What does Israel hope to achieve with its assassination campaign?

Turkish authorities detained 33 people last week of which 15 were later arrested on suspicion of spying for Israel’s intelligence service, Mossad.

Their suspected espionage activities were expected as a Wall Street Journal article reported a month ago that Israeli intelligence service plans to kill Hamas leaders around the world.

Just days after that report, the head of Israel’s domestic security agency Shin Bet, Ronen Bar, told Israeli public broadcaster Kan that "Israel will hunt down Hamas in Lebanon, Türkiye and Qatar even if it takes years."

However, experts point out that these campaigns, of Mossad and Shin Bet, have negligible impact on the motivation of Palestinians to fight the Israeli occupation.

“In many ways, the policy of assassination does not matter or change the course of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” says Ahron Bregman, author of The Spy Who Fell to Earth.

Bregman, who also served in the Israeli army for six years and was former parliamentary assistant in the Knesset, tells TRT World that such steps would risk diplomatic relations with Türkiye and Qatar.

Another challenge is how to escape responsibility if these assassinations do take place, “since the assassinations are war crimes”, Ramzy Baroud, Palestinian journalist-author, tells TRT World.

What happened after ‘Munich’

Following the Munich Olympic killings in 1972, Mossad went on a decades-long assassination campaign called ‘ Operation of God’s Wrath’.

“The cabinet set a goal for us, to take out Hamas. And we are determined to do it, this is our Munich,” Ronen Bar said.

It took over 20 years to assassinate the members of Black September militant group in Rome, Paris, East Berlin, Athens, Lillehammer and Beirut.

“The operations were conducted in collaboration with European services, with their significant support” says Ali Burak Daricili, security and intelligence expert at Bursa Technical University.

He adds that Mossad succeeded in assassinating 11 people across Europe by 1992.

Mossad’s assassinations were not limited to just the Black September group members, their campaign carried on killing many prominent figures, scientists, and members of various Palestinian resistance groups across the world.

There was even a case of misidentification where Mossad assassinated the wrong person, Daricili explains.

Known as the Lillehammer affair, Mossad killed Ahmed Bouchikhi, a Moroccan waiter in Norway in July 1973, instead of Ali Hassan Salameh.

That resulted in the suspension of the operation and damaged the organisation's reputation.

And Israel never officially accepted responsibility for the assassination although there was clear evidence at the time.

Who were the targets actually?

During the time, there was some confusion on who Israeli intelligence was targeting and what their connection was to the Munich killings.

Throughout the years, Israel targeted a nuclear scientist, a lecturer, a poet, or Palestinian officials, or members of Hezbollah or a spokesperson of a Palestinian resistance group.

PLO (The Palestine Liberation Organisation), DFLP (Democratic Front for Liberation of Palestine), PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), Black September, Al Fatah, and now Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas have been among those targeted.

“They want to kill anyone affiliated with Hamas leadership to redeem the reputation of their intelligence for the Israeli public,” Baroud says.

“The targeted assassination of Saleh al Arouri in Beirut was part of that agenda”, he adds.

He thinks that targeting Türkiye and Qatar does not make sense since “effective leaders of Hamas are based neither in Türkiye nor Qatar, not even in Beirut”.

“Mohammed Deif, Yahya Sinwar and Abu Obaida, the most wanted ones are based in Gaza,” he says.

“Even the people who are related to Hamas in Türkiye are mostly intellectuals, not making decisive military or political decisions on behalf of the group,” he says, adding that assassinating them is going to be of very little benefit to Israel for the situation in Gaza.

Because Israel failed to eliminate Hamas in Gaza they want to target other countries now, Baroud says.

Therefore, the ongoing plan is not based on eliminating a threat but rather redeeming the reputation following the October 7, Baroud points out.

Domestic problems at home

As the latest assassination campaign starts with the killing of Saleh al Arouri, Bregman says that “assassinations of Palestinian leaders never really changed, strategically, the situation of Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

“The Israelis often say that such assassinations deter others from joining the Palestinian resistance - but this is nonsense,” Bregman adds.

“The Israelis also often claim that those they assassinate are ‘indispensable’. But then, we all know that the graveyards are full of ‘indispensable’ men - there's also a replacement,” he adds.

There are definitive domestic gains in these killings, he says “when key Palestinian leaders are assassinated, it helps to raise morale in Israel.”

Because, since the start of the war, there have been divisions within the coalition government of Israel and within Netanyahu’s war cabinet.

And then there is pressure from the Knesset, and from the opposition, the Supreme Court and the Israeli streets.

“The Israelis are currently more divided than ever,” Baroud expresses.

Discussion on ‘the day after the war’ in Gaza has also been canceled due to the pressure from the coalition government.

What does Israel risk?

Such espionage activities are against both international law and sovereign rights of the states, Daricili reiterates.

He also believes that carrying out spying in Türkiye won’t be an easy task for Mossad.

“They do this in Lebanon but it is a very overt failed state,” he says, adding that the strength of Turkish intelligence comes from the traditionally rooted structure of the organisation, its use of technology, quality of personnel and the support coming from the politics.

Also, Türkiye’s fight with various terrorist groups over years led to the development of the capabilities of Turkish intelligence, Baroud explains

“All elements of Turkish security were in coordination when the operation against Mossad spies took place, which was massive," he adds, noting the superior anti-terrorism and anti-espionage capabilities of the Turkish intelligence.