Kimche (centre) with US chief delegate Morris Draper (R) and Lebanese negociator Antoine Fattal (L), after the three completed their marathon negociations that produced the agreement between Israel and Lebanon to begin the withdrawal of foreign troops fro Photo: AFP
As deputy head until 1980 of the Israeli external security service, the Mossad, Kimche was deeply involved in Operation Wrath of God – the plot to assassinate the terrorists who had killed 11 members of the Israeli team at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Kimche ensured that, rather than eliminating the terrorists with a straightforward sniper's bullet, Mossad used more sophisticated methods (booby-trapped mattresses or telephones) that both burnished the agency's own reputation and struck fear into potential future targets.
"We wanted to make them afraid of being a terrorist," he said. "We wanted to make them look over their shoulders and feel that we are upon them. This was a message that they can be got at anywhere, at any time and therefore they have to look out for themselves 24 hours a day."
Long before the recent furore over the use of foreign passports by Mossad for its assassination operations abroad, Kimche was at the heart of a similar scandal. As Mossad was being ticked off by Whitehall for using fake British documents for Wrath of God "hits", Kimche was applying to have his own, genuine, British passport renewed.
"This is really extraordinary," one Foreign Office official noted. "At the same time as the minister is about to protest to the Israeli ambassador over the misuse of British passports for Israeli intelligence operations, we are apparently contemplating issuing a British passport to a man who may well have been in charge of the operation complained of."
Chutzpah.
But Kimche was by no means a stereotypical Israeli blood-and-guts man of war. He was an urbane and cultivated official diplomat, who, as director general of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1980 to 1987, drew on his extraordinary contacts to bring his nation out of the cold at a time when many foreign partners, fearful of an Arab oil-embargo, were minded to shun the Jewish state. No one will now be able to say for sure exactly where Kimche exerted most influence. But it is certain that he had long experience dealing with the Soviet Union and African nations.
Inevitably he focused on building ties with the Arab world: "You have to be very sensitive. You have to understand Arab society," he once said. "Above all, you have to be sensitive to their feelings and their attitudes. I've had a lot of dealings with the Arab world. I find it interesting."
This boundless interest in people and places was one of Kimche's great assets both in the overt and covert domains. His friends said he was a well-rounded man, not purely focused on operational intrigue. "The fact is that I know the world fairly well," Kimche conceded. "The fact is that I know how to make contacts with people. This enables me to do things that many others don't know how to do."
David Kimche, usually known as Dave, was born in London in 1928 to an aristocratic Jewish family with Swiss roots. His parents and brother, Jon, were active Zionists, and Dave left Britain Palestine in 1946, fighting in the war two years later that accompanied Israel's creation. He then joined the Jerusalem Post before joining Mossad in 1953. His postings to Africa and Asia, often under journalistic cover and using the name David Sharon, were designed to create an Israeli sphere of influence on the periphery of the Arab world.
A frequent tactic was to approach Christian ethnic groups and offer support in civil wars or uprisings against Muslim rivals. In this role Kimche became known as the "Man with the Suitcase", appearing in various African states shortly before dramatic coups and disappearing again quickly afterwards. There was rarely room for scruple in this "Great Game" strategy, and among the Israeli proteges on the continent was the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. No state was too remote to prove useful, however, and Israel sought and secured allies from Central America to South East Asia.
By the late 1970s, Kimche's covert work was proving crucial in the delicate peace negotiations with Egypt. Using contacts in north Africa, he is thought to have convinced Morocco's King Hassan to broker talks between Jerusalem and Cairo. But Kimche, by then deputy-director of Mossad, fell out with his boss, Yitzhak Hofi, and, in 1980, he resigned to join the Foreign Ministry. It was there that he almost came unstuck. The caution inherent to covert work seemed to give way to adventurism as he championed an Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 where, true to form, he backed Christian militias – which then went on to carry out massacres at Palestinian refugee camps Sabra and Chatila. It was in Lebanon too, that Kimche almost became snared by a web of intrigue that stretched from Nicaragua to Tehran.
Following the suggestion that Iran could use its influence with Hizbollah to win the release of American hostages held by the Lebanese militant group, Israel agreed to sweeten Tehran by supplying the regime there with weapons, in defiance of an arms embargo. The CIA funnelled profits from the deals to anti-communist rebels, or Contras, that it was backing in Nicaragua.
Fall out from the so-called Iran-Contra affair proved deeply damaging, and afterwards there was a suspicion that the idea had originated with Kimche. But he retained his contacts in Iran. In 1991, after he had officially retired to pursue "business interests", an American television team reporting in Tehran found that, "whenever we went to interview Islamic revolutionary government officials, David Kimche seemed to be just leaving their offices". But an undercover relationship with a sworn enemy inevitably produced worrying and comical moments.
"I was in Hamburg for discussions with a certain ayatollah," he once recalled. "The talks went on into the night, ending at 2am. Then the Iranians beckoned us to go with them.'We have something to show you,' they said, and drove us into the depths of Hamburg's dockland. We stopped outside a warehouse and were led up an unlit staircase. I felt quite nervous when we suddenly emerged into a huge chamber. The light went on – and spread before us was an extraordinary spectacle: a huge collection of magnificent carpets once owned by the Shah of Persia. They had been shipped out for sale to finance the Mullahs' revolution." Sadly for Kimche, his salary could not stretch to meet the price of the treasures on display.
In his later years, Kimche, ever the pragmatist, focused on achieving a peace settlement with the Palestinians. He had previously sought to destroy the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) of Yasser Arafat ("Arafat was our mortal enemy" he said). But having weakened the PLO, he later accepted that "like it or not, Mr. Arafat is the only Palestinian leader with the power to curb violence and work out an enduring ceasefire, let alone a peace accord." Even after Arafat's death, and despite endless failures that hardened mistrust among people on both sides, Kimche kept at behind-the-scenes peace efforts. In his last years, and as informed as anyone of Israel's capacity to strike at its enemies if need be, he was in a position, perhaps, to be more trusting than most.
"I do not share what I regard as the Diaspora mentality of seeing danger under every rock we pick up," he says. "I do not believe that a Palestinian state poses a danger in any way or form. Whether the territories become a part of Jordan or a Palestinian state, neither will pose a threat to Israel."
David Kimche, the author of several books on foreign affairs, married twice. He is survived by his wife, Ruth, and four children
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