Security services draw list of Israel officials liable to be Hezbollah targets
Israel”s intelligence community has drawn up a list of dozens of former senior security officials who are liable to be targets of Hezbollah attacks.
The list was prepared in response to Hezbollah”s threats to avenge the assassination of its "operations officer," Imad Mughniyeh, last February. Hezbollah blames Israel for the killing.
A senior security source said that following the assassination, the Counterterrorism Bureau, which works out of the Prime Minister”s Office, called a series of meetings on Hezbollah”s likely response. The meetings were attended by representatives of all the intelligence agencies – the Shin Bet, the Mossad and Military Intelligence – as well as the Foreign Ministry and the police. The main goal, he said, was to try to prevent another incident like Hezbollah”s abduction in 2000 of Elhanan Tennenbaum, a former senior Israel Defense Forces officer who went into business after retiring from the army.
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The meetings resulted in a decision that every security agency should draw up a list of former senior officials who might be vulnerable to a Hezbollah assassination or kidnapping. "Each organization was asked to define those of its retirees on whom an attack might be viewed as equivalent in value to the assassination of Mughniyeh," the senior source said.
The criteria for inclusion on this list include the person”s seniority in his organization, his current public prominence, and the risk to which his current occupation is likely to expose him.
Each security agency drafted a list of a few dozen names. The agencies then devised procedures for exchanging information on subjects such as those individuals” trips abroad, potential threats, and intelligence warnings of planned attacks. In a few cases, people on the list have been assigned protection by either Israeli security agencies or local agencies in the countries to which they traveled.
Since Mughniyeh”s assassination, Israel has received numerous intelligence warnings of Hezbollah”s plans to avenge the killing by attacking Israeli or Jewish targets overseas. A few attempted attacks have already been foiled by cooperation between Israeli and foreign security services.
About six weeks ago, the media reported that the defense establishment had warned various former senior security officials who do business in Muslim countries with which Israel does not have diplomatic relations about the threat of a Hezbollah kidnap attempt. A few months earlier, Israeli businessmen active in western Africa were warned of a Hezbollah plot to kidnap or kill them.