by Uzi Eilam
Schwimmer had come equipped with printed literature and a few sketches of the facility that Dr. Bussard and Dr, Shani had developed. The material did not provide a clear picture of the concept, but I thought it would be wrong to reject the project out of hand. Schwimmer was excited and enthusiastic, and Nimrodi followed Schwimmer’s lead, although he knew nothing about such technical and scientific issues. They wanted the IAEC to authorize the project and provide assistance in setting up a center for development in Israel. I promised to look into the idea and let them know. I called Professor Dostrovsky and asked him to head a committee to consider the idea of the ‘disposable’ Tokamak, being certain that Dostrovsky’s wisdom and experience would help us understand the essence of the proposal. Dostrovsky and I put together an expert committee composed of scientists, engineers, and economists who were to be provided with the material that Schwimmer and Nimrodi left with me. Dostrovsky and the scientists on the committee possessed a clear understanding of the Tokamak and the experiments that had been done on it, but they had extremely limited material on the Riggatron project itself. Many weeks passed before they received additional material from Dr. Bussard, in response to questions posed by the committee.
In the meantime, an unprecedented drive was underway in Israel to have the project approved. Science Minister Ne’eman threw himself into the undertaking and discussed it with Prof. Teller during his visit to Israel. Arik Sharon, who was still serving as defense minister, responded to the pressures of his friend Nimrodi and told Brigadier General (Res.) Aharon Beth Halachmi, who was then director-general of the defense ministry, to get involved with the project and to try to help. Finance Minister Yoram Aridor was besieged by pressure to allocate $100 million to Israel’s part in the project. Shimon Peres was in no need of persuasion by Al Schwimmer, whom he admired for his formative contribution to the establishment of IAI, to join the effort to start up the project. Peres was always mesmerized by grand ideas, and he quickly contacted his friend Jacques Attali, Mitterand’s advisor, to convince the French president and, in his wake, the French Atomic Energy Commission to take part in the project. Schwimmer, Nimrodi, and Elkana Gali all maintained that France would become a partner in the project and would cover one-third of its costs. However, a quick check with my friends at the CEA revealed that this was completely untrue: actually, France had decided not to join the project because its scientists had identified no significant breakthrough in the material provided by Dr. Bussard.
In May 1983 Yuval Ne’eman received a letter from Prof. Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb and a friend of Israel. Teller had met with Bussard and Schwimmer, who had explained the project to him. In his letter to Ne’eman, Teller encouraged Israel to consider taking part in the Riggatron project because it stood to make a contribution to the foundation of scientific knowledge and the prestige of the country. Out of a sincere interest for the good of Israel, Teller wisely refrained from asserting that Riggatron would provide an immediate solution to the world’s energy problems. However, he also did not minimize the project’s scientific value. As a result Ne’eman remained in support of the idea, but only in terms of scientific research. He maintained no overblown hopes of an immediate breakthrough in the construction of facilities for the production of hydrous energy. Finance Minister Aridor was under the unrelenting pressure of Nimrodi and Schwimmer, who were asking him to approve Israeli participation in the undertaking, including allocation of land for a factory and a project budget of $100 million. Aridor called on me first, to provide him with an explanation of the main idea of the project and to bring him up to speed on the assessment processes then underway. When he felt that he could no longer withstand the pressure and that he had to make a decision, he asked me to write him a paper that included a recommendation of how to proceed. I wrote up a three-page document that addressed the current status of the program, all the scientific opinions on the program, the French position, and the situation in the US, where, as we understood it, the relevant bodies had refrained from providing support. All in all, the document emphasized the scientific importance of researching the use of nuclear fusion. In the same breath, however, it concluded that the conditions were still not conducive to begin the manufacturing of industrial systems, and that the processes of development and establishing feasibility and economic profitability would still require a great deal of time. As expected, Aridor accepted the recommendations and Ne’eman did not appeal his decision. From their part, Nimrodi and Schwimmer disappeared just as suddenly as they had appeared.
Finishing up My Work at the IAEC
I had no intention of staying on as director-general of the IAEC forever. After more than seven years in the position, when Yitzhak Shamir became prime minister after the resignation of Menachem Begin, I felt the time had come for me to move on. I enjoyed working with Shamir during his year in office. He was a down-to-earth and direct man, and — in comparison to the widespread corruption Israeli governance has witnessed in recent years–was decisively non-corrupt. My sources had also informed me that Shamir had been pressured by people within his party to appoint one of their own in my stead, but Shamir neither mentioned this to me nor even hinted that I might be replaced. For me, these reports actually motivated me to take my time in concluding my work at the IAEC, just to make a point.
After the 1984 elections, when the Likud and Labor parties established a national unity government with a rotating prime ministry, Shimon Peres moved into the prime minister’s office. I felt it would not be right to resign at the beginning of his term, so I resolved to remain in my position a bit longer. One year after he came into office, I asked Peres for his blessing to move on. “Let me go,” I said. “Nine years is a long time, and we need to make room for a new director to take over.” Peres did not oppose my request, but he did ask that I recommend candidates to replace me.
A few weeks later I provided him with three names: Professor Yehoshua Jortner, Professor Haim Harari, and Dr. Yona Ettinger. Yehoshua Jortner was a professor at Tel Aviv University and an old friend, and Peres knew him from his days as minister of communication, when Jortner served as his chief scientist. Haim Harari of the Weizmann Institute was already a well-known personality in Israel and abroad. And Yona Ettinger had directed the Nahal Sorek Nuclear Research Center and had just returned from a two-year sabbatical in the US. Each of the candidates told me that if the prime minister offered him the job, he would take it.
Peres summoned Professor Jortner for a non-committal interview during which he was not asked to take the position. Instead, in 1986, he was appointed president of the Israeli Academy of Sciences, and during his 10 years serving in this capacity he made an important contribution to the sciences in Israel. Haim Harari was also not offered the position, and instead was selected to serve as the president of the Weizmann Institute, which he led to impressive research accomplishments in accordance with the highest international standards. Yona Ettinger was the sole remaining candidate, and he was appointed director-general of the IAEC only after Yitzhak Shamir began his term as prime minister.
12
The Administration for the Development of Weapons and Technological Infrastructure — MAFAT
The Early Days of MAFAT
I began thinking about my next career move while waiting for the prime minister to formally approve the appointment of the deputy director of the commission as my replacement. A political career did not seem appealing at the time so I began to consider business, feeling that my experience could be useful in the private sector.
I was then unexpectedly summoned for a personal meeting by Menachem Meron, director general of the defense ministry. Speaking in the name of Defense Minister Rabin, Meron asked me to accept the position of director of the Administration for the Development of Weapons and Technological Infrastructure, commonly known in Israel by its Hebrew acronym, MAFAT.
Meron told me what I already knew, that Dr. Ben-Tzion Naveh, the first director of MAFAT, had
resigned, taking an offer to become CEO of Scitex, a graphics imaging company founded by Efi Arazi, who gave up fascinating and lucrative positions in the American defense industry to create one of the very first Israeli civilian start-ups.
I greatly appreciated Arazi’s talents, creativity and captivating optimism. After giving up quarreling with the defense bureaucracy, Arazi directed all his efforts to developing advanced imaging systems for the civilian market. A serial entrepreneur at heart, Arazi knew that Scitex needed a manager to stabilize the company and oversee operations, budgets and finances, which never interested him. The Scitex board chose Ben-Tzion Naveh to fill the slot.
“The minister is asking you to take the position,” emphasized Director-General Meron. I hesitated because the job seemed too similar to the one I had already held in the R&D Unit despite the change in title, and asked to discuss the matter with Rabin personally. In a friendly and relaxed meeting Rabin emphasized the difference between the new position and my old job of director of R&D. MAFAT was established by Arik Sharon during his term as defense minister. The original idea was to amalgamate the defense ministry’s Production and Purchasing Administration and the IDF’s R&D Unit into one agency that would handle the whole range of weapons procurement from R&D through the acquisition of systems off the assembly lines. Another of Sharon’s innovations as minister was establishing a planning body within the defense ministry to serve as a counterbalance to the IDF’s planning branch. This body was known as the National Security Unit and was headed by Avraham Tamir, the first chief of the IDF planning branch and an admirer and close associate of Arik Sharon. The merger of the R&D Unit and the Production and Purchasing Administration was ultimately unsuccessful due to the determined opposition of the defense ministry’s workers union, which gave its full backing to the director of the Production and Purchasing Administration who feared the merger would cost him his job. Sharon still did not understand that in the defense ministry, with one of the strongest unions in the country, he could not act with the decisive bravado of the 1950s border raids.
Eventually a framework that incorporated a virtually unchanged R&D Unit and an expanded Technological Infrastructure Unit that had been extracted from the R&D Unit was established, incorporating a Foreign Relations Unit and foundations to accommodate new large program administrations. Rabin updated me on the current situation, and emphasized that I would work with him directly in the capacity of Chief Scientist and general defense advisor. He also proposed that I be on loan from the prime minister’s office to the defense ministry, and promised to have the government approve a resolution ensuring that my personal rank of director general be carried over to the new position in the defense ministry. I knew I would be unable to refuse Yitzhak Rabin, and by the end of the meeting I accepted the position.
I was pleased by the opportunity to have private meetings with Rabin. Based on my familiarity with his working style, I knew that his door and his heart would always be open to me. Deep down I also wanted to complete my term as director of R&D, which had been cut short by my early departure.
More than a decade had passed since I left the R&D Unit, but I met no problems when I took over at the helm of MAFAT. Many people, particularly from the civilian side of the R&D Unit, were still there and were happy to have me back. Despite the changed name and expanded function I was familiar with the principles of answering to two masters — the defense ministry and the IDF. My renewed membership in the General Staff Working Group was also old hat. The only new thing was that many of my former colleagues had aged 10 years, which reminded me that I was also that much older.
During my years at the Atomic Energy Commission I had not been privy to the difficulties and complex challenges stemming from the IDF’s longterm presence in Lebanon. The IDF had been in Lebanon since the first Lebanon war (1982), which Prime Minister Begin adamantly referred to as “Operation Peace in the Galilee.” I insisted on visiting southern Lebanon to acquire a first-hand understanding of how the IDF and the SLA (the Christian South Lebanon Army that was allied with Israel) were addressing the threats to their positions and mobile forces in the area just across the border, which we referred to as the “buffer zone” between Israel and Lebanon. My visits to southern Lebanon started at the Fatima Gate, the main passage through the border fence that Israel referred to as the “Good Fence” (in reference to the freedom with which some inhabitants of southern Lebanon were permitted to cross into Israel to work in the Jewish settlements of the Galilee). The dangers were made clear by the requirement to wear body armor vests and we travelled in civilian high-powered Mercedes limousines to conceal the presence senior Israeli officers who were such an attractive target for snipers and anti-tank missiles.
I recalled the terrifying sensation of driving fast along the narrow roads of southern Lebanon from the days when I headed the lesson-generation team during the Lebanon war. We darted from one defended location to another as quickly as possible as our officer escort reported each leg of the journey in code over his radio. In such situations, I would inevitably start to feel queasy and start asking myself what I was doing there, putting myself in unnecessary danger after having been in so many battles. But every time we reached a military post manned by IDF and SLA soldiers I knew that the danger was worthwhile. It was simply impossible to understand the situation along the front in southern Lebanon without venturing there. My first visit concluded at SLA headquarters with a sumptuous Lebanese meal followed by a mad race back home during which we came under light arms sniper fire.
As early as 1986 we realized that a terrorist organization known as Hezbollah was emerging alongside the Shiite militia Amal. Even when the first Lebanon war was still in its planning stages in 1982, my impression was that it had not been the subject of sufficient strategic thought. It is fair to say that Defense Minister Sharon fought the war as if it was another reprisal operation like those he had carried out in the 1950s, except on a larger scale. Throughout his illustrious career, Sharon proved to be a brilliant tactician but a weak strategist. CGS Rafael Eitan, who also began his ascent to the senior echelons of the IDF from the post of company commander in the 890th paratroop battalion, also suffered from a lack of strategic thinking in contrast to his extraordinary personal courage. The fact that we did not seriously consider the importance of the Shiites of southern Lebanon and that we did not develop our relationship with the Amal movement was another result of the strategic blindness that characterized Israel’s overall implementation of “Operation Peace in the Galilee.” The growth of Hezbollah, which initially did not appear threatening, quickly grew largely because of Israel’s long-term presence in Lebanon. It was part of the same entanglement and should have been considered soberly and strategically.
The IDF had been in Lebanon for more than three years before the defense research and development community recognized the need to change the weapons development paradigm for the next war. Slowly but surely, and as a result of the growing number and variety of attacks on IDF forces in Lebanon, MAFAT came to understand that the ‘next war’ had already begun. We therefore began to focus our work on “low intensity war” — at the time an innovative concept that referred to a new type of fighting that differed significantly from full-scale wars between armies like all of Israel’s wars until that time.
While defining the threats in Lebanon and searching for possible solutions, we were surprised by the fact that by and large the threats were not really new. We had already encountered primitive and sophisticated roadside bombs in the Jordan Valley in the early 1970s during the War of Attrition. The car bombs that Hezbollah began to use against IDF convoys travelling in southern Lebanon were also nothing new. What troubled me most at the time, and what I still find so disquieting today, is our lack of collective memory. Our behavior is comparable to the biblical passage “But Jeshurun grew fat and kicked; filled with food he became heavy and plump.” (Deuteronomy 32:15). When threats arise on one front after a period of ca
lm on another front, it is necessary to start the learning process from scratch as if we have learned nothing before. My past experience as a battalion commander, a deputy brigade commander, and commander of the Jordan Valley Brigade during the War of Attrition, served me well, and enabled me to gain a good understanding of the threats facing Israel in Lebanon and how we needed to change Israel’s paradigm of weapons development.
The new approach that evolved called for unveiling some of the capabilities which until that point we had been keeping under wraps until the next “big war“, and starting to use them in Israel’s low intensity war in Lebanon and the war against terrorist groups.
After a short period of harmonious work together, and after he was convinced that I had a good command of affairs at MAFAT, Brigadier General Yossi Ben-Hanan, the director of R&D and my second in command, asked for my help in his promotion. His next move, as he saw it, was to be appointed as the chief officer of the armored corps. I promised Yossi to assist and he eventually won the post. Even before he left his post at R&D a fierce competition began to replace him.
Eleven candidates battled over the prestigious position of director of R&D, which offered diverse fields of interest, senior status within the defense establishment, extraordinary leverage for a future in the defense industries, and promotion to the rank of brigadier general.