90 Minutes at Entebbe

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90 Minutes at Entebbe Page 6

by William Stevenson


  The Jackal, known also as Carlos, identified as Xlich Ramirez Sanchez, was trained in the tradition of the assassin sent by the Soviet Union to kill Stalin’s personal enemy, Trotsky. There was a slim chance of catching him in Entebbe, and on July 2 The Jackal’s file was hastily assembled from intelligence drawn from Europe and the Americas. He was connected with the killing of two Paris police officers, the kidnapping of delegates to the Vienna conference of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and other acts of violence. His companion and technical adviser was, of course, the German now watching over the hostages at Entebbe.

  “It would be useful to take the hijackers alive,” commented an intelligence officer, reading The Jackal’s file.

  Defense Minister Peres shook his head doubtfully. “The priority is the rescue of the hostages. However—”

  A scheme to send General Moshe Dayan to Uganda pierced the screen designed to filter out the crazier proposals. “It reached the task force because someone saw Dayan as the man to get the terrorist leaders, another saw him back in the role he performed long ago with Nasser of Egypt, and yet another thought it would flatter President Amin.” Prime Minister Rabin commented later, “I saw nothing but humiliation and the loss of Dayan.”

  Dayan, the soldier with the black eye patch who seemed to symbolize Israel to the world outside, was considered first as a possible answer to the question: Can we get Hadad or any other senior terrorist alive?

  There was a faint chance, because “Big Daddy” Amin was introducing Dayan’s name repeatedly in the telephone conversations between himself and “Borka” Bar-Lev. At one stage Dayan was asked to phone the African dictator. His reply: “If he wants to talk, make it face to face.”

  That was the way the idea grew. The chief of staff had told all units that the channels of communication to the top were wide open: “We’ll give any plan a chance.”

  Dayan, since he was military commander of Jerusalem more than a quarter century ago, had developed a reputation for dealing diplomatically with his enemies when he was not taking them by surprise on the battlefield.

  Prime Minister Rabin’s greatest fear was that if Dayan got wind of the plan to send him into the hostage camp, his love of danger and action would make him virtually unstoppable. A dashing rescue mission might suit his temperament, but it would encourage Israel’s foreign critics to accuse her of reckless military impulses.

  “Still I had to analyze the proposal and prepare to argue against it,” said Rabin. “Every scheme that reached the task force became the subject of attack and defense, as if we had all the time in the world for devil’s advocates and the adversary system.

  “If Dayan went, he was likely to be killed. If he dazzled Amin instead, the president would maneuver him into the same act of humiliation as the British general sent by the queen, who was obliged to kneel publicly as the price of saving lives during another of Amin’s adventures.”

  Plans were laid for getting an emissary to Entebbe nonetheless. The time was not wasted. The flight details could serve as well for a commando raid. And as it happened, Dayan knew all about the scheme and was packed to go. But he knew that more was at stake than his life. Uganda’s secret police would turn over such a prize to the terrorists, and Dayan had just studied the declaration from Lebanon that confirmed the eagerness of the PFLP to keep world attention: “Flight 139 was taken in order to remind the world of our intention to expel Zionists so that we may replace Israel with a ‘socialist democracy.’ The Air France plane is the price of French military intervention in Lebanon designed to divert attention from our cause.”

  This was the political arm speaking for the guerrillas in Uganda, and Dayan had no intention of walking into a trap. Instead, doing his best not to seem an interfering old soldier who should stick to his archaeological digging into the past, he suggested that identikits and profiles of PFLP guerrilla chiefs be shared out among leaders of commando groups earmarked for any military action. This had been done. “In that case, if you want my opinion,” said Dayan, “I’m 150 percent in favor of military action.” And as new information reached Israel through the French Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST), Scotland Yard, the CIA and FBI, the security branch of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and more was smuggled out of Uganda by released hostages and Israel’s informants within “Big Daddy” Amin’s government, commando groups were given photographs and identikit details to memorize. They were to proceed on the basis that action would be required. .

  There were still those praying for the capture alive of those like The Jackal who knew the supporters of the new terrorist agencies, and where they functioned, and how. The biggest prize would be Dr. Wadi Hadad, identified as the author of the Entebbe demands to Jerusalem. Hadad had been described by Israeli intelligence as “being outlawed, behaves like a 19th-century Russian anarchist who derives almost mystical satisfaction from knowing—with others of his organization—that he is cut off from the rest of the world and thus obeys rules and standards of his (and their) own making.”

  9

  DR. HADAD: PLANNER OF TERROR

  Fresh facts hardened the conviction of Defense Minister Peres that military action must be taken.

  “If Israel gives way,” he said during the critical hours between Thursday and Friday, “I fear a tremendous catastrophe for this country. And when we discuss the lives of the hostages and the danger to their lives, I want you to know I regard them as if they were Israeli soldiers in a war.”

  He spoke in measured tones under the portrait of David Ben-Gurion, and the soldiers listening said later it was as if they were in the presence of that “stubborn, rebellious, tempestuous spirit,” as Peres himself had described it when Ben-Gurion died in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War. “His was the spirit of the Jewish people,” Peres had said then. And for the young commanders streaming through the defense minister’s office with operational plans that ranged from kidnapping President Amin to more sedate methods of releasing the hostages, it seemed that here was someone who would remove the bitter taste of that last conflict and erase the memory of dangerous hesitations and near-fatal delays in the response to the sudden massive attacks that had almost overwhelmed Israel only three years before.

  For the soldiers saw time running out fast. Commanders like Dan Shomron recognized that the campaigns against Israel had shifted to worldwide terrorism in the hope that the nation might become an outlaw—pushed outside by a new law of the jungle in which other free nations feared for their own survival and put their safety above all moral considerations.

  The soldiers had no fear of striking into the heart of Africa. Airmen reported no problems in landing by night on a blacked-out airfield under heavy and hostile guard. The navy had ships equipped to provide electronic protection.

  But world opinion? The casualties in a rescue mission might be very high. Peres had experts making estimates now on the basis of alternate plans and variants. What the world refused to believe was that terrorism was war, conducted without declarations, aimed at the structure of traditional societies built painfully by trial and error.

  Peres and the rest of the task force knew fairly accurately who their real enemies were in Uganda. A report laid before Peres was explicit. A terrorist headquarters had been set up in Somalia, which had joined the Arab League against Israel three years earlier. Uganda was the first country that extended a helping hand to hijackers, and success would encourage neighboring Somalia and others. Out of Somalia had come Dr. Wadi Hadad.

  Dr. Hadad was as shadowy a figure as The Jackal, and the time was approaching when Israel’s intelligence agencies would have to disclose how much they knew about him.

  On July 11, 1970, Dr. Wadi Hadad was saved from death by a miracle. The fact that he survived was to influence the course of Palestinian terrorism throughout the world. The story was summarized by the Lebanese Security Service: -

  A rocket attack on Dr. Hadad’s home on July 11 is entirely similar to t
he bombardment of the Palestine Liberation Organization offices in September 1969.

  This time the target was the home of one of the senior men responsible for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, headed by Dr. George Habash—the home of Dr. Wadi Elias Hadad, a 40-year-old Palestinian. He is considered to be the number two man in the PFLP and a founder of the Arab Nationalist Movement.

  The Arab freedom fighter Leila Khaled, who took part in the hijacking of a TWA plane to Damascus in August 1969, was a guest in Dr. Hadad’s house at the time of the bombardment, but was unharmed.

  At 0214 hours a loud explosion was heard in Dr. Hadad’s house, which is on the third floor on the Katarji Building in Almala District—Muhi Aldin Alhayat Street.

  Six Katyusha rockets of Soviet make were launched from an apartment on the fifth floor of a building which faces the Katarji Building. The rockets were launched from a distance of approximately one hundred meters; three of them penetrated the salon and bedroom of Dr. Hadad’s apartment. Two rockets did not work because of technical malfunction. Fire broke out in Dr. Hadad’s apartment. Doors and windows in the apartment, and of cars parked in the street, were damaged.

  Dr. Hadad was slightly injured. His wife, Sarnia Hadad, and his son Hagi (eight years old) suffered burns and were taken for treatment to the American University Hospital.

  In the apartment from which the rockets were fired was a standard wardrobe, a simple bed, and some cheap furniture. Surgical gloves were also found in the apartment. The assumption is that the criminal used them to assemble the rockets without leaving fingerprints.

  A man representing himself as Ahmad Batzrat, holding an Iranian passport, arrived in Beirut three months ago and rented the apartment from which the rockets were fired. He bought modest furniture and drove a beige Volkswagen. The suspect had written an English sentence by the launching assembly: “Made by Fatah, 1970.”

  Dr. Hadad manages considerable activity in the PFLP and devotes himself completely to the cause; he no longer practices medicine. He is a graduate of the American University, and is very close to Dr. Habash. He is always on the move, and never stays anywhere permanently.

  The information department of the PFLP has published a communique on the incident in which they accuse the Israeli enemy and American intelligence circles and agents of the assassination attempt. Dr. Hadad is quoted as saying that the bombardment of his home was the work of Zionist and American organizations.

  The suspect Ahmad Batzrat is a dark-skinned young man in his thirties, thin with a mustache, and wears black glasses; he represented himself as not having a command of Arabic, and avoided meeting people.

  The investigation is trying to establish how the assassin succeeded in discovering the home of Dr. Wadi Hadad and how he knew that Leila Khaled was there at night, particularly since Dr. Hadad had been in France and only returned to Beirut two days before.

  The investigation revealed that the terrorist came from Europe, and that he traveled by Lufthansa and Air France, as evidenced by the labels on his valises that remained in the rented apartment.

  The two valises that were found had false bottoms and sides. The assumption is that the assassin used them to get the rockets through Beirut Airport.

  It became clear that Ahmad Batzrat was the chief agent among a number who were assigned to bombard Dr. Wadi Hadad’s home and kill him, and that he did not act alone in carrying out this mission, which required the work of more than one man. He was apparently chosen to be the overt operative of the gang.

  Yasir Arafat condemned this act and said that this criminal operation was a link in a chain of conspiracy woven by the counterrevolution in order to eliminate Palestinian resistance. Arafat added that this team was preceded by many others, and especially by the firing of rockets at the Palestine Liberation Organization offices in Beirut, and the attempt to assassinate Haled Yasrami, also in Beirut.

  The agent could have brought the rockets through Beirut Airport, or across the frontier, or by buying them on the local black market. In each case, the agent would need a local base, an inside net which would carry out each mission, observation posts, planning, renting of an apartment, and preparation of the equipment. The agent is the expert who comes when everything is ready, aims the rockets at the target, sets the time mechanism, and leaves.

  It is almost certain that there is a network depending on a few hired local agents. Uncovering these, of course, calls for an intelligence and police effort at a high scientific level, but first there is a need for deterrent force.

  It is clear that the man called Ahmad Rauf came from West Germany and returned there, as did Ahmad Batzrat, whose papers left in the apartment are West German documents; the airports of West Germany share some of the responsibility, as do the German security mechanisms who for the second time running have allowed fake passports to pass through their airports going and coming.

  The great diligence with which the conspirators covered their tracks suggests that the proofs left behind are planted evidence. The implication is that the rockets were not brought from abroad but procured in Lebanon. The evidence to prove the contrary was deliberately fabricated.

  Hadad has not hesitated to use aircraft hijacking as a means to finance his terror activities. The classic example of this was the hijacking to Aden of a Lufthansa plane in February 1972, which netted a ransom payment of $5 million for its release.

  Intelligence reported that “all strings lead to Dr. Wadi Hadad, who up till now has served as operations officer of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.”

  At first West German security thought that gangsters were involved in the hijacking of the Jumbo; or, because the operation was so professionally executed, that it was a “brilliant tactic of the Israeli Shin Beth,” with the intention of discrediting the Palestinians.

  A review of Hadad’s career, and the burdens placed on Israel when Flight 139 was pirated to Uganda, provoked an outburst from the transport minister, Gad Yaakobi, whose ministry dealt with the security of travelers. During the crisis he was disturbed by evidence that other nations preferred to shy from taking precautions and collaborating in the frustration of terrorism. Too many governments were afraid of offending Arab, African, and Asian sensibilities. “Yet nobody hijacks aircraft to Communist countries,” Yaakobi observed dryly.

  “With Flight 139 we paid the bill and took the whole responsibility,” he said. “Israel suffered from the neglect of others from start to finish.”

  Because Israel felt it was fighting international terrorism alone, and because of the feeling that many Western governments choose for political reasons to play down the formidable nature of aerial pirates, Israel on Friday, July 2, made available further information on Dr. Wadi Hadad. It was a preparatory move to disarm those who would criticize Israel if the rescue mission to Entebbe failed.

  Dr. Hadad’s followers run the splinter PFLP, which hijacked Flight 139. They seek to extend terror against Israel beyond the frontiers of the Middle East through tight cooperation with non-Arab underground organizations. . . .

  The members of this faction engage in very little ideological propaganda or information diffusion. They concentrate on showpiece actions. Numerically they are very few, and their advantage lies in administrative capabilities, in their operational experience, and in utilization of international contacts.

  Wadi Hadad, 46, is Greek Orthodox. He was apparently born in Safad, but spent his youth in Jerusalem. His father, Elias Nasralla, was one of the most famous Arab teachers in Palestine at the end of the Ottoman Empire and during the British mandate.

  Hadad, the son, studied medicine in Beirut’s American University together with Dr. George Habash. The two of them started the Arab Nationalist Movement, an organization that set up a chain of branches throughout the Arab world and established links with President Nasser.

  With the founding of the PFLP at the end of 1967, Hadad quickly became the main operations figure. In 1968 he devised the hijacking of an El A
l airliner to Algeria—the first in a chain of hijackings. He discovered and encouraged Leila Khaled (who was careful not to mention him in her memoirs).

  Dr. Hadad began his underground activity in 1963 in Jordan, when he opened (with his friend George Habash) an eye clinic in Amman which served as a cover for the Arab Nationalist Movement.

  In the clinic was a small press where they printed handbills in which medicines dispensed to needy Palestinians were wrapped. After the Six Day War the Arab Nationalist Movement became the PFLP, led by Habash with Hadad as his operations officer.

  When the PFLP headquarters transferred to Beirut, Dr. Hadad’s apartment not far from the main al-Hamra Street became the operational center of the organization. It was here that Hadad met with his operatives and planned the first strikes of the PFLP outside Israel.

  Dr. Hadad is the man who thought of transferring the terror war beyond the frontiers of Israel. The first operation was an attempt to hit David Ben-Gurion during a transit stop in Denmark. Afterward he began to plan aircraft hijackings. Under his guiding hand, an El Al plane was taken to Algeria and a TWA aircraft to Damascus (with Leila Khaled in command of the hijackers) ; Hadad’s planning is also evident in the operation—the biggest and most sophisticated to date—of hijacking simultaneously three aircraft.

  Dr. Hadad is a handsome man who includes women, some of them his mistresses, in all his operations. Thus it was with Muna Saudi, a beautiful painter, who took part in his first operation in Denmark. Thus it was with Leila Khaled, and again with Leila’s successor, the beautiful Iraqi Katie Thomas, who led the hijacking of a Japanese Jumbo, and was killed when a grenade exploded in the plane.

 

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