No Room for Small Dreams

by Shimon Peres

  I summoned Gur to my office and told him we needed to meet to discuss options. He was shocked. “You just voted with the government to surrender!” he shouted in disbelief. “It was a trick to buy time,” I explained, “and now we have time. So we shall use it as best as we can.” That afternoon, the “Fantasy Council” reconvened, and for the first time, it felt that a practical rescue plan was emerging. Kuti Adam and Dan Shomron had already drafted a course of action that involved landing aircraft at the Entebbe airport and then taking it over. They described it in great detail. The operation would be carried out under cover of darkness and wouldn’t last for more than an hour. The first plane would land at 11:00 P.M., right in the wake of a British airliner as a way of avoiding radar detection. Out of the belly of the plane would emerge two cars that would drive toward the old terminal to unload a group of commandos who would take out the hijackers and rescue the hostages. Within ten minutes, another of our Hercules aircraft would land, out of which two more cars would emerge. Those commandos would head for the “new terminal” and take control of it, along with the runways and the fuel reservoirs. Once their missions were achieved, two more Israeli planes would land to evacuate the hostages.

  We talked about every possible outcome, every variable we could think of, everything that could go wrong. The latest we could carry out the mission was Saturday night, and though there were still questions about the viability of the plan, the officers at least agreed that we had time to prepare. But Gur expressed concern. He made the case that, even if the operation worked as intended, we didn’t have the ability to fly our planes all the way to Uganda without a stopover. If we couldn’t get Kenya to agree to let us use their bases for refueling, the operation was simply impossible. And even if we were able to secure the consent of the Kenyan government, Gur felt we still lacked sufficient intelligence to have confidence in the operation. We still didn’t even know how many terrorists we would be facing.

  “Without intelligence, there is no chance I’d recommend such an operation,” he exclaimed. “Some of the things I heard here aren’t worthy of the IDF’s general staff. If you want James Bond—you’re not getting it with me!”

  Mossad was working on getting us better intelligence, I told Gur. In the meantime, I asked that he authorize a task force to begin preparing for the attack; if we were able to get the intelligence we required, we had to be ready to act. Gur agreed, and appointed Dan Shomron to command the operation.

  At 5:00 P.M., I met with Rabin and a small group of ministers for further discussion. To this point, I had not presented Rabin with the details of the plan we were considering. I saw only a downside in doing so prematurely. But I did continue to push for a rescue.

  “If there is a military operation, it’s preferable,” I said. “At this point, I admit, there’s no concrete proposal—only ideas and imagination. But the alternative is complete and utter surrender.” My pleas were, again, largely ignored.

  When the meeting was over, my confidence had fallen. Despite all the work of the people around me, despite their willingness to push hard for me and think creatively for me, I felt increasingly like I was truly alone. And though Ben-Gurion had always taught me the virtue of standing alone, I also believe that when one is all alone, he must consider whether he is the one who is wrong. I started to wonder whether my enthusiasm for the purpose had clouded my judgment about the practicality, whether I had become so committed to the principle of rescuing the hostages that I had grown blind to the reality that we could not. Now I didn’t have Ben-Gurion to turn to for advice and wisdom. So I turned to the closest thing to him: my old friend Moshe Dayan.

  I’d gotten word that Dayan, who was no longer in the government, was at dinner at a waterfront restaurant in Tel Aviv with guests from Australia. I drove directly to the restaurant to meet him. He was surprised to see me, as were his guests, who looked to be just starting on their soup course. I apologized and asked Dayan to step away so that we could speak briefly in private. As I started to explain the situation, a waiter came over with two glasses of red wine. I realized it was the only sustenance I’d had all day.

  I described the circumstances—the daring rescue plan, the lack of intelligence, the many risks involved, the objections, the unknown consequences—and as I did I could see Dayan fill with delight.

  “This is a plan that I support one hundred and fifty percent!” he declared, dismissing the downsides as the unavoidable risks of war. “You are right to pursue this with everything you have.” He reinforced my convictions at a most important time. Though I hadn’t eaten, I left the restaurant fuller than when I’d arrived.

  At 11:00 P.M. on Thursday, Rabin held another cabinet meeting, at which the granular details of the hostage negotiations were being discussed. I’m not sure I spoke a word. My mind wandered back to the conversation with Dayan, and forward to the persuading that still remained.

  The meeting ended well after midnight, but before going home, I decided to take a run at Gur once more. We spoke for several hours—not just about the Jewish state, but about the Jewish people—about the stakes for us all. I spoke of the great danger of the military action I was endorsing, but of the greater danger that would befall all of us were we to choose surrender instead. I tried to overcome his doubts, but when we parted ways in the early hours of the morning, Gur remained unconvinced. I returned to the couch in my office and lay down for a brief respite, hoping my words might have more power with Gur as they lingered in his mind.

  •••

  After what couldn’t have been more than an hour or two of sleep, I woke up in sudden agony. A toothache that had been bothering me all week had gone from distracting to debilitating. And so in the middle of all the commotion, I had to excuse myself for an emergency dental appointment.

  My dentist was an old friend, Dr. Langer. His son was an IDF commando, and his weekend leave had been called off. Dr. Langer surely knew why, as he had seen press reports about hostages in Entebbe. He must have wondered if an operation was about to take place, if his son was about to face mortal danger. But as he worked on my tooth, he said nothing of it—such was the man that he was.

  When I returned to my office, I was bombarded with a wealth of new intelligence that had arrived while I was gone. We had sent a Sayeret Matkal officer named Amiram Levin to Paris to assist French intelligence officers with debriefing the non-Israeli hostages. One of the hostages, an older gentleman, approached Levin. “I know exactly what you need.”

  He told Levin that he was a former colonel in the French army and therefore knew what to pay attention to while being held in Entebbe. He drew a sketch of the so-called old terminal, where the hostages were being held, and gave a succinct description of the layout. From him we learned there were thirteen terrorists and about sixty Ugandan soldiers. He told us that the hostages were held in the main hall of the terminal, but the French crew of the plane were detained in the women’s restrooms. The plane was not parked nearby. He said there was a wall of empty crates in the old terminal, which the hijackers warned were full of explosives. But there were no wires visible from the outside, nor any indication that they were being set up to explode. It was a wealth of information. Yet again, Israel found its security bolstered by the generosity of a Frenchman.

  In addition to his report, we received another from Mossad. Days earlier we had approved a mission to send an aircraft to photograph Entebbe. The mission had been a success and we were now in possession of high-quality photographs of the airport. We also received confirmation from Yitzhak Hofi, the director of Mossad, that Kenya had agreed to let us use their air base for stopovers. Gur and I met in his office to discuss the new information. In an instant, his skepticism washed away. He was ready to support the plan.

  With Gur’s endorsement, I put everything in motion. He was to use the new intelligence to operationalize the plan with the other members of the “Fantasy Council” while I went to brief Rabin.

  I walked into the prime minister’s off
ice. “At this moment,” I said, “speaking personally rather than officially, I am convinced that we have a real military option available.” I described the plan to Rabin, as well as the reservations among those who were working on it. I told him the whole story of the planning sessions, of the doubts raised and answered and of those still remaining. Rabin asked Hofi to join us so that he could talk through his questions.

  Rabin had both political and tactical concerns. Tactically, he worried that the first plane to land might be identified and attacked before it could unload, preventing the soldiers from deploying and leaving the hostages unprotected under the care of terrorists who believed they were under assault. More broadly, he worried that the failure of such a mission could do great damage to the country. “It might do more harm to Israel than any of the other alternatives,” he contended. On the tactical side, the Mossad director expressed support for the operation. Whether the risk of failure was a risk worth taking—that was a question for Rabin to answer himself.

  “Anyway, I’m bound by the cabinet’s decision,” Rabin concluded, referring to the earlier vote to begin negotiations. He was bound, I agreed; that was true. But I asked that he give us the chance to present him with a plan. “If you support it, the cabinet can choose to support it, too.”

  Later that afternoon, when I convened the “Fantasy Council” in my office, Gur announced that they were ready to present a plan to the prime minister. “Walk me through the details,” I asked.

  While I didn’t yet know what Rabin’s decision would be, I knew that our success depended on being ready from the moment we were given the go-ahead. As defense minister, I was authorized to send the IDF anywhere inside Israel’s borders without the prime minister’s approval. So, rather than wait for an answer, I ordered the Hercules to leave the following day from Tel Aviv to Sharm el-Sheikh, in the Sinai. I knew it was the best jumping-off point for the mission—and that if we got Rabin’s approval, we’d have no time to waste.

  The plan was now clear. From Sharm el-Sheikh, our forces would fly through Ethiopian airspace, beyond the range of its radar capability, and approach Uganda along the same route that commercial airliners used. The commandos, led by Yoni Netanyahu, would attack the terrorists and secure the hostages in the old terminal. The other planes would follow in succession every few minutes, unloading commandos. Some were charged with taking over the new terminal, runways, and fuel stations, while others were tasked with destroying the Soviet-made fighter jets stationed nearby. Another unit would set up roadblocks on the highway, preventing reinforcements from reaching the airport in time.

  Once secured, the hostages would be taken to one of the Hercules planes and take off for Nairobi for refueling. The other planes would follow behind to Kenya, and then together they would return to Israel. The operation was planned to the minute, and the commandos had already begun drilling the movements and gaming out all scenarios around the clock. They were studying maps of the airport the way their fathers and grandfathers had studied the pages of the Talmud. Still, the operation had hundreds of variables to consider, with almost countless ways that something could go wrong.

  As our discussion continued, someone at the table offered a creative idea: knowing, as we did, that Amin was not in country, he proposed that we disguise one of our commandos to look like Amin, and make it appear as though the Ugandan president had arrived at the airport in his presidential motorcade. Perhaps the Ugandan soldiers guarding the old terminal would be fooled in the darkness, long enough at least to create a moment of surprise. Gur and I both loved the idea and ordered a search for a black Mercedes, similar to Amin’s car, at once. Only the night before, Gur lambasted me for my fantasies of a James Bond–style mission. Clearly, he was a man transformed.

  I sent a note to Rabin to share the amusing new development: “Yitzhak, final upgrade to the plan: instead of the airport’s vehicle, a large Mercedes car will come out of the plane with flags—Idi Amin is returning home from Mauritius.”

  “I do not know if it is possible,” I added, “but it’s interesting.”

  When the meeting was concluded, we went to Rabin’s office, where Gur presented the details of our plan to the prime minister and the ministerial committee. Rabin was receptive in general, but remained uncommitted. “I am still uncertain about this operation,” he said. “We have never had so many hostages. We have never had such limited military information. This is going to be the riskiest operation I have ever known.” He continued to pepper Gur with questions about the plan’s details. “I am in favor of all the preparations going ahead, but I propose we still see this thing as subsidiary to the ongoing negotiations,” he said. “If only I could get them to release the women and children . . . that would change the whole picture.” He decided to convene an extraordinary government meeting the following afternoon, just before the planes would need to take off for Entebbe. Then, and only then, would we have his final decision.

  That evening, Sonia and I had plans we couldn’t cancel. Some weeks earlier, the Foreign Ministry had asked me to host a Columbia University professor named Zbigniew Brzezinski during his visit to Israel. The United States was in the middle of the presidential campaign, and Professor Brzezinski was expected to be named White House national security advisor should Jimmy Carter win the election. He was scheduled to come to our home that evening for the Sabbath, along with the editor of Haaretz newspaper and the director of military intelligence. Were we to suddenly cancel, I feared it could raise suspicions among everyone who knew about the invitation.

  I left the Defense Ministry offices just before sundown and greeted Brzezinski and the others at my table. During our dinner we had a deep and fascinating discussion about global affairs, and for a time managed to avoid the hijacking. But eventually the professor brought the conversation around to Entebbe, admitting he’d been surprised that Israel was unwilling to launch a military rescue. He pressed me for an explanation. I was unwilling to lie, yet unable to tell the truth, so I spoke in vague terms about a lack of reliable information and the challenges inherent in the distance. Brzezinski seemed unconvinced, but to my relief, the conversation moved on to other topics. When the dinner was over, I kissed Sonia good night, apologized for my weeklong absence, and returned to the office straightaway.

  In the early hours of Saturday, I found myself wrestling with increasingly anxious thoughts. I spent those tense waking hours imagining all of the factors that could lead to failure—both big and small. During this period, I kept a daily journal. “Who can guarantee,” I wrote, “that one of these tens of thousands of items—of which the planes, the armored cars, and the weapons are built—wouldn’t fail to function at the most critical moment, or at the most critical place?”

  At first light, I summoned the “Fantasy Council” to my office, where I ordered them to once again review the details of the operation. “What’s your report?” I asked Gur. He told me that the practice runs had gone just as planned, taking fifty-five minutes on the ground. He said that they had been unable to find a black Mercedes in all of Israel, but he assured me not to worry, as they’d found a white one of a similar model, and had already taken the liberty of painting it black.

  “There is no reason not to carry out the operation,” Gur announced at the end of our gathering, beaming with confidence. “The chances of success are great.”

  After the meeting, Gur and I rode to the airport together to bid the soldiers farewell. The team had been practicing for the most daring mission we’d ever contemplated, but even as they boarded the planes, they didn’t know if it would be approved. A number of them approached me when I arrived. They wanted to know if the government was going to give them the order, and wondered if we could really be so brave. Some of the commandos came over to shake my hand and to assure me of their own confidence in the mission. I watched as they boarded the plane—Yoni in the lead, his unit by his side—and knew full well that all the bravery was theirs.

  That afternoon, Rabin opened the ex
traordinary session of the cabinet, describing the new circumstances that had emerged. “As of today, we have a military option,” he explained, before describing the contours of the operation. When he finished, I addressed the group.

  “The heart-wrenching question is whether we risk the lives of innocent unarmed civilians and save the future of this country—or not. If we surrender, we encourage more operations like this,” I said. “Countries around the world might understand our ways, but they will mock us in their hearts.”

  Next, Gur laid out the details of the plan, step by step, as well as his conclusions. The operation, as he saw it, was well calculated and calibrated, and one that he expected would succeed. He noted, of course, the possibility of casualties, but said that such risk existed “in any other operation we’ve ever done to rescue civilians.”

  “If we fail to refuel, how long is the flight?” asked one minister.

  “They won’t be able to return home,” Gur said.

  “What about weather issues over there?” asked another.

  “It’s risky,” Gur admitted.

  “What if we find out they moved the hostages’ location overnight?” asked a third.

  “The mission will be a complete and utter failure,” said Rabin.

  And yet, these were the circumstances. The mission—the first in the IDF’s short history executed outside the Middle East—was unprecedented on that fact alone. Add to that the additional complexity and unknowable variables and it was, I admitted, “an IDF operation like never before.” But this was the price to be paid.

  At the end of a long debate, Rabin had the final word.

  “I am for the operation,” he announced, for the first time aloud. “I am not idealizing. On the contrary, I know what we are in for . . . The government must know that it is deciding to launch an operation where there could be a large number of casualties,” he said, echoing Gur’s assessment. “Nevertheless, I ask the government to approve the operation, though not with light of heart.”