A picture taken in 1987 shows late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat consulting with Abu Jihad during the Palestine National Congress conference in Algiers. (AFP)

Friday 2 November 2012

Israel has for the first time admitted assassinating the deputy of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Abu Jihad, in a raid on the movement’s Tunis headquarters in 1988, media reported yesterday.

A report, published in Israel’s Yediot Aharonot, said the operation was planned by the Mossad spy agency and carried out by the Sayeret Matkal elite commando unit.

Abu Jihad, whose real name was Khalil Al-Wazir, was shot dead in the early hours of April 16, 1988 in a commando raid on the PLO headquarters.

“For us, it was the state of Israel which assassinated Abu Jihad,” Mahmud Al-Alul, a former assistant to the PLO deputy, and now a senior official in the Fatah movement of President Mahmud Abbas, told AFP. “Abu Jihad was not assassinated by a soldier but by a decision of the Israeli government.”