Nadav Shragai
Israel Hayom, Feb. 14, 2025
“… if it were possible and practical – I would support it. It’s a better solution than others.”
Two Gaza migrants, Talal al-Damsi and Khaled Abdul Qassab, entered the Israeli Embassy in Asuncion, Paraguay, in May 1970, where they fatally shot the ambassador’s secretary, Edna Peer. The pair were among thousands of Gaza residents whom Israel had persuaded to emigrate to Paraguay in exchange for airline tickets and several hundred dollars. During this period, Mossad and Shin Bet agents operated throughout Gaza, encouraging many residents to emigrate abroad in exchange for financial benefits. Some, like al-Damsi and Qassab, were promised agricultural land parcels for their livelihood.
During their trial, the two men testified that they had waited in vain in Asuncion for contact with the Mossad agent who had promised to meet them upon their arrival in Paraguay. After attempting to establish contact with the Israeli Embassy and finding themselves rebuffed (according to their testimony), they broke into the embassy building. There, they unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate Ambassador Benjamin Varon, who evaded their bullets, though his secretary was fatally shot. The two were sentenced to 13 years in prison.
The Peer murder first exposed Israel’s secret government mechanism that attempted to encourage emigration from Gaza after the Six-Day War in exchange for economic benefits – a system established during Prime Minister Levi Eshkol’s tenure. Ada Sereni, a leading figure in the Mossad’s Aliyah Bet operations in Italy and later an Israel Prize laureate for special contribution to society and state, headed this mechanism. Initially, Eshkol opposed paying migrants, but Sereni defied this directive. She confronted Eshkol, arguing for additional funding to enable mass migration. Eventually, Eshkol refused, and Sereni’s mechanism was suspended. The system managed to relocate approximately 50,000 Gaza residents from a total population of about 400,000 during those years, most of them refugees from 1948, dispersing them worldwide. …SOURCE