A Bomb Hidden in a Phone Ended the Hunt for Hamas’s Engineer

The telephone was handed to Yahya Ayyash with a familiar explanation: his father was calling. According to the account his host gave the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Ayyash acknowledged the caller and the handset exploded. The man Israel had spent months trying to find died inside a hideout in Beit Lahiya, in the Palestinian-ruled Gaza Strip, on January 5, 1996.

Israeli authorities considered Ayyash a central figure in the suicide-bombing campaign against Israeli civilians. Known as the Engineer for his expertise with explosives, he stood at the top of their most-wanted list. JTA’s contemporary account described him as the alleged mastermind of attacks that had killed scores of Israelis.

The phone reached a home where Ayyash was staying with a former university roommate. An Inter Press Service reconstruction published three days after the killing said he had previously checked the handset and had arranged a time to speak to his father. Trouble with the ordinary telephone line pushed the call onto the mobile. That reconstruction drew on accounts emerging after the attack; the full operational record was not made public.

Israel’s official position was silence on responsibility. Former Shin Bet deputy chief Gideon Ezra welcomed the killing in comments reported by IPS, while qualifying his praise with whether the security service had been involved. Prime Minister Shimon Peres declined to accept responsibility. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat accused Israel of violating the peace accords and Palestinian autonomy.

The killing arrived two weeks before Palestinian elections. Israel closed the West Bank and Gaza, anticipating revenge attacks. JTA reported a warning from parliamentary committee chairman Hagai Meirom: Ayyash had left behind younger people who had learned bombmaking from him. Killing the man had left that knowledge in circulation.

The exploding phone subsequently entered military literature as an example of a targeted killing. A 2007 study published by the United States’ Joint Special Operations University described the device and identified Ayyash as Hamas’s bombmaking expert. The study supplied a retrospective account of the method; its publication was not an Israeli operational disclosure.