Word: wazir
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Khalil al-Wazir was sitting in the study of his comfortable home outside Tunis reading field reports when the muffled fire of submachine guns mounted with silencers disturbed the early morning quiet. Instinctively, al-Wazir drew his pistol. But the gesture was futile. The intruders, a commando unit of seven men and one woman, had already killed al-Wazir's Tunisian driver and two Palestinian bodyguards. Then, with the brutal efficiency of a well-trained hit squad, they turned their fire on al-Wazir and riddled his body with a prolonged spray of bullets. Al-Wazir, 52, Yasser Arafat...
...slaying of al-Wazir last Saturday shocked the Palestinian community and prompted a fresh wave of violence in the already besieged occupied territories. In Gaza, where al-Wazir had lived as a teenager, there were protests and memorial services for the slain official of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Seven Palestinians were killed and scores wounded in clashes with Israeli soldiers. In the West Bank the scene was somewhat less violent but no less angry. Palestinians flew black flags and crowded the mosques to read commemorative phrases from the Koran. Still, tensions resulted in five deaths, making last Saturday's total...
Initially, the Israelis refused to either confirm or deny an Israeli connection to al-Wazir's assassination. "Do not ask me, and I'll not have to tell you lies," a high-ranking Israeli intelligence official said. But according to TIME's Middle East correspondents, the entire operation was carried out by a commando unit of 30 members of the Israeli Defense Forces. After crossing the Mediterranean in a large vessel, the commandos switched to a dinghy to make their way ashore. In Tunisia they were met by three men carrying Lebanese passports who provided two Volkswagen vans...
...Israelis made no attempt to disguise their relief that al-Wazir's career had come to an end. "I do not know who killed him, but I do not regret the fact that someone did it," said a government official. "After all he did to us, he deserved it." A founding member of Fatah, al-Wazir was second only to Arafat in the military arm of the P.L.O. He dispatched the first Fatah squad in 1965 to sabotage Israel's main water project, and has been in charge of planning and coordinating military operations inside Israel since...
...Wazir's picture appears on leaflets ordering Palestinians to attack with "stones, petrol bombs, metal balls and slingshots" to avenge his death...