leaders of Palestinian terrorism who were not necessarily linked to
the slaughter. These plans were put into action in the Wrath of God
Operation and the Spring of Youth Operation.
Committee X continued to exist and authorize the covert targeted
killing of all those involved in any kind of terrorism, but the role of
clandestine assassination in the Mossad’s activities was greatly re-
duced after the Khaled Mash’al Fiasco, a failed assassination at-
tempt in Jordan in September 1997.CONCEPT, THE.After the 1967 Six-Day War, analysts of Military
Intelligence(MI) in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) developed the
opinion that Egypt was unprepared and unwilling to go to war against
Israel. The theory, which became known as the “Concept” (kon-
septzia), was founded on the overwhelming Israeli victory against the
Arabs armies in the Six-Day War, which the Arab armies would not be
able to overcome for some time. It was also based on an Egyptian out-
look provided by the Top Source, Marwan Ashraf, who claimed the
Egyptian military establishment believed it would not be ready to
wage war on Israel and achieve its goals of reoccupying territories lost
to Israel in the Six-Day War until it obtained long-range offensive
weapons from the Soviet Union. The Concept also held that the Arabs
were not ready for an all-out war against Israel and would launch one
only when they could attack all Israeli airfields simultaneously; in par-
ticular, Syria would not attack without Egypt. The theory was rein-
forced by the presence of the so-called Bar-Lev Line, IDF defensive
positions deployed along the Suez Canal that could restrain any at-
tacker long enough for the IDF to mobilize its entire army.
The obsession with the Concept drastically affected the Israel’s polit-
ical and military decision making. Based on the Concept, MI analysts
assessed that if war were to begin, it would not be until at least two years
after delivery to Egypt and Syria of these strategic weapons from the
Soviet Union. Since, on the eve of the 1973 Yom Kippur Warit was
known that neither country had obtained these weapons, MI analysts es-
timated that war would not be possible until at least 1975.
An entrenched concept like this one very rarely changes of its own
accord unless unequivocal information that utterly contradicts the
concept is obtained or it is seen to fly in the face of reality. In the pres-
ent case no such thing happened. MI did not learn that Egyptian pres-70 • CONCEPT, THE06-102 (02) A-G.qxd 3/24/06 7:23 AM Page 70