THERE
were many mysterious circumstances in the case that may have led that MI5 manager
to believe there was some Israeli involvement. Despite the warnings and the
widely held belief at the time that anti-Israeli attacks in Britain were likely,
the considerable security at the embassy was easily circumvented and the surveillance
cameras on the embassy building were allegedly not working, so no video recordings
were made of the positioning of either car bomb. The officer employed at the
embassy to watch the videos was actually removed from his post just after the
bombings and was not available at the trial. It was also confirmed that Israeli
teams had taken bomb crater and other samples and conducted their own tests
and investigations. Yet nothing is known about who these people were, what they
took or exactly what the results of their tests.
The bombings took place in crowded areas of London, one of them in the middle
of the day, but there were no fatalities. It was also very fortunate that there
were only a few people in the embassy at the time, indeed the Israeli Ambassador
was out of the country. Well before the trial though, he felt able to congratulate
the police on their arrest of the 'terrorists'. The security, a police presence,
was actually taken off Balfour House an hour before that explosion, despite
the likelihood of such an attack and despite the bombing of the Israeli Embassy
earlier that day. There was a massive subsequent demand for funding from Jewish
institutions in Britain from the government and the image of the Israelis as
being victims under siege was reinforced, particularly important at that time
as the massacre by a Jewish settler of Palestinians at prayer in Hebron had
taken place only a few months earlier.
An Israeli journalist, openly hostile to the defendants, tried to contact one
of the jurors in court but the judge took no action and allowed them both to
stay for the rest of the trial.
Perhaps most oddly, no one seems concerned that the actual bombers have not
been found. Neither Samar nor Jawad were ever accused of actually planting either
of the bombs. The case against Mrs Nadia Zekra was so laughable that it was
thrown out by the judge. Yet when Samar and Jawad revealed in their defence
the identity of someone who was involved, Mr Rida Mughrabi, the authorities
expressed no interest in tracking him down.
One of the defence's leading expert witnesses, the writer, historian and academic
George Joffe, believes that the bombings were probably conducted by intelligence
services on behalf of a government. Indeed they do have the hallmarks of a government-backed
operation: efficient, reliable, untraceable. And newspaper reports at the time
did describe it as a "precision job".
The fact that MI5 received warnings also suggests an intelligence tip-off, which
indicates the involvement of a foreign government or international terrorist
organisation. As Gareth Peirce said, "If one analyses the bombings of an embassy...who
carries out these things...? Who is it? Who does it and on whose behalf?...
informed observers would say that somewhere at the back of all this would usually
be a government. Which government remains a question. There are substantial
resources here. This is an operation of extraordinary audacity and amazing expertise.
Those who perpetrated it achieved what they intended to do and left."
And still, no one knows who planted the bombs or even what explosive they used.
Whatever explosive it was, where did it all come from? Where were those explosives
prepared and made up into the two powerful car bombs? Where was it all stored?
Who bought the Triumph? Where were the cars kept? Who is behind the 'Jaffa Team'
of the 'Palestinian Resistance'? Who is Rida Mughrabi? And why were those bombings
carried out?
Of course, the one group who did not benefit from the explosions were the
Palestinians.
