Such incidents were not uncommon. Working closely with Israel’s small but highly trained navy, Mossad had since then intercepted several boats and removed passengers suspected of terrorist activities. Not only Israel’s long Mediterranean coast called for vigilance; the Red Sea also presented a constant vulnerability. A Mossad agent in Yemen had been the source for an operation that had thwarted a PLO plot to sail a fishing boat up the Red Sea to the Israeli resort of Elat and detonate its cargo of explosives close to the shore, lined with hotels. An Israeli gunboat had intercepted the fishing boat and overpowered its two suicide bombers before they could detonate the cargo.
As the Learjet descended toward northern Israel, the passengers also feared this was a further retaliation for what had happened when another of their heroes, Abu Al-Abbas, had, only a few months before, on October 2, 1985, taken over the Italian cruise liner
The crime had become a floating diplomatic incident that had embroiled an outraged Israel and the United States, Egypt, Italy, Syria, Cyprus, Tunisia, and the stateless PLO; for days the crisis had drifted around the Mediterranean, gathering publicity for the hijackers and revealing the self-interest which, in the Middle East, governed attitudes toward terrorism. The hijacking of a cruise liner that was bringing much-needed foreign tourists and hard currency to Israel, followed by the murder of a passenger, provoked a wave of indecision. The murder had technically taken place on Italian soil, the Genova-registered
More than one of the Learjet’s passengers wondered whether they would now be held in some Israeli jail in an act of revenge. With the fighters still flying almost wingtip to wingtip, the executive jet landed at a military airfield in northern Galilee. A waiting team of Aman interrogators had been told by Mossad that on board were two of the most wanted terrorists in the world, the notorious Abu Nidal and the equally infamous Ahmed Jibril. Instead the interrogators found themselves questioning a bunch of badly frightened Arabs, none of whose names appeared on Israel’s computers. The Learjet was allowed to depart with its passengers.
Israel would insist that the prospect of catching terrorists was the only reason for intercepting the aircraft. But within Mossad was a mood that no opportunity should be lost to create fear and panic in Arab minds. The Aman interrogators had some satisfaction in knowing that the passengers would further the image of an all-powerful Israel.
The head of Aman, Ehud Barak, believed the operation was yet another example of Mossad shooting from the hip, and he made his feeling very clear to Nahum Admoni.
Never a person to suffer a mistake or a rebuke lightly, the Mossad chief set about devising an operation that would not only put an end to the mocking of Mossad on Arab radio stations for being reduced to forcing down an unarmed civilian plane, but one that would also end the sniping within Israel’s own intelligence community that the service he commanded should next time be very sure before it made a fool of them all.
So began an operation which, among much else, would ruin the life of a pregnant Irish chambermaid and send her Arab lover to prison to serve one of the longest sentences given by a British court; cause huge embarrassment to German chancellor Helmut Kohl and French prime minister Jacques Chirac; once more reveal Robert Maxwell in full manipulative fury; cause Syria to be exiled from the world’s diplomatic table; and force all those Arab radio stations that had so gleefully ridiculed Mossad to change their tune.
Like all operations, there were moments of high tensions and periods of patient waiting. It had its quota of human despair, useful anger, and betrayal, but for men like Nahum Admoni, such a plot was the very substance of his life. It went with asking himself the same questions over and over again. Could it work? Would other people actually believe that it had been like that? And, of course, would the real truth remain buried forever?
