Spring of Youth commanders, from right: Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, Shaul Ziv, Emanuel Shaked, Ehud Barak. (GPO)
Moshe Dayan accepted the plan but decided to enlarge it. We don’t land in Beirut every day, he said; this mission will be quite unique—so let’s get the best out of it and hit several enemy targets simultaneously. Chief of Staff Dado Elazar and Chief Paratroop Officer Colonel Mano Shaked decided that while the Sayeret dealt with the three PLO leaders, another team of paratroopers from Airborne Battalion 50 would attack the headquarters of Nayef Hawatmeh’s Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP), a Maoist, left-leaning terrorist organization. The Battalion 50 team would be led by lieutenant-colonel Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, a lanky, cool-headed officer decorated for “leadership and courage under fire” in a 1968 attack on a PLO base, code-named Operation Inferno.
The plan was that Lipkin’s paratroopers would kill the guards at the entrance of the terrorist headquarters on Khartoum Street and blow up the building with two hundred kilos of explosives (about 440 pounds), killing everybody inside. At the same time other paratrooper units would land outside Beirut and carry out smaller diversion operations.
The Sayeret and the Battalion 50 team would approach the Lebanese coast in navy missile boats and land on Beirut’s beach in Zodiac rubber dinghies. A small team of Mossad agents, who would fly to Beirut from several European cities, would be waiting for them on the beach. The agents would arrive a few days before the operation with false passports; they would rent cars, tour the city and get familiar with its streets and avenues. On the night of the mission they would drive the soldiers to their targets and back to the beach after the operation was over. Barak asked for three American cars into which he could squeeze his fourteen men.
The IDF computer supplied the mission’s code name: Spring of Youth.
The intensive training of the units started right away. Mano Shaked and Chief of Staff Elazar spent a lot of time with the fighters. Shaked personally wanted to make sure that his paratroopers were becoming familiar with Beirut’s streets. He would show one of them air photographs and maps, then place the man with his back to the maps and ask him, “What is on your right? What is on your left?” He believed that his boys should achieve a sense of orientation “with eyes closed” in the neighborhoods where they would operate.
The paratroopers and the Sayeret trained for landing from the sea, moving to their targets by foot or civilian cars, then retreating to the beach and departing aboard their Zodiacs. A model of the house that the Sayeret would attack was built of wood and fabric in a remote army base, and the commandos stormed the apartments using live ammo; they also trained in an abandoned police barracks in Samaria. The Battalion 50 team used the Lamed neighborhood in Tel Aviv as a “model” of Beirut. Some of the houses in that area were still in the building stage and could be used for training purposes without raising the neighbors’ suspicion.
Or so their commanders thought.
One night in March 1973, a Lamed resident, sitting by his window, saw some suspect characters sneak between the houses, and heard heavy footsteps and short calls. He alerted the police, who arrived promptly, and Mano Shaked had a lot of trouble convincing them to go. Another doubt was voiced by the owner of a men’s store on Disengoff Street. One after the other, young guys came to his store and each asked to buy a suit, one size larger than what he needed. The store owner did not know that these were paratroopers who were supposed to set out for Beirut wearing civilian suits and needed the extra size in order to conceal their weapons under their jackets. The merchant started asking questions, and the paratroopers persuaded him to forget what he heard, what he sold and who bought it.
But the civilians were not the only ones asking questions. One night, after hours of rehearsing the landing in the north of Tel Aviv, the weary paratroopers crouched on the beach, awaiting the rubber boats. One of them, Lieutenant Avida Shor, approached the chief of staff. “May I talk to you, sir?” In no other army in the world would a junior officer dare to approach the chief of staff, but Israel was different.
“Shoot!” Elazar said to the young man.
Avida, member of kibbutz Shoval, was one of the finest paratroop fighters. He had proven his courage in the Tripoli raid, when his unit had landed on a desert beach 133 miles beyond the Israeli border, attacked and blown up four terrorist bases and returned practically unscathed. Avida was also known for his high moral principles. He now drew a small notebook out of his pocket and said to Elazar, “We plan to blow up the PDFLP headquarters with two hundred kilos of explosives. But I made my own calculations and found out that we can bring down the house with only one hundred and twenty kilos.”
“What difference does this make?” General Elazar asked.
“The difference is,” Avida said forcefully, “that there is another building next to the PDFLP headquarters. It is a seven-story house, inhabited by scores of civilian families. I believe that we should use fewer explosives and avoid casualties among the civilians.” Then he added, “The terrorists should know that we were there and could carry out the mission, but that we would not harm women and children.”
There was a moment of silence. Finally Elazar nodded. “I’ll buy that,” he said. “One hundred and twenty kilos it will be.”
From April 1 to April 6, several tourists arrived in Beirut: Gilbert Rimbaud, Dieter Altnuder, Andrew Whichelaw, Charles Boussard, George Elder and Andrew Macy. Most of them carried British or Belgian passports and were later identified by foreign sources as Mossad agents. They checked into various hotels and rented cars from Avis and Lena Car. At least three of the cars were American-made, as Barak had requested: a Buick Skylark, a Plymouth and a Valiant.
On April 5, nine missile boats and “Dabur” fast patrol boats took to sea from Haifa port, carrying the Sayeret, the Battalion 50 team and Flotilla 13—the IDF Navy SEALs. Before departing, the soldiers were shown the latest aerial photographs of Beirut, the landing beach and the targeted buildings. The Sayeret fighters received photographs of the three terrorist leaders they had to kill. Some of the men were given silenced Beretta handguns. The targets were designated with women’s names: Aviva, Gila, Varda, Tzila and Judith.
After nightfall the boats approached Beirut; the city was bathed in light, its nightclubs and restaurants bustling with activity. At the same time, on the Israeli boats, navy soldiers covered the fighters with large, transparent plastic sleeves to prevent their civilian clothes and the makeup some of them were wearing from getting wet. They boarded twelve rubber boats, and shortly before midnight reached the two landing areas—Ramlet Al-Baida and Dove beaches. The beaches were deserted, and the last couple of lovers had left the sandy stretches. In total silence, like ghostly apparitions, the dinghies emerged from the black sea.
Barak’s Sayeret and Lipkin-Shahak’s team quietly disembarked. Simultaneously, other paratrooper teams prepared to land at some secondary targets. A Flotilla 13 team would land at the Al-Uzai neighborhood, and head for a sea-mines plant and a terrorist base. Another paratrooper team would attack and blow up a warehouse in Beirut port, while the paratrooper commando unit targeted a weapons workshop north of Sidon. The floating headquarters of the mission, headed by Mano Shaked, and a paratrooper rescue unit approached Beirut’s beach in two missile boats. Everything was in place.
On the beach, the rented cars and their Mossad drivers were waiting. The soldiers jumped from the Zodiacs and ran to the cars. One of the fighters in Barak’s team was Yoni Netanyahu. Barak felt he owed Yoni compensation, after having preferred his younger brother, Bibi, for the Sabena hostage mission. The Sayeret soldiers piled up in the American cars, which drove to Verdun Street and parked in the neighboring Ibn el Walid Street, close to the target building. The men got out and walked in small groups to the big house. The other three cars carried Lipkin-Shahak’s paratroopers to Ghana Street, and they surreptitiously moved toward the PDFLP headquarters at the neighboring Khartoum Street. By 1:29 A.M., both teams were
in place.
When the odd couple—Ehud Barak and Muki Betzer—reached the house on Verdun Street, they found out that the building’s gate was not locked and the guard wasn’t there; there would be no problem entering the building. The intelligence reports they had received specified that some security guards would be sitting in a gray Mercedes parked across the street, but there was no Mercedes in sight. The Sayeret teams entered the building and climbed the stairs to the terrorists’ apartments. Only Barak and Levin, who had remained outside, suddenly discovered that the security guards were sitting in the red Dauphine and engaged in a shooting fight with the man who got out of the car. The strident blare of the Dauphine’s horn, whichwas hit by a bullet, echoed in the sleeping neighborhood, and the surprise effect was lost.
Muki Betzer, Yoni Netanyahu and two other soldiers reached Abu Yussuf’s apartment and blew open the door with an explosive charge. For Betzer, the two seconds between the activating of the charge and its explosion seemed an eternity. The door blew off its hinges, and the commandos hurled themselves into the apartment. They stumbled upon Abu Yussuf’s sixteen-year-old son. “Where’s your father?” one of them asked in Arabic. The teenager stared in horror at the strangers wearing nylon stockings over their heads, then ran to his room and slipped down the drainpipe to a friend’s apartment on the fifth floor. Abu Yussuf’s remaining four children were in the apartment, but nobody touched them. Suddenly, a bedroom door opened before the soldiers and there was Black September’s chief, Abu Yussuf, in his pajamas. He jumped back into the bedroom and slammed the door. His wife, Maha, tried to get her husband’s handgun from the wardrobe. The fighters fired at the door, and Muki kicked it open. Several bursts of gunfire hit Abu Yussuf and Maha, who stood behind him. Yoni and another soldier shot him dead. Abu Yussuf, the man responsible for the Munich Massacre, lay dead on the floor.
Muki left the apartment and ran down the stairs, followed by his men.
In the other wing of the house the two other Sayeret teams approached the apartments of Adwan and Nasser. A few fighters, led by Amitai Nahmani, reached Adwan’s apartment and one of them kicked the door open. Adwan stood in front of them, a Kalashnikov submachine gun in his hands. He hesitated for a split second before diving behind a curtain, simultaneously firing at the Israelis and wounding one of them. A soldier who had climbed the water pipe outside the building jumped into the room. At that moment Nahmani shot Adwan. The soldiers searched the apartment, refraining from harming Adwan’s wife and two children; they stuffed files and documents into two suitcases and rushed out.
At the same moment the third team, led by Zvi Livne, blew up Kamal Nasser’s door. The soldiers broke into the bedroom, where two women lay in their beds. Nasser was not there; the men fired under the beds, searched the closet and finally found the PLO spokesman in the kitchen, where they shot him. As they came out, the door of the apartment across the landing suddenly opened. One of the men fired instinctively and mortally wounded an elderly Italian woman who had been awakened by the shooting.
In the meantime a firefight had erupted in the street. A base of the Lebanese gendarmerie was located at a nearby corner; minutes after the exchange of fire with the security guard started, a Land Rover jeep from the gendarmerie arrived at the scene. Barak and Levin fired at the approaching jeep and hit the driver. The jeep crashed into the cars parked in the street. All its passengers were hit by Barak and Levin, soon joined by the fighters who came out of the building. Another gendarmerie jeep rushed up the street. The soldiers opened intense fire and stopped it as well. Barak ordered his men to get into the cars—and then a third jeep appeared. It was also met by heavy fire and a grenade thrown by Betzer. The gendarmes jumped off the burning vehicle and escaped to the entrance of a neighboring house.
The soldiers ran to the cars, and Yoni was the last to jump into the third car. The entire operation had lasted half an hour. The cars sped toward the beach, but as they approached the beach promenade, two gendarmerie jeeps appeared in front of them, moving slowly and inspecting the area. The American cars crawled behind the Land Rovers in perfect order, till the jeeps turned the corner. The Sayeret team safely arrived at the beach.
At the same time, in another part of Beirut, Lipkin-Shahak’s paratroopers stealthily approached the headquarters of the PDFLP. They were fourteen, too—four details of two paratroopers each; Lipkin-Shahak; the unit physician; a Flotilla 13 fighter and the three drivers. The attack would start after two paratroopers would approach the building guards and kill them with silenced Berettas. The two paratroopers chosen for that task were Avida Shor—the one who had convinced Elazar to use fewer explosives—and his friend, Hagai Maayan from kibbutz Magen.
They strolled in a leisurely way up Khartoum Street and stopped by the entrance to the terrorists’ building to light their cigarettes. The guards stood there. “Excuse me,” Shor said to one of them in English. When the guards turned toward the Israelis, Shor and Maayan drew their handguns and shot them. As he fell down, one of the terrorists groaned, “Allah!”
Nobody noticed the two other guards sitting in a Fiat jeep armed with a “Dushka” Russian-made machine gun that was parked across the street. They suddenly opened fire and riddled the two paratroopers with bullets. Avida Shor was killed on the spot; Maayan was to succumb later. Yigal Pressler, another paratrooper who followed the two, was wounded. Lipkin called Shor and Maayan by radio but there was no answer. For Lipkin-Shahak, “this was a moment of real trouble. Shor doesn’t answer, Maayan lies wounded in the street, Igal is bleeding—and we still have to blow up the building!”
From porches, windows and even from the street, the terrorists opened heavy fire on the paratroopers with rifles, Kalashnikovs and machine guns. For Lipkin-Shahak this was “real hell.” He radioed to Mano Shaked that there was “a complication.”
“Do you need help?” Shaked asked.
“Not for the moment,” Lipkin-Shahak said. Shaked immediately launched the diversionary operations, in order to pin down the Lebanese Army forces that might try to interfere in the fighting. The rubber boats, laden with soldiers, darted toward the beaches. The attack was advanced by three minutes, but these were precious minutes.
In Khartoum Street, a full-scale battle was raging between the paratroopers and the terrorists. A soldier tried to haul the wounded Igal to safety; one of the terrorists thought that Igal was one of them and tried to drag him to a nearby courtyard. He let go only after a fierce struggle with Avishai, a Flotilla 13 frogman. The explosions and the bursts of gunfire were accompanied by the terrorists’ shouts: “Yahood! Yahood!” (“Jews!”) To the Israelis’ amazement, in the heat of the battle, while the street trembled with the fusillade, local civilians calmly kept going in and out of the neighboring buildings or stood on their porches and watched the combat with interest.
Under the heavy fire four paratroopers managed to enter the building lobby. Firing long bursts with their automatic weapons and throwing hand grenades, they repeatedly hit terrorists who came down the stairs. They now controlled the lobby. One of the paratroopers, Aharon Sabbag, suddenly noticed the lights on the elevator screen blinking in quick succession as the elevator descended to street level. He watched the numbers as if hypnotized. Four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . As the elevator stopped, he emptied his whole magazine into the cabin. Nobody came out alive.
At that moment the car carrying the explosives broke into the lobby, and the sappers rapidly placed the charges by four of the supporting columns. The soldiers set the fuses for a 180-second delay, then retreated, while their comrades covered them by firing RPGs, bazookas, eighty-one-millimeter mortar shells and tear gas grenades on their way out. The paratroopers loaded the body of Avida Shor, and the still breathing Hagai Maayan, into one of the cars. The driver ignored Lipkin-Shahak’s order to wait for the others and rushed down to the beach. The fighters tossed iron nails on the street, to delay any pursuing vehicles, then piled up in the two remaining cars and sped madly toward the beach.
The entire operation had lasted twenty-four minutes.
Israeli helicopters emerged over Ramlet Al-Baida beach and evacuated the wounded, while the other men boarded the rubber boats and headed toward the missile boats. The six Mossad agents neatly parked the cars on the beach, leaving the keys in the ignitions, then jumped into the Zodiacs. The car rental bills would be paid in a few days through American Express. In the meantime the diversionary operations of the paratroopers and Flotilla 13 were completed as well, and the soldiers returned to the mother ships from other beaches.
Amnon Lipkin-Shahak turned back—and was petrified. He felt “like Lot’s wife” from the Bible, as he saw a huge smoke mushroom rise over the PDFLP building.
In Haifa port Dayan and Elazar were waiting for the commandos. The mission was crowned with total success. The PDFLP headquarters had been destroyed and scores of high-ranking terrorists were buried beneath the ruins. Three of the top leaders of Fatah and Black September were dead. The world press described the IDF’s amazing feat on its front pages. In the days to come, following the deaths of Black September’s top leaders, the organization crumbled and then simply ceased to exist.
Mano Shaked, impressed with Lipkin-Shahak’s calm under fire, awarded him his second medal. Ehud Barak and three other fighters were also decorated.
No Mission Is Impossible Page 16