Editing Yasser Arafat (section)

===Unsuccessful Israeli assassination attempts===
The Israeli government tried for decades to [[assassinate]] Arafat, including attempting to intercept and shoot down private aircraft and commercial [[airliner]]s on which he was believed to be traveling.<ref name="nytimes.com">{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/magazine/how-arafat-eluded-israels-assassination-machine.html|title=How Arafat Eluded Israel's Assassination Machine|first=Ronen|last=Bergman|newspaper=The New York Times|date=23 January 2018|access-date=13 January 2019}}</ref> The assassination was initially assigned to Caesarea, the [[Mossad]] unit in charge of Israel's numerous targeted killings. Shooting down a commercial airliner in international airspace over very deep water was thought to be preferable to make recovery of the wreckage, and hence investigation, more difficult.<ref name="nytimes.com"/> Following Israel's 1982 invasion of [[Lebanon]], Israeli [[Minister of Defense|minister of defense]] [[Ariel Sharon]] created a special task force code named "Salt Fish" headed by [[special operations]] experts [[Meir Dagan]] and [[Rafi Eitan]] to track Arafat's movements in Lebanon to kill him because Sharon saw Arafat as a "Jew murderer" and an important symbol, symbols being as important as body counts in a war against a terrorist organization. The Salt Fish task force orchestrated the bombing of buildings where Arafat and senior PLO leaders were believed to be staying. Later renamed "Operation Goldfish", Israeli operatives followed Israeli journalist [[Uri Avnery]] to a meeting with Arafat in an additional unsuccessful attempt to kill him. In 2001, Sharon as prime minister is believed to have made a commitment to cease attempts to assassinate Arafat. However, following Israel's successful assassination in March 2004 of [[Sheikh Ahmed Yassin]], a founder of the Hamas movement, Sharon stated in April 2004 that "this commitment of mine no longer exists."<ref name="nytimes.com"/>