Karine A affair
2002 Israeli military action
The Karine A affair, also known as Operation "Noah's Ark" (Hebrew: מבצע תיבת נוח, romanized: Mivtza Teyvat Noah), was an Israeli military action in January 2002 in which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) forces seized MV Karine A, which was a Palestinian freighter in the Red Sea. The vessel was reported by the IDF to be carrying 50 tons of weapons, including short-range Katyusha rockets, antitank missiles, and high explosives.
Background
Prior investigation had revealed that the captain of the vessel was Colonel Omar Akawi, a Fatah activist since 1976 and former member of the Palestinian Authority. According to Lloyd's List, which tracks worldwide shipping records, the ship was purchased on August 31, 2001, from a Lebanese company by the Palestinian Authority, under the name of Adel Mughrabi. The alleged purchaser of the weapons, Mughrabi (aka Adel Salameh), was a former member of Yassir Arafat's staff until the early 1980s "when he was dismissed for conducting private business which conflicted with his official status".
From October 2000, Mughrabi was in contact with the Iranians and Hezbollah. Mughrabi was one of the key contacts in Palestinian weapons procurement. He was supported by the Palestinian Naval Police Commander Juma'a Ghali and his executive Fathi Ghazem. Their objective was to sneak in a great amount of weapons for the use of the Palestinian Authority. This particular operation included the purchase and facilitating of ships, forming of a sailing crew, planning on how to store and hide the weapons, the loading of the weapons into the vessels, and the transit of it until delivered to the Palestinian Authority.
“Karine A affair” enters the record as 2002 Israeli military action. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Karine, affair and Israeli can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Karine A affair” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.