Chapter 20

Consequences

From the Plumbat uranium, Israeli scientists at Dimona extracted weapons-grade plutonium which was used to manufacture nuclear warheads. They were designed by Yuval Ne’eman, the man who had been primarily responsible for the computerization of Mossad’s files. Israel has not tested her bomb but there are few, if any, nuclear physicists who doubt that one designed by Ne’eman would work.

Of all the scientists Israel has produced, Ne’eman has the most brilliant international reputation. He is known as The Brain, and his contributions to scientific research have been enormous. He has served as Director of the Center for Particle Theory in Texas and he was for a time visiting professor at the illustrious California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. In 1969 he became the first non-American to win the Albert Einstein Prize, which was awarded for his contribution to physics. What makes these achievements even more remarkable is that it was not until he was well into his thirties that Ne’eman decided to become a physicist – and he studied for that in what was to him a foreign language.

Ne’eman was born in Palestine – in what is now Tel Aviv – but spent most of his early childhood in Egypt where he spoke French and Arabic. Returning to Palestine in the mid-1930’s, he learned Hebrew but found no need to develop any proficiency in English. In 1958, however, Israel needed more physicists and Ne’eman, who had long displayed extraordinary mathematical ability, was asked by the Israeli Defence ministry to take a physics course at Imperial College, London. First, of course, he needed to be able to speak English and so was sent to London as Israel’s supposed military attaché. Having mastered the language, he enrolled at the university where he obtained a degree in nuclear physics in half the normal time. Back in Israel Ne’eman was deeply involved in the atomic development programme at Dimona and became Professor of Physics at Tel Aviv University: It was there he designed Israel’s bomb.

In preparing the design, Ne’eman was able to employ considerable knowledge of other countries’ nuclear weapons, which Israel possessed largely because of the foresight of her first president, Chaim Weizmann. Soon after the Jewish state was founded in 1948 he had sent six of the country’s most promising young scientists to study nuclear physics in the United States, Britain, Switzerland and the Netherlands. The knowledge they gained had been of deep interest to her then ally France, who was nurturing her own nuclear ambitions, and Israel had been able to make a deal: in return for their knowledge, Israeli scientists were allowed to study the French nuclear programme. And, until relations between the two countries went into decline, Israelis were allowed to observe French atomic bomb tests. (The deal, which was concluded in total secrecy, also allowed Israel to build Dimona. It was modelled on France’s EL-3 reactor at Brest in Brittany and much of the equipment was supplied by France and shipped to Israel under the guise of textile machinery. To provide the necessary cover, the French Commissariat a l’Energie Atomique [CEA] set up a bogus subsidiary company with offices in the Paris suburb of Courbevoie. France also supplied part of Dimona’s initial small stock of uranium.)

Naturally, Israel’s nuclear weapons programme was, for a while, her best-kept secret. But ultimately a nuclear deterrent can be effective only if those it is meant to deter know about it. And once the first warhead had been assembled it was not long before positive clues about Israel’s new weaponry began to emerge.

The US Central Intelligence Agency had maintained a keen interest in Dimona ever since spy plane photographs had revealed that it was not a textile factory. When the CIA learned – through the US State Department, which had been informed by the EEC as ‘a matter of courtesy’ – of the missing 200 tons of uranium, it ordered its agents in Europe to find out what had happened. EEC officials were later rather scornful of American efforts: “They couldn’t even find the fucking ship,” one said unkindly. In fact, the CIA strongly suspected that Israel had been behind Operation Plumbat and by 1970, was sure. On 7 July, the Agency’s director, Richard Helms, reported to a secret session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Plumbat uranium was being used at Dimona to develop nuclear weapons: if Israel did not yet have the bomb, he said, she was ‘seven and a half months pregnant.’

By 1973, Dimona had produced a small arsenal. The CIA put the number of bombs at three, each in the twenty kiloton range. Other estimates said six. Whatever the number* there is no question that Israel by then possessed her ultimate deterrent and that in late 1973 she was driven near to using it.

*Current evidence suggests that the estimate of six may have been nearer the mark. In 1978 a CIA document was made public under the terms of the US Freedom of Information Act which said that prior to Operation Plumbat, Israel had obtained 206 pounds of highly enriched uranium from a privately owned nuclear fuel fabrication plant in Apollo, Pennsylvania. That enriched uranium could, at least in theory, have been used by Israel to produce the fissile core of a nuclear weapon. The CIA report was dated May 1974 and stamped ‘Secret, No Foreign Disclosure.’ However, no firm evidence has emerged to support the allegation. And in February 1978 the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission released a 550-page report in which it claimed that the CIA’s theory amounted to no more than ‘circumstantial evidence and much colour.’

At 12:05 pm on 6 October 1973 Egypt and Syria launched the fourth Arab-Israeli war. 6 October was Yom Kippur in Israel, the Day of Atonement, the holiest of all Jewish festivals, and Israel was not on her guard. Of more appeal to the Arabs, 6 October that year was also the tenth day of Ramadan, the day in 624 AD when the prophet Mohammed began preparations for the Battle of Badr, the first victory in the long campaign that led to his triumphant entry into Mecca. The Arab attack was codenamed Operation Badr and at first it was devastating: Syria attacked from the north, across the Golan Heights, and Egypt from the south, across the Suez Canal. In five days of savage fighting Israel managed to turn the Syrian tide in the north. But she did not have the resources to fight an all-out battle on two fronts and Egypt, having secured a massive bridgehead across the Suez Canal, occupied large chunks of the Sinai Desert. Israel was in deep trouble. Her losses of aircraft and tanks were considerable and she had less than four day’s stocks of tank ammunition. By 11 October Israel had reluctantly accepted a US proposal that she agree to a ceasefire – without insisting on Egypt’s withdrawal to pre-war lines. President Sadat of Egypt rejected the proposal. It was an epic miscalculation.

The pressure of American public opinion alone would probably have forced President Richard Nixon to agree to a massive airlift of supplies to Israel. But there was a more deadly reason why the US could not risk any other course: on the information he had received from the CIA, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger advised that Israel, facing defeat, was near the point of resorting to nuclear weapons.

The CIA was not alone in that fear. Jordan had stayed out of the Yom Kippur war but she watched the events with anxiety and her very efficient secret service reported that Israel had taken the penultimate step towards Armageddon. According to the Jordanians, Israel had equipped surface-to-surface missiles with nuclear warheads and during the first few days of battle, those warheads had been armed.

Israel had always denied that she possessed long-range missiles but the Americans knew that was untrue. During the heyday of French-Israeli relations, the Marcel Dassault company – manufacturer of the Mirage fighter – developed for Israel a two-stage solid-fuel rocket designated the MD-660. [NdT: some journalist as Udo Gumpel are firmly convinced that the Italian Ustica’s airplane DC-9 was shot down in 1980 by two Mirages… of foreign nationality. It is a fact that Israel six months after the Ustica ‘accident’ sold out her entire Mirage’s fleet to another foreign country. If the Ustica Affair is true it is not the only case of an Italian aircraft shoot down by Israel: another one was the ARGO 16, in revenge for the Italian Prime Minister Craxi’s policy. The same Mossad source who told that, says that during the 1973 Yom Kippur war Israel deployed depleted uranium ammunitions.]

When French cordiality cooled, Israel Aircraft Industries Ltd took over development and manufacture of the rocket, codenamed Jericho. Very little was known about Jericho except that it could carry a nuclear warhead and that it had a range of 280 miles – sufficient to reach Amman, Cairo or Damascus.

In knowledge of that awful secret, President Nixon authorized the airlift of US weapons and ammunition to Israel. It began on 14 October. With those new supplies, and with a great deal of skill and courage, Israel launched a devastating counter attack. In a week it was President Sadat who was begging for a ceasefire. Egypt and Syria had lost 452 aircraft and two thousand tanks. Israel had crossed the Suez Canal and held a sizeable portion of Egypt. In the Sinai desert twenty thousand men of the Egyptian Third Army were trapped, cut off from supplies and at Israel’s mercy.

Israel could scarcely consider that the Yom Kippur war ended in victory. For the first time the Arab armies were not routed and in the course of the war Israel lost 800 tanks and 115 aircraft. The human cost was appalling: about 2,500 Israelis and 16,000 Arabs were killed. But Israel survived, providing at least short term justification for her decision to take up the nuclear option: if atomic weapons did not deter the Arabs, they certainly deterred the United States government from any thought of abandoning its commitment to Israel.

The question that remains is whether, in the long term, the fruits of Operation Plumbat will bring catastrophe. Can peace in the Middle East ever be built on so explosive a foundation? Will Israel’s deterrent one day fail to deter her enemies or coerce her allies, and will she then use it?

Without an Arab-Israeli settlement there seems little doubt that sooner or later Israel will face a terrifying choice. The situation was summed up in an article which appeared in The Jerusalem Post on 25 April 1976. It was written by Ephraim Kishon and is, of course, no more than one man’s vies. Nevertheless, its awful logic seems compelling:

“From time to time the US Administration wonders [in] all innocence why we’re so greedy. From time to time it plays dumb and pretends not to know of this tragic situation where three million weary Jews who’ve just begun building their home in the desert are being forced to maintain a huge military force to defend themselves against a hundred-million millionaires building up an army of NATO size. The US administration acts as if it had no idea that nearly half our Gross national Product lies under wraps in our military emergency stores, and that if it weren’t for this backbreaking burden we wouldn’t be standing like beggars at their door.

All this generous American assistance, even when it’s called economic, goes directly or indirectly to sustain a losing arms race. All the parties have an interest in this race, each for his own reasons – except Israel who can never win it. To be sure, Israel won’t be defeated in battle: it’ll collapse – economically and socially – under the fearful load of endless arms purchases…

It’s a fully planned vicious circle: when the Arabs have 10,000 tanks, we’ll need at least 6,000; when they have 20,000, we’ll need 12,000 – and so on ad infinitum. Interim agreements or not, the race will go on, and our total dependence on the US.

And this total dependence will mean total retreat to the 1967 frontiers and the sticking of a Palestinian State in our throat, without peace…

Our one and only alternative to our gradual destruction by arms race is to develop a nuclear deterrent of our own. [Officially, Israel still denies she has nuclear weapons.] It’s our single chance for telling our many enemies and our one friend: that’s it, we’re not playing any more, we refuse to go on running for ever in the circles you’ve drawn for us. We want no more of your arms, we want a sophisticated educational system.

Sooner or later we’ll have to say it out loud. Sooner or later we’ll have to announce; if any Arab army crosses this green line we reserve the right to use atomic weapons, and if it crosses the red line we’ll drop the bomb automatically, even if this whole country is blown up by nuclear retaliation. You don’t believe it? Try us!...”

While the consequences of operation Plumbat remain to be seen, there is no doubt of the value – from Israel’s viewpoint – of Operation Cherbourg.

In early 1970, as soon as the fuss over the liberation of the five gunboats had died down, Israel abandoned the pretence that they were to be used for oil exploration. Each was armed with a 76 mm gun and between five and eight Gabriel missiles. They then joined the other seven Cherbourg gunboats to form the elite squadron of the Israeli Navy. Until that moment the Navy had always been the poor relation of Israel’s armed services. Once it had teeth it soon proved its worth. In the Yom Kippur War, while the Israeli Army and Air Force came near to defeat, the Navy was utterly victorious.

The Gabriel missile had less than half the range of the Soviet-made Styx missile* with which both the Egyptian and the Syrian navies were armed. But in manoeuvrability and speed the gunboats were more than a match for anything in the Arab fleets.

*In 1973 the Gabriel had a range of twelve and a half miles compared to the Styx’s twenty-nine miles. Later versions of the Gabriel were given a range of about twenty-two miles.

In every engagement during the 1973 war the Israeli boats got within range of the enemy without being hit.

The war at sea begun at 10 o’clock on the night of 6 October, about eight hours after the start of the war on land. Five miles from the Syrian port of Latakia, five Israeli gunboats ambushed a Syrian torpedo boat and sank it with gunfire.

Two nights later six Israeli gunboats clashed with four Egyptian missile boats near Port Said and sunk three of them. On 10 October two Syrian missile boats were sunk while still in harbour at Latakia and the next night at Tartus two more suffered a similar fate. After that no Arab naval vessel put to sea in the Egyptian and Syrian coastlines. Day after day their 76 mm guns pounded enemy oil installations, radar stations, military complexes and supply depots. The damage to Israel’s fleet was limited to a small hole in the bow of one of the gunboats, caused by a lump of shrapnel.

The Lillehammer debacle did not entirely end Israel’s international hunt for terrorists, nor did it temper Mossad’s taste for adventure.

On 10 August 1973, Dr George Habash, leader of the extremist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was due to fly from Beirut to Baghdad, capital of Iraq. But the Iraq Airways airplane he was to take was delayed in London and a substitute aircraft was hired from middle East Airlines. During the delay Habash, who suffered from a heart condition, began to feel unwell and his aides persuaded him to postpone his journey. That decision saved his life.

Although Habash’s movements are always clothed in secrecy, Mossad had learned of his proposed trip to Baghdad. When the MEA airliner, a Caravelle, eventually took off from Beirut it was intercepted by two Israeli Phantom fighters. Under threat of being shot down, the pilot was forced to fly to Israel. The Caravelle landed at a military base in northern Israel and was boarded by troops who spent two hours questioning the eighty-three passengers and crew. Although disappointed about the failure to capture Habash Israel’s leaders were unabashed at the international outcry over this act of air piracy. Moshe Dayan appeared on television to say that in the war against terrorism, anything goes.

There has been one further demonstration that such Israeli policies remain unchanged although this time the authorities tried strenuously to keep it secret.

On 18 January 1976 an El Al Boeing 707 with 110 people on board was bound for Nairobi Airport in Kenya. An hour before it was due to arrive Kenyan police made a routine inspection of the airport perimeter and came across three Arabs crouching by the fence. On the grass beside them were two SAM-7 missile launchers, loaded and ready to be fired. The three Arabs were arrested.

The Soviet-made SAM-7 is fired from the shoulder like a bazooka, but with far more deadly effect. The missile, which carries a high-explosive warhead, and has a range of almost a mile, is guided by a heat-seeking device. Fired at a jet airplane, it would inexorably seek out the hot exhaust from one of the engines and explode on impact. The Arab’s missiles would have blown the El Al airliner to pieces.

Three days late a young West German couple, Thomas Reuter and Brigitte Schulz, both aged twenty-three, flew into Nairobi. The Kenyan police believed them to be members of the German Baader-Meinhof terrorist gang. They also believed that the attack on the El Al airplane had been jointly planned by German and Palestinian terrorists and that Reuter and Schulz had been sent to Nairobi to find out what had gone wrong. The couple were arrested as soon as they reached the airport terminal. They joined the three Arabs in custody. And then all five disappeared.

In response to inquiries from Brigitte Schulz’s parents and the West German government, Kenya denied any knowledge of what had happened to the couple. The first clue to their fate came in June 1976 when German and Palestinian terrorists hijacked an Air France jet and forced the pilot to fly to Entebbe. The daring and celebrated raid by Israeli commandos put an end to that episode but not before the hijackers had listed their demands which included ‘the release of the Nairobi five from imperialist jails in Kenya.’ The evidence that Schulz and Reuter had been involved in the Nairobi plot led to the West German government making fresh demands of Kenya for information about the couple. Kenya categorically denied that she was holding any foreign terrorists. For the first time suspicion dawned that Schulz and Reuter and the three Arabs might somehow have been taken to Israel. The Israeli government denied it.

In December 1976 Schulz’s parents hired an Israeli-born lawyer named Lea Tsemel to find out if the government’s denials were true. Tsemel is a formidable opponent of the Israeli authorities. She regularly represents Arabs who have been arrested in Israel or the Occupied Territories for ‘security’ offences and she defends Jews who refuse to be drafted into the army. In her attempts to find the young German couple she pursued the police; Shin Beth, the internal security service; and the Ministry of Defence without pause. Finally, in late February 1977, with the help of the Israeli courts, Tsemel won an admission that the ‘Nairobi five’ had been taken out of Kenya by Mossad. On 15 march Israel officially informed the West German government that Schulz and Reuter were in custody in Israel. They had been there for fourteen months.

In the autumn of 1977, the ‘Nairobi five’ went on trial behind closed doors at a military base somewhere in Israel. Tsemel was refused permission to represent any of the defendants on the grounds that she was a ‘security risk’. Understandably, Israel was anxious to keep secret the methods by which Mossad was able to spirit the five out of Kenyan custody, out of Kenya itself and back to Israel.

The killings and the reprisals go on.

On 3 January 1977 Mahmoud Saleh, a former PLO official, was shot dead in Paris outside the Arab library he directed at 2 Rue Saint-Victor. On 7 December 1977, David Holden, chief foreign correspondent of The Sunday Times was assassinated in Cairo when he arrived to cover the Sadat-Begin peace initiative. On 31 December 1977, two Syrian diplomats were blown to pieces in London by a car bomb. On 4 January 1978, Said Hammami, the PLO’s representative in London, was gunned down in his office in Green Street.

There seem little reason to believe that the war of terror will end.

Epilogue