Murphy Martin. Small Boats, Weak States, Dirty Money. Piracy & Maritime Terrorism in the Modern World
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maritime terrorists
Anti-Israel groups. Since the attacks of 9/11, maritime analysts have tended
to focus on the possibility of more attacks like those on the Cole and the
Limburg, plus the potential for terrorist attacks on shipping in the Malacca
Straits and on major international ports—thus neglecting the maritime
aspect of the long-running conflict between Israel and various, primarily
palestinian, insurgent groups such at Fatah, the palestine Liberation Front
(pLF), the popular Front for the Liberation of palestine-General Com-
mand (pFLp-GC) and, latterly, the Islamist-influence groups such as ha-
mas, palestinian Islamic Jihad and hizbollah. is is unjustified. Like the
conflict in Sri Lanka, the maritime conflict between Israel and these groups
displays many of the defining characteristics of irregular warfare at sea.
To bring them together as a collective and compare them with a sin-
gle group such as the Sea Tigers runs the risk of not comparing like with
like. e risk, however, is small because, whatever their ultimate ideologi-
cal and strategic differences, each group has used the maritime domain for
the same reason and employed largely the same tactics.
43
eir aims were
to exploit Israel’s one porous border, its maritime flank, where most of its
2001 suggested a link on the basis that the sophisticated shaped charge used
in the attack was characteristic of Iranian bomb making: ‘uSS Cole update:
hizbollah built bomb’, 21 May 2001. On possible wider links between the
two groups see Jessica Stern, ‘e protean enemy’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 82, no.
4, 2003, p. 32, where she writes that hizbollah gave Al Qaeda logistical sup-
port for the East African embassy bombings and that the relationship between
the groups then deepened after Al Qaeda was driven from its sanctuaries in
Afghanistan. Also Maria Ressa, ‘Bin Laden forges tactical alliance between al
Qaeda and hizbollah’, ABS-CBN Interactive, 18 Aug. 2006. Ressa suggests that
al-Qaeda and hizbollah use the same people interchangeably in much the same
way that fighters in the philippines appear to move freely between the ASG,
MILF and MNLF. Ressa. Seeds of Terror, pp. 130-131.ere are also sugges-
tions that Al Qaeda has received support from Iran directly, including the use
of its territory as a logistical hub: Stephen Fidler, ‘Al Qaeda linked to operations
from Iran’, Financial Times, 6 July 2007. A terrorist logistical hub is generally
regarded as a clandestine operating environment where extremists can estab-
lish and operate safe houses, command posts, financial networks, logistical and
training bases. ere is also some suspicion that Al Qaeda might have assisted
Iran in the 1996 Khobar Towers attack. See e 9/11 Commission Report, p. 60
and Dan Eggan, ‘9/11 panel links Al Qaeda, Iran: Bin Laden might have part
in Khobar Towers, report says’, e Washington Post, 26 June 2004.
43 e palestinian groups that have undertaken maritime missions are the pLO
(known since 1993 as the palestinian Authority) and its constituent organisa-
tions Fatah, pLF and the pFLp; pFLp-GC, pIJ, hamas and hizbollah: Lorenz,
‘e threat of maritime terrorism to Israel’, pp. 26-30.
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small boats, weak states, dirty money
cities are located, to land raiding parties, often to grab hostages that they
could exchange for prisoners held by Israel, and to land arms.
e palestinian naval threat was born in 1967 with the creation, at a
pan-Arab summit immediately before the Six Day War, of a “palestinian
Arab Navy”.
44
Following the Arab defeat the naval effort was expanded. In
September 1970 (“Black September” in the annals of palestinian history),
King hussein drove the palestinians out of their bases in Jordan. ey re-
located to southern Lebanon. From this position the prospect of mounting
attacks against Israel’s exposed coastline presented a more available option.
Katz, in fact, argues that although the first water-borne raid into Israel
came across the Dead Sea in 1969, by the early 1970s, with most of the Jor-
dan valley sealed, the Syrian and Lebanese borders well protected and Sinai
occupied, the sea was virtually the palestinians’ only option.
45
Although
this is broadly correct, it was only once the land border between Israel
and Lebanon was closed completely that the palestinian groups turned to
maritime operations in earnest. e necessary capability took time to ma-
terialise but once it was in place three of the four major palestinian attacks
on Israel during the 1970s came from the sea,
46
and by the end of the 1980s
most observers believed that the palestinians possessed the most capable
and best-equipped maritime arms of any insurgent groups.
e concentration at first was on collecting intelligence on Israeli ship
movements in harbours around the Mediterranean, and on developing tac-
tics such as attaching limpet mines to ships vital to Israel’s economy. Fish-
ermen and smugglers were recruited and a small body of combat swimmers
and commandos established. Most of the attacks that were undertaken ap-
peared to be small operations designed to test Israel’s response.
47
George
habash, the leader and founder of the pFLp, likened Israel to an island
surrounded by enemies that could only survive because of its air and sea
links which, if severed, could bring it to its knees.
48
Although this was far
44 Katz, Guards Without Frontiers, p. 154; Lorenz, ‘e threat of maritime terror-
ism to Israel’, p. 8.
45 Katz, Guards Without Frontiers, pp. 154-5.
46 Lorenz, ‘e threat of maritime terrorism to Israel’, p. 6. e three maritime at-
tacks are the Savoy and Coastal Road incidents and the haran family murders.
e exception is the May 1974 attack on Ma’alot, a town six miles south of the
Lebanon border, when children were taken hostage in a school, of whom 22
died and 50 were wounded in the subsequent rescue..
47 Ibid., p. 7.
48 George habash interview in LIFE magazine, 12 June 1970, cited in Lorenz,
‘e threat of maritime terrorism to Israel’, p. 7.
289
maritime terrorists
from an original insight—it is a concern that has animated Israeli naval
thinking since independence
49
—it appears to have inspired two attacks:
the 1973 attack on the Sanya (mentioned above) and, in 1971, the attack
on the SS Coral Sea, an Israeli-owned but Liberian-registered oil tanker,
which was struck by ten rocket propelled grenades as it transited the Bab
el-Mandeb. e pFLp’s intention was to discourage ships from using the
Israeli Red Sea port of Eilat.
50
e attack was mounted from a small mo-
tor launch that had been lowered from a large trawler off perim Island. A
fire started in one of the cargo tanks but was quickly extinguished.
51
Other
groups focused on establishing a regular clandestine ferry route between
Cyprus and Beirut and between Beirut and Gaza.
52
Fatah was reported to
possess a small “navy” of vessels ranging in size from 150 tons up to 500-
ton markabs based in Cyprus and the Lebanese port of Tripoli largely for
this purpose.
53
Also during the early 1970s, Fatah created a specialised protection group
for Yasser Arafat and other members of the organisation’s high command.
Given the name Force 17, it developed into an elite commando operation
while continuing to answer to Arafat personally.
54
Within Force 17 the elite
of the elite were the naval swimmers who eventually led Fatah military dis-
plays on many occasions when the group was headquartered in Beirut.
55
Intriguingly, Force 17 could be viewed as the counterpart of the IDF/
Navy’s own naval commando unit, Flotilla 13 (Shayetet 13).
56
is unit,
which grew out of the palyam, a small elite force that was part of the haga-
na (the original Jewish resistance movement), was formed in 1949, shortly
after the end of the first Arab-Israel War. Tzalel argues that what he calls
49 Moshe Tzalel, From Ice-Breaker to Missile Boat: e Evolution of Israel’s Naval
Strategy, Westport, CT & London: Greenwood press, 2000, p. 5.
50 On the Coral Sea incident see MIpT Incident profile: popular Front for the
Liberation of palestine (pFLp) attacked Maritime Target, Israel, 4 June 1971;
Katz, Guards Without Frontiers, p. 155 where he attributes the attack to Fatah.
51 Tzalel, From Ice-Breaker to Missile Boat, p. 45.
52 Katz, Guards Without Frontiers, p. 155
53 Menefee, TMV, p. 33; Brian M Jenkins, et al.,
‘A chronology of terrorist attacks
and other criminal actions against maritime targets’ in parritt, Violence at Sea,
p. 66.
54 For a brief background note on this organisation see Aaron Mannes, ‘e end
of Force 17?’ Counterterrorism Blog, 9 Oct. 2007.
55 Katz, Guards Without Frontiers, p. 161.
56 ‘Shayetet 13’, e Israel Special Forces Database.
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small boats, weak states, dirty money
the “palyam-school” has always had an important influence on Israeli naval
thought and force structure.
57
As the Israel-Lebanon border was made progressively more secure and
difficult to penetrate, interest in the maritime domain as an attack medium
increased. In 1974 three terrorists attacked Israel’s most northerly city, Na-
hariya, situated only five and a half miles (9 km) from the border, with the
aim of kidnapping hostages. e attack failed and the attackers were killed
but the event caused consternation within Israel, which responded by in-
troducing the maritime control zones, barred to civilian use and monitored
by radar and lookouts, that have prevented most subsequent incursion at-
tempts against the city.
58
Within a year Fatah had begun to circumvent these zones by employing
its larger vessels as mother ships to support small craft, usually Zodiacs, to
land supplies of weapons, saboteurs and raiding parties, sailing them far
out to sea before turning towards the Israeli coast.
59
In 1975, Force 17 used
this method to mount its most significant raid to date. A 150-ton mother
ship sailed from Sidon and landed a terrorist team on a beach south of Tel
Aviv. As soon as the group arrived its members began firing and throwing
grenades. When fire was returned they ran into the Savoy hotel and took
hostages. When Israeli police and IDF forces stormed the hotel, the terror-
ists blew it up killing themselves, their hostages and several of the rescuers.
e mother ship was apprehended and escorted into haifa.
60
e operation had been planned by Fatah’s military leader Khalil al-
Wazir, otherwise known as Abu Jihad, who was a very talented operational
commander.
61
his stated maritime objectives were, first, to open a new
front against Israel and thereby divert troops from the land borders; sec-
ondly, to undermine Israeli morale; and, thirdly, to infiltrate commanders,
57 Tzalel, From Ice-Breaker to Missile Boat, pp. 7 & 9-10.
58 Lorenz, ‘e threat of maritime terrorism to Israel’, p. 8 and Samuel pyeatt
Menefee, ‘piracy and maritime crimes of violence’, unpublished MS, p. 206 are
clear that the assault craft travelled directly from Lebanon. Katz, Guards With-
out Frontiers, p. 156, on the other hand, writes about the assault being mounted
from a mother ship.
59 Menefee, TMV, p. 33; Lorenz, ‘e threat of maritime terrorism to Israel’, p.
8.
60 Katz, Guards Without Frontiers, pp. 157-8; Lorenz, ‘e threat of maritime ter-
rorism to Israel’, pp. 9-10; Menefee, ‘piracy and maritime crimes of violence’,
p. 206.
61 Katz, Guards Without Frontiers, p. 158; Lorenz, ‘e threat of maritime terror-
ism to Israel’, p. 9.
291
maritime terrorists
messages and supplies into the Occupied Territories. On the strength of
his ability as demonstrated by the Savoy hotel operation, Fatah’s naval
arm attracted expert training from Egypt, Syria, the Soviet union and,
quite possibly, Cuba and North Korea. e Syrians, in particular, were
reported as having provided advanced underwater combat and sabotage
training.
62
Fatah was not alone in receiving support: Yugoslavia helped the
popular Front for the Liberation of palestine-General Command (pFLp-
GC) and the palestine National Front (pNF) to assemble teams of frogmen
equipped, according to the same reports, with re-breather apparatus.
63
On 11 March 1978, Abu Jihad executed an operation to grab hostages
from a hotel in Bat Yam, near Tel Aviv, and demand the release of palestin-
ians held by Israel. e mother ship sailed from Dabur, a port just south of
Tyre, but the captain dropped the raiding party too far from the coast, an
error which, when compounded by rough seas and the team’s poor naviga-
tion, meant that the group landed half way between Tel Aviv and haifa,
on the other side of the city from their objective. In an attempt to redeem
the situation they hijacked a bus. A gun battle ensued, now known as the
Coastal Road or Country Club Massacre, in which all the terrorists and
their 36 hostages were killed.
64
e Coastal Road raid had been mounted shortly after Operation “Joy
of Ages” when Israeli commandoes had struck Tyre and destroyed signifi-
cant numbers of palestinian boats and quantities of equipment. previously,
when Israeli naval commandos had mounted assaults on palestinian mari-
time bases in Lebanon, a mission regarded as being of crucial importance
for Flotilla 13 ever since the bases had first been established,
65
they had
succeeded in inhibited palestinian operations. e fact that the “Joy of
Ages” incursion did not disrupt the Coastal Road attack indicated that
single raids were unlikely to be sufficient to combat the palestinian mari-
time threat and more substantial action was required. e Coastal Road
raid, therefore, even if it was not the sole reason why Israel decided on 14
March 1978 to launch Operation Litani, a limited invasion of southern
62 Katz, Guards Without Frontiers, p. 158.
63 Jenkins, et al., ‘A chronology of terrorist attacks and other criminal actions’,
pp. 66-7. e Yugoslavs were also reported to be responsible for training ETA
frogmen.
64 Jenkins, et al., ‘A chronology of terrorist attacks and other criminal actions’, p.
66; Katz, Guards Without Frontiers, pp. 159-60; Lorenz, ‘e threat of maritime
terrorism to Israel’, p. 10; ‘Coastal road massacre’, Wikipedia.
65 Tzalel, From Ice-Breaker to Missile Boat, p. 74.
292
small boats, weak states, dirty money
Lebanon (excluding the city of Tyre), was a significant contributory fac-
tor.
66
e ground operation exposed an extensive naval infrastructure of
workshops and weapons stores. It also uncovered equipment, including
one-man mini-submarines (bought from sporting goods suppliers but ideal
for solo suicide missions), small reconnaissance boats apparently supplied
by Libya, fibreglass speed boats equipped with machine guns, Zodiacs, div-
ing gear, navigational devices and rafts fitted with multiple Katyusha-122
rocket launchers. Documents seized revealed that Fatah was trying to buy
small warships and coastal radars of their own from the Soviet union, from
Arab navies or on the black market.
67
Although the Israelis regarded the invasion as a success, palestinian
maritime bases were forced only a relatively short distance north beyond
the Litani River. Fatah and other groups were therefore still in a position
to mount significant maritime operations. On 30 September 1978 Fatah
attacked the port of Eilat using a Greek-registered freighter, the Agaeus
Dimitrius. e intention was to use it first, as a platform to fire 42 Katyu-
sha-122 rockets at the port’s oil installations, secondly as a floating bomb
to be rammed, loaded with three tons of explosives, onto a beach crowded
with holiday-makers (who presumably were expected to stand around,
watch and wait). e ship, however, was intercepted as it approached the
resort and when it failed to stop was fired on and the terrorists on board
captured.
68
Also on 30 September two mother ships, the Ginan and the
Stephanie, were intercepted; the second was following a regular sea lane
between Cyprus and Egypt from where it would have launched a fast boat
with a raiding party while still in international waters.
69
Further raids were launched the following year. On the night of 22 April
1979 the Abu Abbas Group was once again successful in penetrating the
city of Nahariya. e raiding party stormed into the apartment of the ha-
ran family. e mother was able to hide with her infant son but in the
process smothered him. e terrorists meanwhile dragged the father and
daughter to the beach where they had left their boats. Cornered by po-
66 Katz, Guards Without Frontiers, p. 160; Lorenz. ‘e threat of maritime terror-
ism to Israel’, p. 11.
67 Katz, Guards Without Frontiers, p. 163.
68 Menefee, TMV, p. 32; Katz, Guards Without Frontiers, pp. 160-1; Lorenz, ‘e
threat of maritime terrorism to Israel’, p. 11; ‘Islamic terrorism timeline’, Entry
for 3 Oct. 1978.
69 Katz, Guards Without Frontiers, p. 161; Lorenz, ‘e threat of maritime terror-
ism to Israel’, p. 10.
293
maritime terrorists
lice and the IAF, the terrorists’ leader, Samir Quntar, then aged 17, first
crushed the girl’s head with a rock before shooting the father.
70
In 2006 the
leader of hizbollah, hassan Nasrallah, named the freeing of Quntar as the
principal, public reason why his organisation had kidnapped two Israeli
soldiers, the event that triggered Operation Change of Direction, the mas-
sive 2006 Israeli assault on southern Lebanon.
71
e haran murders marked the beginning of an interval which lasted
until 1986, during which no palestinian raiders eluded the IDF/Navy. For
much of the time it also coincided with an Israeli troop presence in Leba-
non which was reinforced in 1982, under the auspices of Operation “peace
in Galilee”, because uNIFIL, the united Nations peace-keeping force that
had been made responsible for southern Lebanon after the 1978 invasion,
was demonstrably incapable of preventing rocket attacks on Israel’s north-
ern settlements. e presence of these troops, on ground that was favour-
able to guerrilla operations, meant that the main focus of palestinian efforts
moved away from maritime raids towards attacks on exposed Israeli military
targets in Lebanon. is trend was reinforced by the forcible removal of the
anti-Israel groups from their naval bases in Beirut and Tripoli (although
they retained a presence in Sidon) and their relocation to Tunisia—the
new home of the pLO headquarters—Algeria, Yemen and Libya.
Despite the greater distances the raiding parties needed to travel from
their new bases, and the continuing effectiveness of the IDF/Navy, which
severely hampered their operations, the pLO and other groups neverthe-
less did not give up maritime raiding. Details of these incidents are not
readily available but Katz reports that, in the period between 1979 and
1984, the IDF/Navy intercepted 30 “major terrorist attempts to infiltrate
men and material into Israel”, the interceptions taking place in Lebanese
territorial waters in several cases,
72
and that between April 1985 and early
1987, 20 more planned “attacks” were disrupted.
73
Neither was the search
for advanced naval equipment abandoned;
74
in 1982, for example, there
70 Katz, Guards Without Frontiers, pp. 153-4; Lorenz, ‘e threat of maritime ter-
rorism to Israel’, p. 8.
71 harry de Quetteville, ‘No, I hope these men rot in jail’, Sunday Telegraph, 23
July 2006; ‘Nasrallah: hostages in secure location, far away’, YNetNews.com, 12
July 2006.
72 Katz, Guards Without Frontiers, p. 161.
73 Ibid., p. 174.
74 Ibid., pp. 163, 168 & 176.
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small boats, weak states, dirty money
were reports that Fatah had received four World War II-type one-man
“submarines” from Yugoslavia.
75
e two most significant events of the 1980s occurred in 1985, of which
the most famous was the hijacking of the Achille Lauro by the pLF in Oc-
tober. Before that, in April, Abu Jihad launched an operation that was to
have culminated in a seaborne suicide assault on the compound housing the
Israeli Ministry of Defence and IDF General Staff. however, the boat car-
rying the terrorists to their target from Algeria, the 1,000-ton Attaviros, was
intercepted and sunk.
76
Because the Israeli government believed that the real
target of the raid was the Israeli Defence Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, Abu Jihad
was later assassinated.
77
e Israeli maritime defensive perimeter was finally
breached in July 1986, when the target once again was Nahariya. Four heav-
ily armed pFLp terrorists in a Zodiac eluded an Israeli patrol craft, landed
on the outskirts of the city and set up a defensive position from where they
held off a heavy Israeli assault for three hours before being killed. From the
plans found in their possession it was clear that their objective was to mount
a murderous attack on holiday-makers on the city’s seafront.
78
During the 1980s yachts became favoured for both transport and raid-
ing. In most cases they were foreign-owned in order to divert suspicion.
Force 17 tried this tactic twice in 1985 but in both cases the IDF/Navy
mounted interceptions.
79
perhaps more damaging was the seizure of the SS
Anton in 1986 and of the Maria R in 1987, both of which yielded hauls of
Fatah commanders in transit.
80
Suspecting that their operations were being
compromised by the presence of Israeli agents in Larnaca in Cyprus, Fatah
members seized an Israeli yacht, the First, in 1985, killing one member of
75 Menefee, TMV, p. 33; Jenkins, et al., ‘A chronology of terrorist attacks and
other criminal actions’, p. 66. Just what sort of threat such equipment really
presents, given the high level of skill required to operate it and the intensive
maintenance needed to keep it operational, is questionable.
76 Katz, Guards Without Frontiers, pp. 164-6.
77 Ibid.
78 Katz, Guards Without Frontiers, pp. 173-4.
79 uNSC, Letter dated 4 Sept. 1985 from the permanent Representative of Israel
to the united Nations, addressed to the Secretary-General. In the letter the
yachts involved are named as the Ganda and the Kasilradi. Katz, Guards With-
out Frontiers, pp. 166-7 in his account refers to them as the Ganda and the Cas-
selardit. Menefee, TMV, 1996, p. 33 refers to them as the Ganda and the Kasil
Radis (and places both incidents in 1978).
80 Katz, Guards Without Frontiers, p. 174.
295
maritime terrorists
the crew and abducting two others. Israel retaliated by bombing Fatah’s
headquarters in Tunis, killing 60 and wounding 100.
81
e success of the IDF/Navy made it a target, a development that largely
coincided with the emergence of more aggressive, Islamist-inspired groups
such as hamas and palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group with particularly
strong ties to Iran.
82
In fact, some of the tactics used resembled those devel-
oped by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. e IDF/Navy observed
the deployment of four-man fast boats armed with RpGs against its vessels
in what were likely to be suicide missions. In December 1987 a fast boat
emerged from behind a fishing craft off Sidon. Its crew fired rocket pro-
pelled grenades at a Dabur patrol craft. Before they were killed they man-
aged to inflict severe damage on the patrol craft and mortally wound the
second in command. hamas subsequently claimed responsibility for the
incident.
83
however, the first avowed suicide attack at sea was carried out
by the secular pFLp-GC in April 1988, when a bomber manoeuvred a fish-
ing boat close to an Israeli naval vessel and detonated an explosive charge
which, however, failed to inflict either causalities or damage.
84
Shaul Shai
refers to five further suicide attacks against Israeli naval vessels between
1988 and 1997, all unsuccessful, that were conducted off the Lebanon
coast by either the palestinian groups such as Fatah, pFLp and pFLp-GC
or the Shi’ite Muslim organisation Amal.
85
Attempts to infiltrate Israel by sea continued. e most elaborate was a
pLF mission that sailed from Benghazi in Libya in 1990 with the aim of
inserting two teams on the Israeli coast near Gaash and Nitzanim. e plan
was to shell houses and hotels along the shore with Katyusha rockets, can-
non and machine gun fire, and then to land, capture the Sheraton hotel and
kill everyone they encountered. e mother ship launched six speedboats,
which according to reports had been painted with radar absorbent material.
One sank immediately. e remainder headed for the Israeli coast. One
81 Menefee, TMV, p. 33; Katz, Guards Without Frontiers, p. 167; Lorenz, ‘e
threat of maritime terrorism to Israel’, p. 13; MIpT Terrorism Knowledge Base.
Incident profile:
Al-Fatah Attacked Maritime Target, 25 Sept. 1985, Cyprus.
82 MIpT, Group profile: ‘palestinian Islamic jihad’.
83 Katz, Guards Without Frontiers, pp. 174-5. hamas was formed in 1987.
84 Lorenz, ‘e threat of maritime terrorism to Israel’, p. 14. It is worth noting
that the LTTE’s first maritime suicide attack occurred two years later, on 12
July 1990, when six Sri Lankan personnel were killed in an explosive boat at-
tack in Trincomalee harbour. See ‘Suicide attacks by the LTTE’ at http://www.
satp.org/satporgtp/countries/shrilanka/database/data_suicide_killings.htm
85 Cited in Lorenz, ‘e threat of maritime terrorism to Israel’, p. 15.
296
small boats, weak states, dirty money
was a dedicated tanker which returned to port Said as scheduled. Two of
the four remaining craft experienced mechanical failure, forcing 16 raid-
ers to cram into the two serviceable boats. One was intercepted 22 miles
(40 km) off Gaash. e other made landfall at Nitzanim but had already
been detected by Israeli security forces; four of the raiders were killed on
the beach and seven captured. According to the pLF leader, Abu Abbas,
the raid had taken nearly three years to prepare and cost about $3 million
(equivalent to $4.7 million in 2006).
86
Other infiltration attempts included a raid on Coral Beach at Eilat in
1992, in which four swimmers from the pLF swam over two and a half
miles (5km) from the coast of Jordan towing their weapons in water-proof
containers. One leaked, pulling a swimmer to his death. Once ashore, the
remainder of the team killed an unarmed security guard but were then
killed in turn before they could open fire on holiday-makers.
87
In 1993 a
Fatah faction bombed an Israeli ship, the Jrush Salom, also in Eilat.
88
palestinian coastal raiding effectively came to an end with the signing of
the Oslo Accords and the formation of the palestinian Authority in 1993.
is agreement did not include the new Islamist-inspired groupings which
continued to attack IDF/Navy craft. ree incidents took place off Gaza
early in the new century. On 7 November 2000, the same year that saw
the Cole attack, hamas used a fishing boat in an attempted suicide attack
on an Israeli naval vessel off Rafah at the northern end of the Gaza Strip.
When the Israeli navy ordered the boat to stop it changed course towards
the IDF/Navy vessel and exploded about 100 metres away without causing
any damage.
89
palestinian Islamic Jihad used the same tactic in November
2002, causing injuries to four Israeli sailors.
90
In January 2003, hamas
86 Lorenz, Ibid., pp. 15-16; howland, ‘Israel’s navy steps up to security challenge
in wake of Gaza pull-out’. A brief video of the events at Nitzanim beach can be
viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuejlGFtD5s. In Bohn’s account
the mother ship is named the Tiny Star and the first boat to fail is the tanker
craft: Bohn, e Achille Lauro Hijacking, pp. 121-3.
87 Lorenz, ‘e threat of maritime terrorism to Israel’, p. 16; Aaron Mannes, ‘A life
of terror: Abu Abbas dies’, National Review Online, 10 March 2004.
88 Lorenz, ‘e threat of maritime terrorism to Israel’, p. 16; MIpT Incident pro-
file:
Al-Fatah Attacked Maritime Target, 25 Dec. 1993.
89 ‘patterns of Terrorism in Israel in 2000’; Gunaratna, ‘Sea Tiger success threatens
the spread of copycat tactics’, p. 12.
90 Lee Keath, ‘palestinians attack Israel navy boat’, AP, 23 Nov. 2002; ‘palestinian
suicide boat attacks Israeli navy boat’, Reuters, 23 Nov. 2002; ‘Fishing boat ex-
plodes near Israeli vessel’, CNN.com, 22 Nov. 2002; Ellis Shuman, ‘IDF block-