Tel Aviv Bombers Missed Passover Date
The two-man British terrorist team that bombed the Tel Aviv seafront Blues club Mike’s Place near the American embassy Wednesday night, April 30, was given its mission by a Damascus-based controller, Imad al-Alami, Hamas operations officer closely associated with the Lebanese Hizballah. Three Israelis were killed and 60 injured in the Tel Aviv attack which was claimed by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade of Arafat’s Fatah and the Hamas.
Their original mission, which did not come off, was a Passover massacre like the atrocity carried out last year at Netanya’s Park Hotel.
The two bombers, Asif Hanif, who blew himself up when accosted by the club’s security guard Avi Taviv, and Omar Khan Sharif who fled dropping his bomb belt, arrived in Damascus separately.
One member of the British duo spent four months in Syria preparing for the operation. His partner joined him in the second week of April after taking a circuitous route through Europe. Together, they were led by a Hamas or Hizballah guide through Jordan to the Allenby Bridge crossing into the West Bank and Israel entering on their British passports. A taxi drove them to the Gaza Strip. There, Hanif and Sharif lay low for about two weeks as guests of a Hamas cell that also numbers Hizballah operatives. They stayed in Gaza the same length of time as a fellow Briton, the notorious shoe bomber Richard Reid who visited the Gaza Strip before going on a failed mission for al Qaeda to blow up an American Airlines plan flying from Paris to Miami in December 2001.
More about the British terrorists’ activities and their connections with Palestinian and Islamic terrorist networks are expected from the escaped bomber Sharif when he is captured. Israeli security authorities have launched a massive manhunt, anxious to find him for fear that he may be preparing another suicide assault.
The type of explosive used in the Tel Aviv attack is unfamiliar to Israeli bomb experts who presume it was imported. It is surmised that the belt was manufactured in Lebanon or Syria by Hizballah bomb experts. The belts were either brought from Syria – no easy task to get past two border crossings – or assembled from explosive materials smuggled into the Gaza Strip through Egypt or by sea.
The strike was timed to take place hours before the road map formulated by the Middle East Quartet was published. It was orchestrated by a combination of hard-line Palestinian groups dedicated to defeating any peace efforts. Its perpetrators were the first British Muslims willing to die in the service of Palestinian terrorism.
Our counter-terrorism sources report the Israeli authorities have asked British intelligence whether the two terrorists are on their lists of Muslim extremists. If they were suspected of extremist activities in the UK, the British will be asked why they were allowed to travel abroad. If their departure was recorded, then British intelligence will have to explain why the intelligence agencies fighting Middle East terror were not given the alert.
