Gordon Thomas - Gideon's Spies

A hint of that had surfaced when Shabtai Shavit, a former Mossad director and, in 2006, a national security adviser to the Knesset said, “we do what we think is best for us, and it happens to meet America’s requirements. That’s just part of a relationship between two friends.” This would explain why a small team of U.S. Air Force strategists had been in Israel for weeks and had held several meetings with Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, the chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, who during his time in the Israeli Air Force had helped to prepare the attack plan for an aerial assault on Iran. It was that plan which had been used to launch the air assault on south Lebanon. The effect would once more form the core of the morning meeting in Israel’s war room.

The size of a Hezbollah rocket crater—forty by twenty feet—the war room was deep inside the Kirya, the Tel Aviv headquarters of the Israeli Defense Forces. It was accessed by swipe cards whose codes were as closely guarded as the life-or-death decisions made within the featureless concrete building. Tacked to the olive-green walls were maps and charts showing the progress in the war: the number of IDF air strikes and their targets, bombardment by Israeli warships of the towns and villages around the port city of Tyre, ground advances by the crack Galilee, and Nahal divisions into south Lebanon. On a separate chart were the latest figures of rockets launched against northern Israel and the precise location where each Katyusha BM-24 and Fajr-3 rocket had landed. Another chart listed the armaments Hezbollah still possessed, but had not yet fully used. The Fajr-5 rocket with its range of 55 miles and the deadliest of them all: the Zelzal-2 Iranian missile with a range of 150 miles. It brought Tel Aviv and the Kirya within its range.

Against one wall were a bank of screens. They brought into the war room unedited footage from IDF cameramen on the frontline: advancing with troops into Arab villages, perched on mine-sweeping bulldozers clearing the way for tanks, or on the hull of the tanks as they ground their way forward, firing as they advanced.

In the center of the room was a conference table made from cedar wood from Galilee. There were twenty chairs around the table. With the sun already high over the Judean hills, they were all occupied by 6:25 A.M. each morning by the men who would direct the war against Hezbollah. The fanaticism and ruthlessness of their opponents had surprised them. Their faces showed the strain of long days and shortened hours of often disturbed sleep. They knew before they left the room each morning they would make more life-or-death decisions which, when they were implemented, would draw further harsh criticism from not only around the world, but from within Israel.

A great deal of criticism had been directed against Ehud Olmert from an increasingly bewildered public who had begun to ask what was being gained from a war where the number of Israeli dead rose by the day and tens of thousands cowered in bomb shelters and protected rooms in the north of the country. Hezbollah, far from being crippled, appeared to have a limitless supply of rockets and anti-tank missiles that had destroyed the pride of the IDF army—its latest American-built tanks.

Every morning Israeli Army Radio carried the anguished words to the people that the prime minister had promised to teach Hezbollah a lesson it would never forget—and from which it would never again threaten Israel. And it was not only Hezbollah who would be dealt with. Hamas had continued to attack the Jewish state, creating an effective war on two fronts. Olmert in one of his regular broadcasts had promised the day of reckoning would also soon be upon Hamas. But there were a growing number of Israelis who felt the prime minister not only looked increasingly tired, but sounded ever more uncertain. That would have been noted by his waiting generals in the war room.

Pinned to one wall was a blow-up of an Israeli newspaper editorial: “If Israel fails in this war, it will be impossible to continue to live in the Middle East. What is it about us, the Jews, the few and persecuted? We are not hesitating, apologizing, or relenting. The Jewish state will no longer be trampled underfoot.”

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.