Yehiya Ayyash, a Palestinian bomb builder known to the world simply as "the Engineer," killed 130 Israelis and wounded about 500 more during a remarkable twenty-four months of terror. On April 6, 1994, the first powerful car bomb detonated by a suicide bomber killed eight and wounded some thirty people, and a week later a man on a crowded bus turned himself into a human bomb as he exploded fifty pounds of high-powered explosives. Other suicide bombings, in the center of Tel Aviv and elsewhere, followed with sickening regularity, while Ayyash, who masterminded them all, managed to elude the largest manhunt in Israeli history. Charismatic, dedicated, and cold-blooded, he soon evolved into a mythical figure, revered like a pop star among Palestinians. His pursuit involved thousands of agents spanning four continents, until he was at last killed in the blinding flash of a telephone bomb meant to exact biblical justice. In telling this cloak-and-dagger thriller with its rare look behind the scenes of Israel's security apparatus, Samuel M. Katz focuses on the merciless war of terror on Israel's streets, where bombs are shaping the political reality of the Middle East.
8 Pages of Black-and-White Photographs Notes/Index