LONDON — On June 3, 1982, Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom Shlomo Argov was shot in the head by Palestinian terrorists as he entered his car after attending an event at London's Dorchester Hotel. The attack triggered Israel’s invasion of Lebanon three days later.
The assassination attempt was carried out by three armed men: Hussein Ghassan Said, Marwan al-Banna, and Nawaf al-Rosan. The gunman used a PM-63 machine pistol and, after the shooting, the attackers drove to the Iraqi embassy in London and deposited the weapon inside the building. British authorities arrested the three men shortly afterward in a London apartment.
The attackers belonged to the Abu Nidal Organization, a Palestinian terror group that had split from the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1974. Intelligence indicated the plot was ordered by Saddam Hussein's intelligence service, with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein seeking to provoke an Israeli invasion of Lebanon to weaken Syrian President Hafez al-Assad’s influence in the region. Marwan al-Banna was Abu Nidal’s cousin, and Nawaf al-Rosan was an Iraqi intelligence colonel. The three also intended to kill Nabil Ramlawi, the PLO representative in London.
Hussein Ghassan Said, a Jordanian, was shot in the head by Argov’s bodyguard but survived with serious injuries. All three attackers were later convicted by British courts and sentenced to prison terms ranging from 30 to 35 years.
Argov fell into a coma for three months following the attack. After regaining consciousness, he was returned to Israel and became a permanent patient at Hadassah-University Medical Center's rehabilitation ward in Jerusalem. He remained paralyzed for the rest of his life. For the first three years, he was lucid and able to have newspaper headlines read to him in short sessions, but eventually never fully regained consciousness and became blind. He died in 2003 at the age of 73.
In a 1983 statement published in Haaretz, Argov said: "If those who planned the war had also foreseen the scope [of the operations], they would have spared the lives of hundreds of our best sons." He added: "The war brought no salvation. Israel should go to war only when there is no alternative. Our soldiers should never go to war unless it is vital for survival. We are tired of wars. [Israel] wants peace."
Then-defense minister Ariel Sharon stated at the time that the assassination attempt on Argov was the trigger for Israel's invasion of Lebanon. The 1982 Lebanon War led to the expulsion of Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization from Lebanon and resulted in the deaths of 657 IDF soldiers between 1982 and 1985. The IDF occupied southern Lebanon up to the Litani River until May 2000, during which an additional 256 soldiers were killed. The conflict also created conditions for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force to establish Hezbollah in 1982.