Gordon Thomas - Gideon's Spies

At daybreak the ship set sail, its captain having told the port authorities he was bound for Greece to undergo an engine overhaul. The commandos were belowdecks. But their arrival had not gone unnoticed. A Mossad informer employed in the harbormaster’s office had become sufficiently suspicious to inform the katsa stationed in the city. He sent a message to Tel Aviv.

Its arrival triggered a “condition yellow” alert that was sent to the entire Mossad network stationed around the Mediterranean. Memories were still fresh of the unsuccessful attempt to blow up the seafront at Elat, and it was assumed this could be a similar attack, only this time against Haifa. The busy port on the Mediterranean seaboard was an obvious target. Two naval gunboats were stationed offshore ready to deal with any attempt by the Atavarius to enter the harbor that was Israel’s main trading sea link with the world.

The Atavarius ’s destination was the beaches north of Tel Aviv. In a plan that could have been plucked from a Hollywood movie, the Atavarius would lower the commandos into rubber boats, which they would row ashore. Then they would fight their way into Tel Aviv to their target, the Kirya, the fortresslike headquarters of the Israel Defense Forces, whose tower dominated the skyline and would serve as a beacon for the commandos. The plan depended on total surprise and the ruthless courage the Israelis had themselves made a byword.

The attack had been set for Israel’s Independence Day celebrations, when a carnival mood would prevail, and the Kirya, according to Syrian intelligence, would have fewer men than usual guarding it. The commandos did not expect to escape with their lives, but they had been chosen for the mission because they had all shown the same mentality as the Beirut suicide bombers.

Meantime, they could relax and enjoy the short cruise that took them past Tunisia to their next landfall, the island of Sicily. No one on board probably paid any attention to the fishing trawler wallowing in the swell as the Atavarius passed. The boat contained sophisticated electronic equipment capable of monitoring radio conversations on board the merchantman. A short transmission in Arabic announced that the ship was on schedule. One of the trawler’s two-man crew, both Mossad sayanim, radioed the news to Tel Aviv. For the next twenty-four hours, the Atavarius was shadowed by other Mossad-operated vessels as it passed Crete and then the island of Cyprus.

A fast motor yacht crossed its path. It, too, was equipped with detection gear, including a powerful camera concealed in the side of the wheelhouse. On deck were two young women, sunbathing. They were cousins of the Cypriot sayan who owned the yacht and were being used as bait to attract interest from those on board the Atavarius . As the yacht cruised alongside, several of the commandos appeared at the deck rail, shouting and smiling at the women. In the wheelhouse, the sayan activated the camera to photograph the gesticulating men. His part in the surveillance over, he raced back to Cyprus. In his home the film was developed, and the prints were wired to Tel Aviv. Mossad’s computers identified three of the faces as known Arab terrorists. Condition yellow moved to red.

Prime Minister Shimon Peres ordered that the Atavarius be attacked. A plan to bomb it was considered and rejected. An air attack might be mistaken by Egypt as part of a preemptive strike; though diplomatic relations between Israel and its neighbor had survived a number of incidents, there was considerable tension and suspicion in Cairo about Tel Aviv’s activities. Peres agreed that the attack should be seaborne.

Six Israeli navy gunboats were fueled and armed with rockets. On board were units of the IDF Special Forces and Mossad operatives who were to interrogate any of the commandos taken alive. The gunboats set off in the early hours for Haifa, heading west out into the Mediterranean. They raced through the waters in stern-to-prow formation, so as to reduce the possibility of detection by radar on board the Atavarius . The Israelis had timed their attack to be launched with the rising sun immediately behind them.

At a little after 6:30 A.M., the Atavarius was sighted. In a textbook maneuver, the gunboats fanned out, attacking the merchantman from both sides, raking the hull and decks with rockets. On deck the commandos fired back. But their heavy armaments were still crated below, and their automatic rifles were no match for the superior firepower of the Israelis. In minutes the Atavarius was on fire and its crew and commandos began to abandon ship. Some were shot as they plunged into the sea.

In all, twenty crew and commandos were killed. Their bodies were all recovered. Eight survivors were taken prisoner. Before the gunboats raced back to Israel, they sank the Atavarius with rockets whose nose cones were filled with extra-powerful explosives.

The bodies of the dead were unceremoniously buried in the Negev Desert. The prisoners were tried in secret and sentenced to lengthy terms of imprisonment. During their interrogation, they had totally implicated Syria as the guiding force behind the incident. But, rather than launch an attack on its neighbor, the Israeli government, acting on the advice of Mossad, kept the incident secret. Mossad’s psychologists had predicted that the disappearance of the ship and its crew and passengers would become the subject of intense and increasingly fearful speculation among the Syrian-based PLO groups. Mossad also warned Prime Minister Peres that the one thing he could be certain of was that the terrorists, knowing their operation had failed, would be eager to regain face with their Syrian benefactors.

Meanwhile, the Palestinians continued to fulminate against Arafat and applaud the deadly war being waged against him by his onetime associate, Abu Nidal. Long deemed terrorism’s “grand master of the unexpected,” Nidal had fallen out with Arafat over tactics.

Arafat was slowly coming around to the idea that a movement that had nothing at its disposal but terrorism would ultimately fail; it needed a political program and a sense of diplomacy. Arafat had been trying to demonstrate that in his recent public statements, earning encouragement from Washington to continue on this new path. In Israel, Arafat’s words were seen as a sham. For Abu Nidal they were nothing but a betrayal of all he personally stood for—naked, unadulterated terrorism.

For months, Nidal had been biding his time. When he heard about the failure of the Atavarius mission and the way the ship had subsequently disappeared from the face of the earth, he decided the time had come to remind Israel he was still around. With the full connivance of his protectors in Syrian intelligence, Abu Nidal struck with horrific effect. At the Rome and Vienna airports in December 1985, his gunmen opened fire on helpless Christmas travelers. In as many seconds nineteen passengers, among them five Americans, were slaughtered at the El Al check-in counters at both airports. How had those terrorists been able to move unhampered around Italian police to reach their targets? Where were El Al’s own security men?

While answers to these urgent questions were being sought, Mossad’s strategists were also looking at other areas. Though Britain had joined in the total condemnation of the attacks, the country still maintained full diplomatic ties with Syria—despite Mossad having furnished MI5 with ample evidence of Damascus’s role in state-sponsored terrorism. It was not enough for the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, to deliver forceful denunciations in Parliament of terrorism. There was a need for more direct action. However, in the past MI5 had reminded Mossad that even Israel had from time to time shown expedient self-interest, and accepted the need to trade with its sworn enemies. There had been its decision to free over a thousand Palestinian detainees—many convicted terrorists—only months before the Rome and Vienna airport bombings, in exchange for three Israeli soldiers held in Lebanon.