By 6:30 A.M. the last cup of coffee had been cleared from the table. Olmert opened proceedings with a political update on the view from Washington. He did not have to remind his listeners there was now only a limited time left to crush Hezbollah. On that July morning Ehud Olmert returned to a question raised previously in the war room. Where did the “hawk of hawks”—U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld—stand? Could his virtual silence be no more than a reminder of Rumsfeld’s age, that for him this was just another war in a career that dated back to Vietnam in 1975, where Rumsfeld had been a junior White House aide as American troops had withdrawn? Washington’s Israeli ambassador had been reassuring—his latest enquiries showed “Rummy remained as enthusiastic as ever over what Israel was doing,” Olmert assured the battle-hardened men around the table.
Olmert’s preamble done, he handed over the meeting to Meir Dagan who sat across the table from the prime minister. He, too, had news from Washington. While there was no evident split within the Bush administration, his station chief in the capital had picked up that Condoleezza Rice had modified her position over whether it was not yet “conducive” to formally intervene in the conflict. The Mossad man had learned from his own sources within the State Department that Rice had redefined her role to that “of a mediator waiting to intervene.” It was still too early for her to resume her shuttle diplomacy, but she hoped that day was coming soon. In Dagan’s judgment this could be interpreted as the secretary of state, for the moment, continuing to take a back seat in the crisis while the neo-conservatives around Bush maintained their position of all-out support for military action. It was the latest steps in that action which preoccupied air force chiefs Major General Elyezer Shkedy, Commander of the Israeli Air Force, and Major General David Ben Ba’ashat, Commander of the Israeli Navy. Sitting around the table were the other men charged with running the war. Lieutenant General Dan Halutz as Chief of Staff sat next to Olmert. He was the highest ranking officer in the room and the Minister of Defense had, since 1976, held overall command of the IDF. He was represented by Colonel Yaakov Toran, Director General of the Ministry. Olmert’s cabinet was also asked to approve all military policies and operations. In reality, this was done by the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee, but the decisions taken in the war room had so far not been challenged—and were unlikely to be.
Next to Halutz sat his deputy, Major General Moshe Kaplinsky, and Amos Yedlin, Director of Military Intelligence. Others around the table included the three key field commanders, Major General Yair Naveh of Central Command, Major General Yoav Gallant of the Southern Command with responsibility for watching over the Sinai, and Major General “Udi” Adam who was the northern field commander at the cutting edge of the conflict with daily responsibility for running the war in south Lebanon. Toughened by years of fighting, the three officers gave their reports in the clipped language of seasoned military briefers. Another important member of the gathering was Major General Avichi Mendelblit, the IDF’s Military Advocate General. Among his many responsibilities was to ensure that the air attacks would avoid being labeled as war crimes. Brigadier General Moshe Lipel, the IDF’s Financial Adviser, was present to give the daily cost of running the war. Down to the last tank-shell fired and the sticks of bombs dropped, all was accounted for.
Miri Regev, the articulate chief spokesman for the IDF from 2002–2007, sat down-table. He would later be responsible for trying to convince an increasingly skeptical world that Israel had no alternative but to continue to strike hard. Others around the table guarded their anonymity. They included the head of Special Forces, whose recent commando raid deep into the Beka’a Valley had echoes of the raid on Entebbe. Then it was to rescue civilians held by another terror group. The Beka’a raid came after Dagan’s deep-cover agents in the valley reported that the two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, were hiding there. Neither the soldiers nor Nasrallah were found.
