1973 Israeli raid in Lebanon

In October 1972, Israel obtained intelligence on the home addresses of three top PLO officials in Beirut: • Muhammad Youssef al-Najjar (Abu Youssef) – an operations leader in 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 attacks against Israeli targets. • Kamal Nasser – PLO spokesman and member of the PLO Executive Committee. Najjar, Adwan, and Nasser lived near one another in a pair of seven-story buildings on Verdun Street in a fashionable area of 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. Intelligence had also been obtained on the address of Khalil al-Wazir, the PLO's second-in-command, but he lived further away from the three others. In addition to information about their residences, high-grade intelligence had also been amassed on other PLO targets in Lebanon such as weapons workshops, command posts, and offices. It was decided to assassinate Najjar, Adwan, and Nasser. The Mossad subsequently deployed Yael Man, a female agent codenamed Nielsen to Beirut in January 1973 to amass further intelligence so that an assassination operation could be planned. She arrived in Lebanon under the cover story that she was there to conduct research for a television series on the life of Lady Hester Stanhope which she was planning on writing. She rented an apartment in a building exactly opposite the two buildings where Najjar, Adwan, and Nasser lived and clandestinely photographed potential landing areas and the target buildings, also meticulously recording the routines of those in the buildings. Before the mission, the forces trained using similar apartments in northern Tel Aviv. They also practiced cross-dressing and walking around disguised as lovers. Meanwhile, Mossad agents in Beirut gathered additional intelligence for the raid. Nielsen selected the private beach of the Sands Hotel as the landing site since access was restricted to guests and it was close to the hotel's parking lot, where the commandos could be picked up by Mossad agents. Brigadier General Emmanuel Shaked, the commander of the IDF's infantry and paratrooper forces, was placed in overall command of the operation. On April 6, 1973, six Mossad operatives arrived in Beirut on counterfeit British, German, and Belgian passports. They checked into the Sands Hotel, rented cars, and parked them in the hotel's parking lot. ==The operation==

On April 9, 1973, eight Israeli Navy missile boats departed from Haifa naval base, carrying 75 soldiers - 21 Sayeret Matkal commandos, 34 Shayetet 13 naval commandos, and 20 soldiers of the Paratroopers Brigade's Sayeret Tzanhanim unit - and 19 Zodiac speedboats on board. They dropped anchor twelve miles off the coast of Beirut. Meanwhile, one of the Mossad operatives at the Sands Hotel met with Nielsen, who confirmed that the three targets were at home, and this information was radioed to the attacking force, after which the operation began. The Zodiac boats carrying the raiding party set out for the shore. To avoid being heard, they turned the motors off when they were a few hundred meters from land and rowed the rest of the way in. The Shayetet 13 commandos carried raiders disguised as tourists onto dry land so that they wouldn't get wet and ruin their disguises, particularly those dressed as women, as they were wearing heavy makeup. They met the Mossad agents waiting in the parking lot with the vehicles, and were driven to their targets. The soldiers responsible for carrying out the assassinations were dropped off two blocks from their targets and walked the rest of the way, posing as couples. At the same time, the backup team became engaged in a firefight. A PLO guard who had fallen asleep woke up and emerged from his car with a pistol drawn. Barak and Amiram Levin shot him, but one of their bullets hit the car and set off its horn, waking up residents of the neighborhood who called the police. Security forces from a nearby police station responded rapidly and the Israelis were soon engaged in a firefight with a few dozen Lebanese Internal Security Forces (ISF) gendarmes. The backup team was joined by the raiding parties in the engagement. The Israeli commandos held off the Lebanese security forces with automatic fire and Betser tossed a grenade at a jeep carrying Lebanese reinforcements, killing three of its four occupants. The Mossad agents arrived with the rented cars, and the commandos piled in and made their getaway, leaving behind spikes in the road to puncture the tires of pursuing police cars. While driving to the beach, they encountered a Lebanese Army armoured personnel carrier (APC) as it scanned the shore. They were not confronted and continued on to the beach, where the commandos and drivers abandoned the cars and returned to the missile boats in Zodiacs. ==Aftermath==

The Israeli operation sharply polarized public opinion in Lebanon. The Muslim Prime Minister Saeb Salam tendered to the resignation of the cabinet. 250,000 people, 10 per cent of the Lebanese population, turned out for the funeral in Beirut of the slain PLO leaders and further tens of thousands attended demonstrations in other parts of the country. The opponents of the armed Palestinian presence, chiefly the army command and President Frangieh, tried but failed to use the opportunity to restrict Palestinian freedom of movement. Two weeks of fighting between the army and Palestinian groups ended in stalemate. In the end, Franjiyya had to admit that the Lebanese army was unable to defend the Palestinian refugee camps and he therefore reluctantly allowed the PLO to bring in heavier weapons and build fortifications. Documents seized from Kamal Adwan's apartment provided a wealth of intelligence on PLO operations in the occupied territories and enabled the Israeli authorities to carry out a series of arrests which severely damaged the Fatah network there. ==Popular culture==

• Operation Spring of Youth was featured in the 2005 Steven Spielberg film Munich. • The Israeli children's book The Time Tunnel – Operation Spring of Youth (2005) by Galila Ron-Feder Amit, number 32 in the Time Tunnel series, is based on this operation. ==See also==