Raid on the Sun(46)

SUNDAY, JUNE 7, 1981

1601 HOURS: T-MINUS 00:00

ETZION AIR FORCE BASE, OCCUPIED SINAI PENINSULA

The ordnance crew technician checked his watch, then walked in front of the F-16, making sure Raz could see him from the cockpit, then, bending deeply at the knees, ducked under the plane’s wing for a final look at both MK-84 gravity bombs. Each was secure in its release clips, fastened just in front of its tail fins, which served to stabilize the bomb and keep it from wobbling as it was lobbed forward in its downward arc to the target. The clips had to be sturdy enough to hold the two-thousand-pound bombs, which would be bounced up and down, along with the wings, during the rocky ride hundreds of miles through hot, unstable desert air. When the technician was sure the clips were secured properly, he pulled the metal safety pin from each bomb. He was amazed at how close to the ground the overloaded plane was. The intake manifold was barely twelve inches off the tarmac. Holding pins in his left hand as he ducked back out from under the port wing, careful to avoid the scalding-hot exhaust from the plane’s tailpipe, the tech signaled “all clear” to Raz. He then jogged off the tarmac, where he joined the other ordnance techs, each of whom had performed the exact same maneuver on the F-16s. He did a last-minute check of the runway for any gravel or small obstruction that could be sucked into the manifold and destroy the engine. Theirs would be the final inspections. No sooner had the techs cleared the asphalt than the first two fighters were already barreling down the runway, picking up speed. From now on, the mission was beyond the immediate help of Etzion.





CHAPTER 5



WHEELS-UP




A man’s character is his fate.

—HERACLITUS

Heading back after the security meeting at the prime minister’s office that March, Ivry’s driver took the main road out of Jerusalem, down the winding brown mountain pass dotted with green Jerusalem pines that thrived in the cooler air of the elevation—a phenomenon that surprised first-time visitors to Israel expecting to see nothing but desert and wadis. Deep in thought, Ivry stared out the car window as they passed the charred, red-rusted ghosts of vintage lorries and jeeps junked by the side of the road, silent sentries that lay where they had been shelled nearly three decades before in 1948—monuments to the first Israeli soldiers who had tried to fight their way up the mountainside under murderous artillery fire from Jordan’s crack Legionnaire Brigade in their doomed attempt to capture the ancient Hebrew capital. That attack had failed in the end.

Ivry’s could not.

But within weeks the mission was threatened yet again. Israel’s neighbor on its northern border, Lebanon, had been unraveling into an anarchic feudal battlefield of warring strongmen and radical ethnic Sunni, Shia, Maronite, Greek Orthodox, and Christian Druze factions all protecting their own business interests and territories—and all kept in check by neighboring Syria, which considered the country its de facto client state. Adding to the chaos, PLO leader Yasser Arafat and twenty thousand PLO fighters had moved into Beirut after being chased out of Jordan. Begin’s government, pressured by right-wing hard-liners, began funneling support to Lebanon’s aristocratic leader Bashir Gemayel and the militant Christian Phalangists, hoping moderate Maronites would unite the country under a more benevolent and Israeli-friendly stewardship. The Sunnis, backed by Syria, rose up immediately, sparking civil war. The Phalangists appealed to Israel for support.

In February, Syria deployed SAM batteries into the Bekaa Valley to support thirty thousand troops, well within range of the Israeli border. Israel demanded that Syria pull out the SAMs or the IAF would take them out itself. Skirmishes followed. U.S. special ambassador Philip Habib, a Lebanese by birth, negotiated a fragile peace that lasted until April. It was then that Syria refused to pull back its batteries from the Bekáa, and Begin laid down an ultimatum to either evacuate the SAMs or Israel would bomb them. Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, scheduled to meet with Begin at Sharm al-Sheikh as part of the Camp David agreement, was anxious to use the May meeting to diffuse the Syrian-Israeli conflict. Unfortunately, the day of the historic meeting was May 10, the day of the Osirak attack.

Israel, with a bank account of goodwill in the U.S., well-organized and powerful lobbying organizations, and a strong moral argument, figured it might get away with an attack on Osirak or the Bekáa. But no one in the government believed it could get away with attacking both. The prime minister called another emergency cabinet meeting. Once again Ivry saw his mission on the cutting block. Begin was forced to choose between two evils—Syrian missiles or Iraqi nukes. In the end Begin decided there was no choice, really. They would deal with Lebanon later.