The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership (35 page)

“Not if we grant full autonomy to the Palestinian Arabs.”

“They will never accept it.”

“Why should they when you constantly advocate handing back to them whole chunks of our tiny homeland?”

“But don’t you understand, precisely
because
the Arabs desperately want the West Bank and Gaza that these territories are the real key to peace with them? They are our most valuable bargaining chips. But now, those settler hooligans who masquerade as the champions of Eretz Yisrael
–
”

“Which they are,” interrupted Begin firmly. “They would give their lives for Eretz Yisrael.”

“They are a threat to our democracy,” countered Rabin. “One of their leaders dared write that Kissinger deserves to meet the same fate as Count Bernadotte.” [Count Bernadotte was a
UN
mediator assassinated in Israel in 1948.]

Begin, shocked, said, “I never heard of such a thing.”

“Well I have. Those fanatics have been storming through
Jerusalem’s
streets like common rabble. They even laid siege to the Knesset while Kissinger was there. We barely succeeded in getting him out through a rear exit, and safely back to the hotel. It was disgusting, totally outrageous. I felt thoroughly ashamed.”

“You sound as if those demonstrations took you by surprise, Mr. Prime Minister,” said Begin carefully.

“Their ferocious antagonism in the name of a divine authority certainly did take me by surprise,” snapped Rabin. “I will not tolerate such demonstrations. I have ordered the chief of police to break them up, by force if necessary.”

“Mr. Prime Minister,” said Begin, in a voice full of rebuke. “I ask you, please, to rescind that order. These people are not as you say. They are the salt of the earth. They are the last vestige of our pioneering elite. Yes, I accept, their behavior is sometimes overzealous, but it is because of their passionate love of their country. And they are very angry these days, very angry indeed, and rightly so, because of what you have just committed our country to. For years every Israeli government has said no to withdrawal in the absence of peace. This has penetrated deep into the nation’s psyche. So, is it any wonder that people demonstrate? And where else to demonstrate if not in the streets?”

“Those demonstrations violate the rules of democracy,” retorted Rabin, with equal fervor.

“Really?” countered Begin, his voice touched with sarcasm. “Your party has nothing to teach our national camp about the rules of democracy. We have proven our fidelity to democracy throughout the whole of our public lives, sometimes in the face of the greatest provocation. Moreover, to the best of my knowledge, in free countries demonstrations are not considered a threat to democracy, but rather a demonstration of it.”

Then, rising to his feet, tone prim and official, he said, “You understand, Mr. Prime Minister, that I shall be voicing my opposition to your so-called interim agreement from the rostrum of the Knesset and from every other platform I can find.”

“I expect nothing less, Mr. Begin,” said Rabin, with a mirthless smile. “Are you not in the habit of saying that the job of the opposition is to oppose? Well, feel free
–
oppose, and I shall answer.”

Yitzhak Rabin looked upon his 1975 interim agreement as a historic step on the road to peace with Egypt, and felt embittered that his contribution was never publicly recognized. He said as much in his 1979 memoir:

When President Sadat made his historic visit to Jerusalem on 19 November 1977 I was no longer prime minister. Yet that visit
–
and the subsequent moves toward achieving a peace treaty
–
could never have come about were it not for the course my government adopted in signing the 1975 interim agreement. That our policy provoked the anger of Likud has not prevented Mr. Begin’s government from reaping the fruits of our labors. Of course, that is how things should be, since the quest for peace is not a contest between political parties…. The 1975 agreement with Egypt was never meant to be an end in itself. As its title implies, it was designed to advance the momentum toward peace, and in that sense it achieved its objective.
46

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s military secretary, Brigadier-General Ephraim Poran
–
otherwise known as Freuka
–
was an unexcitable, soft-spoken soldier who had a reputation for keeping his head while others around him were losing theirs. So when Rabin saw him enter the Cabinet Room in the middle of a session and bear down on him with a note in his hand and a troubled look on his face he knew something seriously untoward was afoot. It was Sunday, 27 June 1976. Rabin’s features paled when he read the note:

An Air France plane, Flight 139 from Tel Aviv to Paris, has been hijacked after taking off from a stopover in Athens.

Rabin leaned forward to frown over the papers in front of him as if he was studying their contents, but he was, in fact, desperately trying to decide what to do. Not since the Six-Day War had he been smitten with such a sudden blow of anxiety. Finally, he turned the note over and scribbled on its back:

Freuka
–
find out: 1) How many Israelis are on board. 2) How many hijackers are on board. 3) Where the plane is heading.

Rabin then banged his gavel to silence a minister who was working
himself
up over the price of bread, and informed his cabinet of the shocking news. Adjourning the meeting, he asked Foreign Minister Yigal Allon, Defense Minister Shimon Peres, Transport Minister Gad Yaakobi, Justice Minister Chaim Zadok, and Minister without Portfolio Yisrael Galilee to meet him forthwith in the conference room downstairs, to consider a course of action.

On his way down he told Yaakobi to contact Ben-Gurion Airport to go on instant and full alert. “The hijackers might want to do another Sabena,” he said.

He was referring to an incident in May of 1972 when a passenger aircraft of the Belgian-owned Sabena airline was hijacked during a flight from Vienna to Tel Aviv. It landed at Ben-Gurion airport and the hijackers demanded the release of hundreds of Palestinian terrorists, otherwise they would blow up the plane together with its passengers. The next day Israeli commandos successfully stormed the aircraft.

“The only thing we know for sure right now,” said Rabin, opening the emergency ministerial meeting, “is that the hijacked plane is Air France. What exactly is the legal status of passengers on board that plane?”

He was addressing Minister of Justice Chaim Zadok, a corpulent, round-shouldered, middle-aged gentleman who possessed an encyclopedic legal mind.

“By law, the passengers are under French sovereign protection,” he answered authoritatively. “The French government is responsible for the fate of them all.”

“Yigal”
–
this to Foreign Minister Allon
–
“have your people inform the French Government, and tell them we’re issuing a public statement to that effect. Ask Paris to keep us informed of their actions.” To me, he said, “Prepare a draft of the statement.”

As I began to scribble, Allon rose to leave the room, and was almost out of the door when Zadok called after him, “And tell them they must make no distinction between the Israeli passengers and the rest.”

“That goes without saying,” muttered Allon, slightly huffed.

Now Freuka came barging in with a fresh note, which Rabin read out loud:

There are 230 passengers on board, 83 of them Israeli, and 12 crew members. The Libyans have allowed the plane to land at Benghazi.

“So now at least we know where the passengers are,” said the prime minister, lighting a cigarette, his face a frown. “But there are three crucial things we still don’t know. We don’t know whether Benghazi will be their final stop. We don’t know who the hijackers are. And we don’t know what their demands are.”

For the next half hour the ministers mulled over these three unknowns, until a secretary entered and passed a note to Allon. “Aha, it’s from the French Ambassador,” he said, and he read:

The government of France wishes to inform the government of Israel that the French government bears full responsibility for the safety of all the passengers without distinction on Air France flight 139, and shall keep the government of Israel apprised of its actions in this regard.

“That is satisfactory,” said Zadok, and for lack of fresh information, and in the absence of anything useful more to say, the prime minister adjourned the meeting, asking everyone to stay close to a phone.

It rang in the late afternoon, and the committee reconvened early that evening. Rabin, now once again every bit the hard-nosed commander he used to be, ran his eyes up and down a dossier in front of him, and said, “Here is the new information. The plane was seven hours on the ground at Benghazi, for refueling. One passenger, a pregnant woman, was released. The plane took off and the terrorists requested permission to land at Khartoum. Permission was not granted, despite the fact that Sudan is a haven for Palestinian terrorists. We have no idea where the plane is heading now. Meanwhile, Ben-Gurion Airport is on the highest alert. As for the identity of the hijackers, it seems there are four
–
two Arabs from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and two Germans from a terrorist splinter group calling itself the ‘Revolutionary Cells.’ That’s as much as we know.”

An anxious exchange followed which added nothing to the sum total of knowledge or ideas, so Rabin brought the meeting to a close. That night he fell into a woolly sleep until jerked blinking back into reality by the shrill ring of his bedside telephone:

“Who is this?”

“Freuka.”

“What time is it?”

“Four in the morning. Sorry for waking you up. The plane has landed in Entebbe, Uganda.”

Rabin, instantly alert, said, “Better there than an Arab country. We know the Ugandan President, Idi Amin.”

“Didn’t he do his parachute training here?”

“He did. And during the heyday of Golda Meir’s African aid program quite a few of our specialists worked in Uganda. Some should know him personally so, hopefully, we can straighten this thing out soon. Try and find out who knows him. Any word yet of the hijackers’ demands?”

“None.”

“Convene a meeting first thing.”

“Shall do. Try and get back to sleep.”

“Shall do.”

The next day was Tuesday 29 June, and at 8:30 in the morning a somewhat bleary-eyed and slouched Rabin reported the new facts to the committee. Hardly had the ministers absorbed what he was saying when Freuka’s assistant came rushing in with a note. The general quickly ran his eyes over it and instantly passed it on to the prime minister who, after a single glance, said, “This is what we’ve been waiting for. The hijackers have broadcast their demands over Ugandan radio.”

He paused to study the page and absorb its full meaning, and then shared its contents in a slow and deliberate manner with the men around him. They sat with a too-well-controlled steadiness as if to conceal their uneasiness.

“In return for the hostages,” the prime minister said, “the hijackers want the release of terrorists
–
they call them freedom fighters
–
imprisoned in five countries: forty from us, six from West Germany, five from Kenya, one from Switzerland, and one from France. They’ve issued an ultimatum. Within forty-eight hours the released terrorists are to be flown to Entebbe. Those freed by us are to be transported by Air France; the other countries can decide on their own mode of transport.”

“And if not?” asked Yisrael Galilee in his characteristic solid and phlegmatic way. “What happens if they are not freed?”

Yisrael Galilee had the white hair of an Einstein, the stocky build of a kibbutznik, the shrewdness of an entrepreneur, and the veiled eyes of a Svengali. The reason he was a minister without portfolio was because he did not need one. He was Rabin’s closest political confidante, having also had the ear of virtually every prime minister before him.

“If the terrorists are not freed,” answered Rabin, his voice grim, “they threaten to begin killing the hostages as of two o’clock Thursday afternoon, July the first. That is the day after tomorrow.”

The group emitted a collective gasp. The first to break the silence was Defense Minister Shimon Peres, who delivered an impassioned address on the implications of capitulation to terrorist blackmail.

Rabin turned to look at Peres with contempt. In his memoirs he would revile Peres as an “inveterate schemer,” one who would stop at nothing to advance his own ambitions. Now he stared back at Peres with a gaze that said, ‘Say what you will, I’m in charge,’ and cut him short with a sardonic, “Before the Defense Minister sermonizes any further I suggest we adjourn to think the matter through, with all its implications. We’ll meet again at five thirty this afternoon and, hopefully, come up with some ideas.”

Rabin promptly called a meeting of his personal staff and opened it by letting off steam about what he regarded as Peres’ self-serving homilies. He then asked for a report on the attempts to persuade Idi Amin to intercede on behalf of the passengers, and what he learned caused him to snarl and to say with a bitter smile, “Nothing will surprise me about what that man Amin is capable of. He runs his country like a personal fiefdom. He probably has his own fish to fry in this mess, in cahoots with the terrorists.”

To Freuka he said he wanted the
IDF
chief of staff, General Mordechai (Motta) Gur, to come to the 5:30 meeting, and to me he said he wanted another brief for the foreign media emphasizing, again, France’s responsibility.

“Why do you need the chief of staff?” asked Freuka. “You have something in mind for him?”

He answered, “I want to know what the
IDF
thinks about this whole matter. I don’t have the slightest doubt that Peres’ pontifications about not surrendering to terrorist blackmail are for the record only, so that he’ll be able to claim later that he was in favor of military action from the start. The problem is his rhetoric is so persuasive he believes it himself.”

The prime minister opened the 5:30 meeting with a direct question to the chief of staff: “Motta, does the
IDF
have any possible way to rescue the hostages with a military operation?”

Peres, irate, intervened: “There has been no consideration of the matter in the defense establishment. I haven’t discussed it yet with the chief of staff.”

“What?” spluttered Rabin, the veins on his forehead seeming ready to pop. “Fifty-three hours after we learn of the hijacking you have not yet consulted the chief of staff on the possibility of using military means to rescue the hostages?” His fury was palpable. “Motta,” he repeated, staring sharply at the general, his voice crisp and commanding, “do you have a military plan, yes or no? If you do have a military plan, that will be our top preference. But remember, any operation has to provide for a way of bringing the hostages back. It won’t be good enough just to eliminate the terrorists. We have to be able to bring our people home.”

Again, Peres was about to say something, but Rabin forestalled him, insisting that Motta Gur answer his question.

“When I received your message to attend this meeting,” replied the general, a hefty parachutist who had led the assault to free the Old City in the Six-Day War, “I assumed it was to seek my advice on a military option. Consequently, before coming here I ordered the chief of operations to start a preliminary examination to see whether an operation is feasible, and if so, at what cost. A major problem is our lack of reliable information on the attitude of Idi Amin. If the Ugandans cooperate with us our chances for a successful operation would be that much greater.”

“Obviously,” said Rabin, and then, to the whole table, “but the reports we are receiving about Amin are not encouraging. The point is that, as of this moment, there is no concrete military solution, so we shall have to…”
–
he paused, as if hesitant to express his next thought
–
“…
consider negotiating with the terrorist hijackers for the release of the hostages.”

Peres promptly rose and left the room, followed by General Gur, presumably to speed back to the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv to see what military plan they could come up with, if at all. The rest of the committee engaged in a fretful discussion about the frightening thought of attempting to rescue so many hostages, thousands of miles away in the heart of Africa, and the unthinkable alternative of negotiating with the killers for the release of
their
killers in exchange for innocents.

Later that evening, over a drink in the privacy of his room
–
the prime minister was drinking and smoking more heavily now
–
Rabin confided his inner thoughts with these words: “When it comes to negotiating with terrorists, I long ago made a decision of principle, well before I became prime minister, that if a situation were ever to arise when terrorists would be holding our people hostage on foreign soil and we were faced with an ultimatum either to free killers in our custody or let our own people be killed, I would, in the absence of a military option, give in to the terrorists. I would free killers to save our people. So I say now, if the defense minister and the chief of staff cannot come up with a credible military plan, I intend to negotiate with the terrorists. I would never be able to look a mother in the eye if her hostage soldier or child, or whoever it was, was murdered because of a refusal to negotiate, or because of a botched operation.”
47

On the following day
–
Wednesday 30 June
–
Rabin opened the next ministerial committee meeting with this chilling news:

“The terrorists have carried out a selection. They have separated the Jews from the non-Jews. There are ninety-eight Jews. The non-Jews have been released. The Jewish hostages are threatened with execution. There is now absolutely no doubt that Idi Amin is eager to ingratiate himself with the Arabs and is fully collaborating with the terrorists. The ultimatum expires in less than twenty-four hours. So, again, I ask the chief of staff – Motta, do you have a military plan?”