The biggest loser was Lebanon. Over one thousand of its people had been killed, fifteen thousand homes and other buildings had been destroyed, tourism and the economy had been decimated. Tourism had generated 15 percent of the Lebanese national economy and the economy had shrunk by 3 percent. Mossad analysts said it would require $2.5 billion to rebuild the country. Israel had lost 144 lives and hundreds more were injured. Israel had also spent $1.6 billion waging the war—equalling 1 percent of its GDP. It’s all important tourist industry had fallen by 50 percent—and would remain like that for some time. President Bush and Prime Minister Blair had both suffered a humiliating defeat in accepting Olmert’s insistence at the outset of hostilities that it would be a short conflict. And, even when that had looked unlikely, they had still done nothing to halt the fighting. Their stance had reinforced the view in the Muslim world that Britain and the United States would always side with Israel.
As Israeli troops trudged back from Lebanon, many of them were bitter and angry. They spoke of how they had gone to war in the stifling summer heat without even sufficient water to drink and how they had to take canteens from the bodies of dead Hezbollah fighters. By the time they reached Israel, many signed a petition claiming incompetence “at all levels” in the way the war was run. Others pitched tents outside government buildings in Jerusalem to protest, charging that Ehud Olmert and his security advisers provided incoherent leadership and must be held accountable. It was a view shared by the Mossad analysts. On the top floor of Mossad headquarters there was also anger that Ehud Olmert had asked an old friend, Ofer Dekel, a former head of Shin Bet, the country’s internal security service, to try and open discussions with Hezbollah to return the two captured soldiers. Meir Dagan told his senior staff that it was too soon to contemplate such a move.
In the streets of Israel’s cities the anger grew. Brigadier Yossi Hyman, the senior paratrooper’s officer, accused the IDF of “the sin of arrogance,” while expressing his own regret that he had not better prepared his own soldiers for war. A group of reservists sent a devastating indictment of IDF commanders to the country’s defense minister, Amir Peretz. The document accused IDF officers of “chronic indecisiveness and displaying under-preparation, insincerity, and an inability to make rational decisions.” Never before had there been such an attack on Israel’s military elite.
Meir Dagan was not alone in recognizing that if Israel was to survive in an Islamic world grown more determined to remove it, it must urgently learn from its mistakes and adapt. There was a growing public demand that Olmert should resign along with some of his generals. Among those who did resign was Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, General Dan Halutz. But the prime minister clung to office. It was only when he found a criminal investigation, alleging he had been involved in corrupt financial deals, did he finally announce he would leave office in October 2008 and fight to clear his name.
As an uneasy truce settled over Lebanon, Operation Overt, to which Mossad was one of half-a-dozen security services making a contribution, began to move to resolution. MI5 was checking all Britain’s universities and technical schools for Middle East students who had come to Britain to study thermochemistry, the science which includes creating liquid explosives. The search also extended to all British firms that had employed foreign students since 9/11. The fear was that any of them could have been recruited by one of the two terror cells now under intense surveillance in London that were now known to MI5 to be linked to al-Qaeda. MI5 were certain the plot centered on destroying transatlantic flights from Heathrow to the United States.
Mossad’s own scientists had already told MI5 the most effective way of smuggling explosive liquids onto an aircraft would be using two stable fluids which could be mixed in an aircraft lavatory to create a powerful bomb. Research by the chemists showed that nitroglycerine hidden inside a tub of hair gel or a shampoo bottle, with a detonator hidden inside a cell phone, would be one effective method. Another was to use two bottles of clear chemicals hidden inside cans of soft drinks or toiletries. A prime candidate for this method would be triacetone triperoxide (TATP) a crystalline white powder. The July 7, 2005, bombers in London had used this method to create the explosions on the city’s underground system. On board an aircraft the two chemicals would be mixed to create TATP.
Ehud Keinan, a member of the Technical Institute in Tel Aviv, whose expertise was invaluable to Mossad, said (to the author):
