Operation Atlas
It involved five soldiers: three who were previously members of the Templer religious sect in Mandatory Palestine, and two Palestinian Arabs who were close collaborators of the mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini.
[1] Atlas aimed at establishing an intelligence-gathering base in Mandatory Palestine, radioing information back to Germany, and recruiting and arming anti-British Palestinians by buying their support with gold.
One version of the incident advanced by Michael Bar-Zohar and Eitan Haber alleges that the mission included a plan to poison the drinking water resources of the residents of Tel Aviv.
[3] Haj Amin al-Husseini was one of prominent Palestinian Arabs leaders who fled Mandatory Palestine in 1937 during 1936–1939 uprising and spent World War II period as visiting collaborator of the Axis Powers.
[a] Al-Husayni argued that were the Jewish insurgency against British authorities in Palestine to fail, they would redirect their anger against Palestinian Arabs who would stand in need of leadership.
[7] On the other hand, the anti-Jewish focus suited the SS, and one original proposal by Karl Tschierschky to include an Atlas attack on the Haifa Oil Refinery that would provoke British reprisals was scuppered for that reason.
Wieland was a Palestine-born German from the Templer community in Sarona and had developed a personal animus against the Yishuv after his family business had suffered as a result of a local Jewish anti-Nazi boycott.
[10] On the night of 6 October 1944, the five unit members parachuted from a captured B17 Flying Fortress flown by Luftwaffe KG 200 over the Jericho region in Wadi Qelt.
He added that Nafith Bey had explained to him that they were not aware of the political relationship between Arabs and British and that it was a terrible mistake to participate to such an adventure with Germans.
On 16 October the British Mandate authorities published the following official statement: Police information led to a combined military and police operation in the Wadi Qelt area and resulted in an important arrests by the Trans Jordan Frontier ForceOn 27 October a full report of the capturing of the enemy parachutists was published in the Davar newspaper under the title: Enemy parachutists were captured nine days after parachuting in the region.
– They came equipped with money, Arab dictionaries and weapons.The newspaper stated that on 8 October, the Jericho police chief learned that gold coins were being circulated in the city.
On 16 October a sergeant in the Jordanian Frontier Force discovered a man dressed in traditional Arab clothing, standing at the entrance to a cave and holding a gun.
[2] In 1983, Michael Bar-Zohar and Eitan Haber published The Quest for the Red Prince, a book about the hunt by Mossad agents for Ali Hassan Salameh, son of Hasan Salama, the Black September's head of operations who had been responsible for the execution of the 1972 Munich massacre.
[17][18] Historian Wolfgang G. Schwanitz has cast doubts on the story: The claim that the mufti got "ten containers with poison" to kill a quarter of a million people via the water system of Tel Aviv in exchange for the five Palestinian paratroopers in late 1944 (61) is not substantiated in British or German sources.
[20]Historian Christian Destremau points out that the cargo contained no such quantities of toxic material, but only poison capsules, probably to be of service in attempts to liquidate locals believed to be collaborating with the Mandatory Authorities.
[21] In 2009, the Israeli journalist and military affairs commentator, Gad Shimron, published the fictional novel "The Sweetheart of the Templar From the Valley of Rephaim", which incorporated the story of Operation Atlas while making several changes to the plot, the exact period in which the parachuting was carried out, the names, and their fate.
