Kill Khalid: The Failed Mossad Assassination of Khalid Mishal and the Rise of Hamas

by Paul McGeough

Overview

“Meticulously researched . . . This is the definitive chronicle of the Middle East crisis during the Clinton years and in the post-9/11 era” (Publishers Weekly).
 
“Providing a fly-on-the-wall vantage of the rising diplomatic panic that sent shudders through world capitals,” Kill Khalid unfolds as a masterpiece of investigative journalism (Toronto Star). In 1997, the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad poisoned Hamas leader Khalid Mishal in broad daylight on the streets of Amman, Jordan. As the little-known Palestinian leader slipped into a coma, the Mossad agents’ escape was bungled and the episode quickly spiraled into a diplomatic crisis. A series of high-stakes negotiations followed, which ultimately saved Mishal and set the stage for his phenomenal political ascendancy.
 
In Kill Khalid, acclaimed reporter Paul McGeough reconstructs the history of Hamas through exclusive interviews with key players across the Middle East and in Washington, including unprecedented access to Mishal himself, who remains to this day one of the most powerful and enigmatic figures in the region. A “sobering reminder of how little has been achieved during 60 years of Israeli efforts in Palestine,” Kill Khalid tracks Hamas’s political fortunes across a decade of suicide bombings, political infighting, and increasing public support, culminating in the battle for Gaza in 2007 and the current-day political stalemate (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).
 
“A pacey, riveting, and controversial book that has all the compulsion of a Le Carré novel.” —John F. Burns, The New York Times
 
“[A] gem of leave-no-stone-unturned reporting.” —Foreign Affairs

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781595583253
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	03/10/2009
Pages:	477
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Paul McGeough is the chief foreign correspondent for and a former editor of Australia's Sydney Morning Herald and the author of several books on the Middle East, including Kill Khalid: The Failed Mossad Assassination of Khalid Mishal and the Rise of Hamas (The New Press), which won the 2010 Premier's Book of the Year award in Sydney, Australia. He has twice been named Australian Journalist of the Year and was awarded the Johns Hopkins University–based SAIS Novartis Prize for excellence in international journalism and eight Walkley Awards for his reporting on crisis and conflict. He lives in McLean, Virginia.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Who's Who xi

1 The Tourists 1

2 Village of the Sheikhs 4

3 The Tap Dancer from Amman 17

4 The Education of a Terrorist 30

5 "Have You Guys Lost Your Minds?" 40

6 Arafat's Circus 49

7 The Palestinian Project 61

8 The Bearded Engineer in a New York Cell 78

9 Violence Is the Only Weapon 95

10 A Little Obscurity Is Good 110

11 "They Used a Bizarre Instrument" 129

12 Mishal Must Not Die 144

13 "Who the Hell Is Khalid Mishal?" 161

14 Pulling a Rabbit from the King's Threadbare Hat 178

15 The Price Bibi Paid 196

16 The Legendary Image of Mossad 215

17 Brother Against Brother 230

18 Handcuffed and Deported 247

19 Dead Men Walking 267

20 Follow the Money 294

21 Government from the Trenches 312

22 "No Gold Bars Left" 336

23 Everything Is Not as It Seems 349

24 An Eye for an Eye 365

25 Taking the Holy Land to Court 383

26 The Man Who Wouldn't Die 396

Epilogue 415

Chronology 419

Notes 425

Index 457

Editorial Reviews

"More than just a thriller with endnotes. The author's accumulated contacts over the years have given him rare access to most of the individuals at the centre of the Hamas story." —The Times Literary Supplement

"An incisive insider's history about one of the world's most intractable conflicts—and a ripping yarn to boot." —Jon Lee Anderson, The New Yorker

"Suspense-filled." —Vanity Fair

"McGeough's work reminds us what real journalism looks like. " —Firedoglake.com

"[A] riveting account of Israel's botched poisoning of Mishal." —Library Journal

From the Publisher

In Kill Khalid, Australian journalist Paul McGeough uses the botched assassination as the jumping-off point for a timely and thorough examination of Hamas, highlighting the ways in which Israel has intentionally and unintentionally aided its rise…Far too many earnest, lumbering books on the Middle East propose recycled versions of the path to peace. McGeough doesn't offer a solution to the conflict. But he provides a highly instructive account of how Hamas emerged as a potent force and why its faithful honor Mishal as the "martyr who did not die."
—The Washington Post

Greg Myre

McGeough (Manhattan to Baghdad) offers a meticulously researched, if in places excessively detailed treatment of Palestinian political history. Based on interviews conducted with key players and Hamas leader Khalid Mishal, the narrative focuses on the attempted assassination in 1997 of Mishal by Mossad, the Israeli secret service, and examines how the bungled poisoning catalyzed Hamas-previously marginalized and labeled a terrorist group-to rise to power. The brazen attempt on Mishal's life in broad daylight while he was taking his sons for a haircut in Amman, Jordan, galvanized the movement; Mishal became a household name in the Middle East and Hamas members called him "the martyr who did not die." By 2004, Hamas's refusal to abandon the use of suicide bombers turned international opinion against the organization, but by this time even Jimmy Carter had visited Mishal, and Arafat's PLO had been pushed aside as the sole representative of the Palestinian cause. This is the definitive chronicle of the Middle East crisis during the Clinton years and in the post-9/11 era. (Mar.)

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Publishers Weekly

Despite the title, Israel's disastrously botched 1997 attempt to murder a key Hamas leader plays a minor role in this gripping and discouraging history. Readers will receive one of many jolts as Sydney Morning Herald chief correspondent McGeough (Manhattan to Baghdad, 2003, etc.) reveals that America and Israel welcomed Islamic fundamentalism to the occupied territories during the 1960s and '70s, pleased that these pious Muslims despised Yassar Arafat and his secular Palestine Liberation Organization. Khalid Mishal was 11 when his devout family fled to Kuwait after the Israeli conquest of the West Bank in 1967. Brilliant in school, he taught at Kuwait University from 1978 to 1984 while leading members of the Islamic Association of Palestinian Students in often violent clashes against students who supported the PLO. He was involved with Hamas from its founding in 1987, and by 1991, when he moved to Jordan, he was one of the organization's leaders. Hamas soon launched a murderous campaign of suicide bombings, which led to a equally murderous Israeli response, including the assassination of Hamas leaders. After 30 years of denouncing Arafat as a terrorist, American leaders hoped he would lead the patchy new Palestinian state, but it was too late. While the PLO was largely a guerrilla organization, Hamas spent 20 years providing clinics, schools and food to Palestinian civilians, social services that brought their reward in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections. Outraged that voters had chosen the wrong people, America cut off aid, thereby falling in line with Israel's policy of encouraging Palestinians to seek peace by making them as miserable as possible. A journalistictour-de-force, and a sobering reminder of how little has been achieved during 60 years of Israeli efforts in Palestine.

Kirkus Reviews