We have a good plan. We are pretty well spread out. The sea border is quite well sealed," he says enigmatically.
He does disclose, vaguely, that the intifada has prompted the navy to take new defensive precautions. About a year and a half ago, Marum recalls, a "suicide fisherboat" attempted to detonate alongside a Dabur patrol boat. He also mentions an incident three months ago, when a Palestinian swimming toward the Israeli shore north of the Gaza Strip, and loaded with grenades, was "picked up by our radar and shot. It�s made us very cautious."
The navy is maintaining a strict embargo on shipping to Gaza, and keeping a very close eye on the Palestinian fishing fleet, severely restricting the waters they are allowed to sail. As for the Palestinian navy, "they have a shore police with a few patrol boats with small engines. Some carry light machine guns. And a few rubber boats. We�re watching them, believe me."
Plans to create a deep water harbor in Gaza which would allow large ships to anchor -- a Dutch firm drew up plans -- have been cancelled for now. "As long as they are smuggling weapons, we cannot allow that to happen."
Not all the navy�s anti-terror operations are at sea. Naval commandos have been used to carry out several special operations in the West Bank; its commandos were involved in Operation Defensive Shield. One was killed, and eight were wounded, in Jenin.
Marum points out that in addition to its intifada duties, the navy has two primary strategic missions: ensuring that Israel�s sea routes remain open and undisturbed; and contributing to strategic defense by keeping watch on neighboring Arab states� naval activities. It is currently engaged in a modernization program, central to which is the boosting of the mainstay Sa�ar missile boat fleet, with the addition of at least two, and maybe four enhanced versions of the Sa�ar 5 craft, at a cost of $100 million per vessel.
While stressing that Egypt is a "friendly nation," its navy is the one which gives Marum most to think about. "It�s a large, impressive, formidable navy with a long tradition," which, he says "made a nice transition" from a more primitive U.S.S.R.-supplied "Eastern" fleet, to modern, Western-based equipment, thanks to American military aid. "Since 1980," he notes, "in excess of $30 billion in U.S. aid has been spent on Egypt�s military -- the lion�s share on the navy. It�s a lot of money."
Marum says Egypt has declined to join the U.S., Israel and Turkish navies in trilateral excerises. "We did have, from time to time, bilateral activities with them in the past. Sadat came to Haifa on a yacht once. I was in Alexandria in the 1980s. We still invite them. In the recent past they�ve said �no.� Now, sadly, they don�t answer."
Marum has no such concerns regarding Syria�s navy which, he says, has not recovered from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Libya once had an impressive navy, he goes on, but that has been much reduced because of the U.S. embargo. He sees no particular naval threat from Iran or Iraq.
Marum lives with his Egyptian-born wife and three children, two of whom are serving in the navy. Nicknamed "Chiney" -- a reference to the facial features that highlight his mother�s Chinese origin -- he was born and raised in the Galilee and began his naval career at age 14, following in an older brother�s footsteps as a cadet in a pre-naval academy in Acre. It�s a decision he�s never regretted. "I totally love my work," he says, "despite the tough conditions it imposes on my family."
He�s always loved too, he says, the northern part of the country -- its rural atmosphere and the generally easy relations between Jews and Arabs, which prevail, he says, "despite what is going on now." A recent dinner at the home of Arab friends included some painful talk about "our mutual dreams in this land." But Marum tries to remain optimistic: "We need peace and there will be peace."
Yet, as our interview draws to a close, I ask Marum about reports in the foreign press that Israel has equipped three submarines newly acquired from Germany with cruise missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, having earlier test-fired a new cruise missile from a submarine in the Indian Ocean. Marum smiles but refuses to comment. "Let me ask you. You live in this region. You know who the neighbors are. Do you think we should be testing long-range missiles?"
September 9, 2002
Israel
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