Background
In February 1973, Ehud Barak, the commander of the elite Sayeret Matkal unit, obtained photographs and precise information on the whereabouts of three senior PLO leaders:
- Muhammad Youssef al-Najjar (Abu Youssef) – an operations leader in the terrorist group Black September, the group responsible for the 1972 Munich massacre. He was also a PLO veteran, previously head of the Lebanese Fatah branches, head of Fatah internal intelligence organization. His latest duties were head of the PLO's political department and one of Yasser Arafat's deputies (third in line of Fatah's leadership).
- Kamal Adwan – a PLO chief of operations, responsible for armed terrorist activities against Israel in the West Bank and the Gaza strip.
- Kamal Nasser – Poet, PLO spokesman and member of the PLO Executive Committee.
The men lived in a pair of seven-story buildings in the fashionable neighborhood of Verdun in West Beirut. These buildings were residential housing for both British and Italian families along with Arab families. One building housed Al-Najjar, and a building across the street housed Adwan and Nasser.
Barak and his team immediately began planning on an operation to eliminate them. The plan they came up with was to land from navy ships on the Lebanese coast and infiltrate into Lebanon disguised as tourists, with some of the commandos to be disguised as women (Barak was disguised as a brunette woman). Before the mission, the forces involved trained for the operation in the apartments of northern Tel Aviv, similar in construction to those they would be assaulting in Beirut. They also practiced cross-dressing and walking around disguised as lovers.
Read more about this topic: 1973 Israeli Raid On Lebanon
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