According to press reports, an envelope containing a suspicious substance was sent to the Office of the Palestinian Authority’s Prime Minister, in Ramallah, in August 2006. Some Palestinian officials have accused Israel of sending a “poisonous substance” in an attempt to assassinate Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and his deputy. [1] Israeli officials declined to comment on this allegation, although the incident was reported in Israeli media. [2]

On Monday, August 7, the Office of the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, West Bank received an envelope via mail. Some initial media reports indicated that the envelope was addressed to Deputy Prime Minister Naser El-Din El-Sha`er, with Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh’s name written as the sender. [3] Others alleged that the letter was addressed to Prime Minister Haniyeh himself and that it had a Tel Aviv postmark. [4] During a press conference later on August 7, Deputy Prime Minister El-Sha`er confirmed that the envelope had been addressed to Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. [5]

Office employees described a toxic gas that was emitted after a Palestinian official opened the envelope. The seven employees in the room fainted after inhaling the gas and were admitted to the hospital. [6] There are various descriptions of the actual contents of the envelope. El-Sha`er’s office manager described the contents as being a foul smelling orange tissue. Other reports described a foul smelling white substance, while yet other sources described a small yellow cloth. [7] However, all of the reports agreed that envelope emitted a pungent odor. One witness described the event by saying “When they opened it [the envelope], there was a strong smell in the room and all those present fainted.” [8] Shortly after, Palestinian security officials were made aware of the incident, and all of the employees within the building were evacuated. The affected individuals who were sent to the hospital claimed that “They inhaled gas after opening an envelope,” and doctors stated that the patients were having “breathing difficulties and eye and nose irritations.” [9] Most of the patients were released from the hospital within hours and were in good condition. [10] On the day of the incident, doctors from Ramallah General Hospital were unsure about what had occurred. They stated that “It’s too early to tell whether the envelope contained toxic material.…We are trying to establish why some of the workers lost consciousness….” [11]

In the aftermath of the incident, many Palestinians accused Israel of sending the poisonous envelope to assassinate the Prime Minister and his deputy. The Palestinian Ambassador to Russia stated that “By all accounts Israeli special services are behind this.…It’s neither a threat, nor a warning….It is attempted murder.” [12] Palestinian Deputy Prime Minister El-Sha`er also stated that he believed the envelope was an assassination attempt on his and Haniyeh’s lives. [13] The spokesman for Hamas, Ghazi Hamad, also accused Israel, stating: “It was sent from Tel Aviv and that’s why we believe that this was an attempt to kill the Prime Minister.” [14]

Other Palestinian sources were less certain of Israel’s involvement. The Palestinian Deputy Health Minister stated that, “I can’t rule out that someone was targeting someone in the government but I can’t confirm this…I can confirm that there was a strange substance [in the envelope]”. [15] Others in Ramallah speculated that the incident might have been conducted against Hamas by the rival Palestinian faction, Fatah. [16] Another unnamed source in Ramallah discounted the theory of an Israeli assassination attempt, stating, “The Israelis aren’t that stupid.…If Israel wanted to kill Haniyeh, they know that he is based in the Gaza Strip, not the West Bank.” [17]

The Palestinian Prime Minister Haniyeh, however, personally accused Israel of perpetrating this incident and stated that he believed that the envelope was intended to reach Gaza City to attack the ministers there. He added: “We have no doubt that the Israeli intelligence was involved in this criminal and dangerous act…. This is not the first time that the [Palestinian] government has received threats.” [18]

According to Deputy Prime Minister El-Sha`er, the envelope, along with clothes and blood and urine samples from the victims, were sent to Palestinian, British, and Jordanian hospitals for further testing. [19] Initial reports from a Ramallah laboratory indicated that no known poisons had been detected. [20] Testing continues, and many details about the incident in Ramallah remain uncertain, including the characteristics of the alleged poisonous gas emitted by the envelope.

Nevertheless, many supporters of a Palestinian state are quick to blame Israel because of its past attempted and successful assassinations of Hamas leaders, including the killing of the founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his deputy, Dr. Abdel al-Aziz Rantisi, in 2004. Israel’s failed 1997 attempt to kill Hamas’s politburo head Khalid Mishal with a poison in Amman, Jordan, is the most relevant previous assasination attempt because it also involved the use of toxic chemical agents.

According to published accounts, on October 12, 1997, Israeli Mossad operatives, disguised as Canadian tourists, injected Meshal with a “slow acting poison” as he entered his office in Amman, Jordan. [21] However, immediately following the incident, the Mossad agents were captured and held by Jordanian authorities. Within days, the assassination attempt escalated into a full-blown diplomatic crisis. Having signed a peace treaty with Israel only three years earlier, Jordan’s King Hussein was deeply angered that Israeli operatives were conducting secret operations in his country. He compared the incident with someone “spitting at him in the face.” [22]

The Jordanian monarch demanded that Israel identify the poisonous agent injected into Meshal or face the closure of the Israeli Embassy in Amman and a public trial of the two captured Mossad agents. [23] Initially, the Israeli government resisted, but under U.S, pressure, it subsequently disclosed that the substance used in the attack was a synthetic opiate, Fentanyl, which is used in anesthesiology in much lower doses than that injected into Meshal. [24] The revelation allowed Jordanian authorities to provide Meshal with an antidote, which saved his life. Subsequently, to secure the release of the Mossad agents, then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to release Hamas Founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, as well as a number of other Palestinians, from Israeli prisons. In addition, to further placate the Palestinians, who make up a majority of residents in Jordan, King Hussein traveled to Gaza to personally visit Sheikh Yassin.

The failed poisoning attempt on Meshal and subsequent developments significantly boosted Hamas’s standing in the West Bank and Gaza and strained relations between Israel and Jordan. [25] It remains to be seen what effect the alleged attempt against Prime Minister Haniyeh using chemical agents will have on his popularity and the general standing of Hamas in the Palestinian territories and on relations with Israel, regardless of whether its involvement in the incident is proven.

Sammy Salama, Gina Cabrera-Farraj - Monterey Institute Center for Nonproliferation Studies