The End of Force 17?

By Aaron Mannes

Reportedly Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is disbanding Force 17 as part of a re-org on Palestinian security forces. As Arafat’s elite Presidential Guard Force 17 has played a crucial role in the development of modern terrorism. Although Force 17’s disappearance would be welcome (if it really happens – re-orgs of the Palestinian security forces are a frequent occurrence with little real effect) it has already had its terrible impact on the international arena.

Force 17 was founded in the 1970s as a response to Israel’s successful campaign of assassinating PLO leaders. The name reportedly came either from the organization’s address in Beirut at 17 Faqahani Street or from the last two digits of the phone number of its founder, Ali Hassan Salameh. Dictatorial regimes frequently have multiple overlapping security services, both to keep an eye on the citizenry and each other. Although the PLO was stateless, it nonetheless followed this pattern. As an elite unit close to Arafat, Force 17 was intimately tied to terror operations. Founder Salameh was assassinated by Israel in 1979 for his role in organizing the attack on the 1972 Munich Olympics. Force 17 was also Arafat’s key enforcer against Palestinians who dared break from Arafat. In 1987 Force 17 killed Nagy el-Ali, a Palestinian political cartoonist famous for his criticism of Arafat.

Force 17 continued in this enforcement role under the Palestinian Authority. It spear-headed campaigns against “land-dealers” (Palestinians who sold their land to Israelis) and was the go-to muscle against Hamas and Fatah when they threatened Arafat. When the Palestinian Authority was founded, Force 17 officially became al-Amn al-Ri’asah (Presidential Guard). The unit’s uniforms had the number 17 on their sleeves.

In the early period of the al-Aqsa Intifada, Force 17 played a central role in sniper attacks and bombings. Its infrastructure was heavily targeted by Israel and to some extent was kept out of the fray to preserve it as an internal security force.

In one of those grand historical ironies, the United States provided aid and training to Force 17 in order to buttress PA President Mahmoud Abbas against Hamas.

Force 17’s legacy goes beyond the Palestinian arena. In its heyday the PLO was terror central, providing training to terrorists from every corner of the world. One Force 17 alum has achieved particular notoriety. Next to bin Laden and Zawahiri, Hezbollah external operations chief Imad Mughniyah is the terrorist most wanted by the United States. He has been linked to all of Hezbollah’s major terror attacks, including the Embassy and Marine Barracks bombings of the early 1980s and the AMIA bombing in 1994. In 1996 Mughniyah met with Bin Laden in Khartoum where Bin Laden expressed his admiration for Mughniyah’s efforts expelling the United States from Lebanon in the 1980s. (Mughniyah is a Lebanese Shiite.) The meeting wasn’t just chit-chat. Hezbollah provided training and technical support to al-Qaeda, which then mastered Hezbollah’s signature tactic – the multiple simultaneous suicide car bombing – using it to deadly effect in Kenya and Nairobi in 1998. Mughniyah keeps a low profile but remains active. He was spotted at a Damascus summit in which the Presidents of Syria and Iran met in January 2006.

Mughniyah cut his teeth as a teenage gunman with Force 17 in Beirut in the late 1970s. Mughniyah’s links to Fatah are also not ancient history. While Hezbollah’s growing with relationships with the Palestinian Islamist groups has been well reported, Hezbollah has also worked to build connections within the ostensibly secular Fatah. Force 17 officers founded the very first Hezbollah cells in the Gaza and the West Bank. The strategic significance of the Palestinian terror groups moving into Iranian orbit should not be underestimated.

It would be nice to think that Force 17 will fade from the scene, but it will undoubtedly re-surface. Regardless, its bloody legacy lives on.

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