00:00Well, just days then before France is set to officially recognize a Palestinian state for the first time,
00:05a breakthrough in the investigation into the 1982 attack on a Jewish restaurant in the French capital.
00:11In what was described now as a major procedural breakthrough,
00:15Palestinian authorities arrested a key suspect in the case Friday,
00:19the announcement actually coming from French prosecutors who were citing Interpol.
00:24Now, 70-year-old Hisham Harb is suspected of leading the assailants in the gun attack
00:28on a restaurant back in August of 1982.
00:32Six people were killed and 22 others injured.
00:35Harb had been the subject as well of an international arrest warrant for 10 years.
00:40For more on this, then, we'll cross to our Israel correspondent, Noga Tarnopolski.
00:44Hi, Noga.
00:45So, I mean, can you talk to us more about the timing of this announcement then?
00:52Yes, absolutely, Erin.
00:54This is really quite a story.
00:56Hisham Harb is the non-du-ger of a 70-year-old Palestinian called Mahmoud Hadar Abed al-Adra.
01:05And he has been basically on the watch list for both France and Israel, to the best of my knowledge, for 43 years.
01:13The terror attack took place at a time when there were a number of Palestinian armed militia groups operating in Europe,
01:24when there were many threats against Jewish institutions and against Israelis.
01:29And the terror attack in which he's accused of being the commander was particularly gruesome.
01:35Six people were shot in a fusillade of bullets.
01:39I think to this day, we don't know exactly how many hitmen there were, but it was a very traumatic event for Jews in Europe and I think for France in general.
01:48The timing is quite something because this gentleman was arrested by the Palestinian Authority in July, so two months ago now.
01:59And this really is a moment that reveals one of these dirty little secrets of the region that I cover.
02:06Because Israeli and Palestinian security cooperation, despite the insults and the threats that are hurled from each side,
02:15the security cooperation is actually very important and continues to work.
02:19Now, I haven't been able to get a response from the Israeli authorities today.
02:23It's the weekend here, so I don't know what the Israeli reaction will be,
02:28but I expect that it should be one of satisfaction, despite the fact that the Israeli government and its prime minister
02:35regularly refer to the Palestinian Authority against, which would they cooperate as being a group as bad as Hamas.
02:43So it's a very interesting juncture.
02:45In terms of the announcement, as you asked, French President Macron right now is making serious efforts,
02:53not only to impact, you know, maybe a day after the war here in the Middle East,
03:01but also to persuade Israelis that he is not, and I'm quoting now, he's not a collaborator with Hamas
03:07as the Israeli foreign minister.
03:09And the Israeli prime minister has essentially accused him of being by this recognition of a state of Palestine.
03:17So here we have an important arrest and an important announcement made two months later with, as you say,
03:25very significant timing in which France and the French consulate in Jerusalem are showing Israelis
03:32that they are not pro-Palestinian in an anti-Israeli way, but also operating to secure Israelis and also to work against anti-Semitism.
03:44So all of that has come together in this very interesting weekend bit of news.
03:49Noga, can you give us more context then about the attack?
03:52It, of course, came in the early 80s, which is a time when, you know,
03:56there was more than one devastating anti-Semitic attack in Paris.
04:04There was. Paris was one of these real hotspots at the time, not just for anti-Semitic attacks,
04:10but for kind of urban terror in general.
04:14There were also, there was a case of an Argentinian diplomat vanishing from the Argentinian embassy in Paris.
04:22That was a bit of Argentinian state-sponsored terror.
04:26There was the PLO that was very active in Europe and at that time considered and operating as a terror group
04:33before, decades before, recognizing Israel and eventually signing the Oslo Accords.
04:40So this really is a flashback to a period of time in which, for example,
04:45Jewish schoolchildren were really afraid, not just in Paris.
04:49I would say in much of Western Europe, in which there were constant attacks.
04:54But this particular terror attack in which, in the heart of Paris and just outside a very well-known restaurant
05:01owned by Joe Goldenberg, a very famous Parisian restaurateur, this really had a huge impact.
05:09And so it harkens back to a period of time in which terror was not a word that brought up images,
05:17for example, of Hamas's incursion into Israel and mass murder on the scale of a thousand people,
05:24but in which there was a fear in France and elsewhere that it could hit you at any time,
05:31these small urban guerrilla attacks.
05:34Noga Tarnopolski, our correspondent in Israel.
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