No Mission Is Impossible (18 page)

After the massacre of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, Golda Meir's anti-terrorism adviser, Aharon Yariv, and the head of the Mossad, Zvi Zamir, have told the prime minister that if Israel assassinates the Black September leaders, their organization will cease to exist. Several Mossad operations in Europe have resulted in the deaths of Black September commanders. But the major figures still live with total impunity in the Lebanese capital, Beirut.

T
he night of April 9, 1973, the moon was full in Beirut, capital of Lebanon.

It was long after midnight when a couple of lovers appeared, walking along Verdun Street. The man was tall, athletic, clad in a fashionable suit. The woman, small, black-haired, wore a black dress clinging to her slight frame and large breasts. As two gendarmes approached on the same sidewalk, the couple tenderly embraced, their sweet hug lasting until the gendarmes disappeared from sight. The couple then continued walking till they reached a posh apartment building; at this point the two separated. The man, together with some other guys and a blond girl who had emerged from the dark, swiftly entered the building; the woman in the black dress stayed in the street, where she was joined by another, auburn-haired girl.

Across the street was parked a red Dauphine. A huge sentry got out of the car, suspiciously watching the two ladies. He drew his gun and started across the street. But he was in for his life's surprise. The two women suddenly flung off their vests, drew Uzi submachine guns from
between their curves and sprayed him with fire. The sentry jumped for cover and dived behind a low fence. A bullet hit the Dauphine's steering wheel and the shrill wail of the car horn tore the stillness of the night.

Operation Spring of Youth was on its way.

T
he couple the gendarmes had crossed on the street were not a couple of lovers. The tall man was Muki Betzer, one of the best Sayeret fighters. His girlfriend was none other than Ehud Barak, the Sayeret commander. Barak was wearing a black wig, his face was heavily made up and his brassiere was stuffed with hand grenades and old socks. Under his vest he carried weapons and a walkie-talkie. The “other girl” was Amiram Levin, a future Sayeret commander and IDF general. They both had chosen female disguises because they were short and slight; so was “the blond girl,” Loni Rafaeli, who got in the building with the men, all of them Sayeret fighters.

Operation Spring of Youth was born at the height of the secret war that Israel waged against the terrorist group Black September. The group had been created by Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat after King Hussein of Jordan had massacred many thousands of PLO members in Jordan, in September 1970; hence “Black September.”

At first, the new terrorist organization attacked Jordanian targets, leaders and secret agents; but soon it turned against Israel, hijacked the Sabena Boeing 707 (see Chapter 12) and slaughtered eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Following the advice of Mossad head Zvi Zamir and the prime minister's adviser on terrorism Aharon Yariv, Golda Meir unleashed the operational team of the Mossad against Black September's leaders, operating undercover in Europe. Zamir and Yariv believed that the elimination of the organization leaders would cause the demise of the entire group and put an end to its terrorist actions. In quick, ruthless Mossad operations in Rome, Paris, Athens and Cyprus, several Black September leaders were killed. But the Mossad and the IDF believed this was not enough, that it was necessary to hit the organization leaders in their very bastion—Beirut. The Lebanese capital had become the base of myriad terrorist groups and organizations
that carried out their activities with total impunity. It was time to prove to the terrorist leaders that there was no place under the sun where Israel's long arm wouldn't reach them.

The goal of the operation was to kill three major leaders of Black September and the PLO: Kamal Nasser, the main PLO spokesman; Kamal Adwan, the PLO operations commander, in charge of the activities in the territories occupied by Israel; and the chief commander of Black September himself, Muhammad al-Najar (Abu Yussuf). All three of them lived in a tall apartment building on Verdun Street—Nasser on the third floor, Adwan on the second and Abu Yussuf on the sixth floor at the northern wing of the house. The original idea was to launch a large-scale IDF operation, with the landing of big elite units in Beirut, blockage of the streets around the building, an elaborate attack on the house—but Ehud Barak cancelled that plan. Such a plan, he said to his superiors, means losing the most important factor on which its success depends—surprise. The Sayeret could carry out the mission with fourteen fighters, who would quietly penetrate into Beirut, sneak into the house and break into the terrorists' apartments like a bolt from the blue sky.

Spring of Youth commanders, from right: Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, Shaul Ziv, Emanuel Shaked, Ehud Barak.
(GPO)

Moshe Dayan accepted the plan but decided to enlarge it. We don't land in Beirut every day, he said; this mission will be quite unique—so let's get the best out of it and hit several enemy targets simultaneously. Chief of Staff Dado Elazar and Chief Paratroop Officer Colonel Mano Shaked decided that while the Sayeret dealt with the three PLO leaders, another team of paratroopers from Airborne Battalion 50 would attack the headquarters of Nayef Hawatmeh's Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP), a Maoist, left-leaning terrorist organization. The Battalion 50 team would be led by lieutenant-colonel Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, a lanky, cool-headed officer decorated for “leadership and courage under fire” in a 1968 attack on a PLO base, code-named Operation Inferno.

The plan was that Lipkin's paratroopers would kill the guards at the entrance of the terrorist headquarters on Khartoum Street and blow up the building with two hundred kilos of explosives (about 440 pounds), killing everybody inside. At the same time other paratrooper units would land outside Beirut and carry out smaller diversion operations.

The Sayeret and the Battalion 50 team would approach the Lebanese coast in navy missile boats and land on Beirut's beach in Zodiac rubber dinghies. A small team of Mossad agents, who would fly to Beirut from several European cities, would be waiting for them on the beach. The agents would arrive a few days before the operation with false passports; they would rent cars, tour the city and get familiar with its streets and avenues. On the night of the mission they would drive the soldiers to their targets and back to the beach after the operation was over. Barak asked for three American cars into which he could squeeze his fourteen men.

The IDF computer supplied the mission's code name: Spring of Youth.

T
he intensive training of the units started right away. Mano Shaked and Chief of Staff Elazar spent a lot of time with the fighters. Shaked personally wanted to make sure that his paratroopers were becoming familiar with Beirut's streets. He would show one of them air photographs and maps, then place the man with his back to the maps and ask him, “What is on your right? What is on your left?” He believed
that his boys should achieve a sense of orientation “with eyes closed” in the neighborhoods where they would operate.

The paratroopers and the Sayeret trained for landing from the sea, moving to their targets by foot or civilian cars, then retreating to the beach and departing aboard their Zodiacs. A model of the house that the Sayeret would attack was built of wood and fabric in a remote army base, and the commandos stormed the apartments using live ammo; they also trained in an abandoned police barracks in Samaria. The Battalion 50 team used the Lamed neighborhood in Tel Aviv as a “model” of Beirut. Some of the houses in that area were still in the building stage and could be used for training purposes without raising the neighbors' suspicion.

Or so their commanders thought.

One night in March 1973, a Lamed resident, sitting by his window, saw some suspect characters sneak between the houses, and heard heavy footsteps and short calls. He alerted the police, who arrived promptly, and Mano Shaked had a lot of trouble convincing them to go. Another doubt was voiced by the owner of a men's store on Disengoff Street. One after the other, young guys came to his store and each asked to buy a suit, one size larger than what he needed. The store owner did not know that these were paratroopers who were supposed to set out for Beirut wearing civilian suits and needed the extra size in order to conceal their weapons under their jackets. The merchant started asking questions, and the paratroopers persuaded him to forget what he heard, what he sold and who bought it.

But the civilians were not the only ones asking questions. One night, after hours of rehearsing the landing in the north of Tel Aviv, the weary paratroopers crouched on the beach, awaiting the rubber boats. One of them, Lieutenant Avida Shor, approached the chief of staff. “May I talk to you, sir?” In no other army in the world would a junior officer dare to approach the chief of staff, but Israel was different.

“Shoot!” Elazar said to the young man.

Avida, member of kibbutz Shoval, was one of the finest paratroop fighters. He had proven his courage in the Tripoli raid, when his unit
had landed on a desert beach 133 miles beyond the Israeli border, attacked and blown up four terrorist bases and returned practically unscathed. Avida was also known for his high moral principles. He now drew a small notebook out of his pocket and said to Elazar, “We plan to blow up the PDFLP headquarters with two hundred kilos of explosives. But I made my own calculations and found out that we can bring down the house with only one hundred and twenty kilos.”

“What difference does this make?” General Elazar asked.

“The difference is,” Avida said forcefully, “that there is another building next to the PDFLP headquarters. It is a seven-story house, inhabited by scores of civilian families. I believe that we should use fewer explosives and avoid casualties among the civilians.” Then he added, “The terrorists should know that we were there and could carry out the mission, but that we would not harm women and children.”

There was a moment of silence. Finally Elazar nodded. “I'll buy that,” he said. “One hundred and twenty kilos it will be.”

F
rom April 1 to April 6, several tourists arrived in Beirut: Gilbert Rimbaud, Dieter Altnuder, Andrew Whichelaw, Charles Boussard, George Elder and Andrew Macy. Most of them carried British or Belgian passports and were later identified by foreign sources as Mossad agents. They checked into various hotels and rented cars from Avis and Lena Car. At least three of the cars were American-made, as Barak had requested: a Buick Skylark, a Plymouth and a Valiant.

On April 5, nine missile boats and “Dabur” fast patrol boats took to sea from Haifa port, carrying the Sayeret, the Battalion 50 team and Flotilla 13—the IDF Navy SEALs. Before departing, the soldiers were shown the latest aerial photographs of Beirut, the landing beach and the targeted buildings. The Sayeret fighters received photographs of the three terrorist leaders they had to kill. Some of the men were given silenced Beretta handguns. The targets were designated with women's names: Aviva, Gila, Varda, Tzila and Judith.

After nightfall the boats approached Beirut; the city was bathed in light, its nightclubs and restaurants bustling with activity. At the same time, on
the Israeli boats, navy soldiers covered the fighters with large, transparent plastic sleeves to prevent their civilian clothes and the makeup some of them were wearing from getting wet. They boarded twelve rubber boats, and shortly before midnight reached the two landing areas—Ramlet Al-Baida and Dove beaches. The beaches were deserted, and the last couple of lovers had left the sandy stretches. In total silence, like ghostly apparitions, the dinghies emerged from the black sea.

Barak's Sayeret and Lipkin-Shahak's team quietly disembarked. Simultaneously, other paratrooper teams prepared to land at some secondary targets. A Flotilla 13 team would land at the Al-Uzai neighborhood, and head for a sea-mines plant and a terrorist base. Another paratrooper team would attack and blow up a warehouse in Beirut port, while the paratrooper commando unit targeted a weapons workshop north of Sidon. The floating headquarters of the mission, headed by Mano Shaked, and a paratrooper rescue unit approached Beirut's beach in two missile boats. Everything was in place.

On the beach, the rented cars and their Mossad drivers were waiting. The soldiers jumped from the Zodiacs and ran to the cars. One of the fighters in Barak's team was Yoni Netanyahu. Barak felt he owed Yoni compensation, after having preferred his younger brother, Bibi, for the Sabena hostage mission. The Sayeret soldiers piled up in the American cars, which drove to Verdun Street and parked in the neighboring Ibn el Walid Street, close to the target building. The men got out and walked in small groups to the big house. The other three cars carried Lipkin-Shahak's paratroopers to Ghana Street, and they surreptitiously moved toward the PDFLP headquarters at the neighboring Khartoum Street. By 1:29
A.M
., both teams were in place.