A spontaneous cheer broke out among the hundred former hostages as the Air France Jumbo touched down on French soil at 2.10 a.m. Their nightmare was finally over.
Twenty minutes earlier, as the descent began, they had been advised over the intercom to be careful what they said and to whom: to their families and friends they were ‘to appear as reassuring as possible’; to the authorities they were to ‘tell everything they could remember in the minutest detail’; and to the press they were to say nothing that might ‘make the Palestinians or Ugandans angry’ and that might lead to ‘a deterioration of conditions’ for the hostages still at Entebbe, or ‘put their lives in danger’.
Once on the ground they were told that their families and a high-level delegation were waiting to greet them in the airport’s VIP suite. What they were not expecting, at two in the morning, was to have to run the gauntlet of the world’s press as they left the plane. Amid popping flashbulbs and shouted questions, they were ushered by a line of police into the temporary refuge of the VIP suite where most of the forty-nine French nationals enjoyed a tearful reunion with their families: Claude Moufflet, for example, was met by his wife, his parents, his brother and his sister-in-law. (Later that day he posted the ‘urgent’ letter that had been entrusted to him at Athens the previous Sunday.) British-born Isabella Poignon and her French husband Gérard left at once for their home in Versailles where Gérard’s mother was caring for their eighteen-month-old daughter Emma. On hearing of Isabella’s release, her mother Dr Kathleen Murray said from her home in Middlesex: ‘I’m so relieved that I can’t stop smiling–it has been ghastly these last four days.’
Waiting to greet Michel Cojot, much to his surprise, was his ‘future ex-wife’ and they ‘embraced almost as warmly as a real couple’. They were still locked together when a soberly dressed official from the Ministry of the Interior tapped Cojot on the shoulder and asked if he could speak to him urgently and in private. Cojot was delighted. ‘France needs me,’ he told himself, before arranging to meet the official at his home a couple of hours later.
The official never appeared. Instead Cojot was closely questioned at work that Friday by Amiram Levine and agents from the Mossad who had been pointed in his direction by other former hostages. He told the Israelis everything he knew about the layout of the Old Terminal and the number, habits and descriptions of the terrorists; and, as before, the information was quickly phoned back to Israel. A lot of what he said was simply confirmation of what the Israelis already knew from the testimony of other hostages; yet, at the same time, it was more up to date and more precise. There would most likely be, he explained, at least four terrorists guarding the hostages at any time, day or night, while the others slept in the VVIP room at the end of the building. Exactly how many in which room he could not say: he had left before the remaining hostages had been reunited in the big hall and, as far as he was aware, they were still in separate rooms.
For the non-French nationals, there was no tearful reunion at Orly. Instead they were met by consular officials and given details of hotel accommodation and onward flights. Most of the Americans were put up at the Hôtel Concorde La Fayette, near the Porte Maillot in Paris’s 17th Arrondissement, though Sanford Freedman chose to join his lover Carole Anne Taylor and her son at the Hôtel Le Littré in the city centre. Not all were impressed by their welcome. After all they had been through, the Rabinowitzes were expecting the waiting US diplomats to be sympathetic and helpful. They were anything but. ‘We were expecting a hero’s welcome,’ remembered Peter. ‘But instead their attitude was, “You’ve made me get up at two o’clock in the morning, so don’t expect any of my time tomorrow.” They were essentially hostile to us.’
It went from bad to worse when one US diplomat told the Rabinowitzes that, since their old passports had been confiscated by the terrorists, they would have to buy new ones at ‘full price, but good for only three months’.
Peter then asked: ‘Have you contacted our families?’
‘No, that’s your responsibility.’
‘Could we charge the cost of the calls to the Embassy?’ queried Nancy.
‘Do that and we’ll break your arm.’
After ‘five days at gunpoint’ this was hardly, as the Rabinowitzes put it later, a ‘diplomatic joke’.
Later that day, after they had got some rest, a selection of the Americans were debriefed in their hotels by US officials–probably from the CIA–and the composite report was distributed to, among others, the US Embassy in Tel Aviv.
They claimed that, as far as they were aware, the only Americans still in Entebbe were the young stockbroker and his wife, both from New York. They did not know why they had been kept back, though one of them suggested that ‘their flaunting of their Jewishness might have alienated some of the Arabs in the commandos’. One or two thought their retention might simply have been ‘an oversight’. As for Janet Almog, not one of them had been ‘aware of her presence’. She was probably held back, they thought, because she was ‘seated with the Israelis’ and had ‘Israeli documentation’. The dual nationals, they noted, had ‘made no attempts to destroy or discard the evidence of their national citizenship’.
They explained that the four hijackers were ‘two Germans and two rather inexperienced young Arabs’. The German male was the ‘obvious leader’, though the woman was ‘often the most virulent’. They were, thought some of the Americans, ‘sincere revolutionaries who were not working merely for the PFLP… but also to free their colleagues imprisoned in Germany whom they appeared to know personally’.
Once they had reached Entebbe the hijackers were joined by ‘four PLO’ who assumed ‘principal command’, though some Americans thought ‘Basil’ continued to be the ‘General Manager’ of the group and ‘was able to make a major input into the decisions as to who should be released’. The four ‘Arab leaders’, on the other hand, were ‘more authoritative’ and ‘much tougher’ than the original hijackers. They were ‘clearly’ anti-semitic–unlike the Germans, who insisted they were only anti-Zionist–and ‘took a certain sadistic pleasure in forcing the old Jewish passengers to plead to be among those sent to France’. Two of the group were tall (one weighing over 200 pounds) with black moustaches. Another was short and heavy-set, with a ‘comical face’, as though he was wearing the stereotyped big nose/hornrimmed glasses mask, and ‘appeared to be the most influential’. He was thought to have connections with Peru, and spoke Spanish as well as French and English.
As for Idi Amin, all the Americans found him ‘repellent and duplicitous in his treatment of the prisoners’. They were convinced that he knew Uganda was the plane’s destination ‘before it landed’ and that he had probably been ‘aware of the plot before the hijacking’. He had let the terrorists bring in ‘more lethal weapons’ and the Ugandan troops were ‘clearly there as a back-up force’. It would have been easy for the Ugandans, had they so wished, to disarm or kill the terrorists. But they had chosen not to. Amin, moreover, had made clear his support for the terrorists’ aims. He had told the hostages that ‘if their governments wished to see them alive, they must cooperate in meeting the just demands of the hijackers’.
The most controversial aspect of the composite report, however, was the section that dealt with American suspicions that three of the released hostages–two Arab men and a Canadian woman–had collaborated with the terrorists. The female, said the report, had ‘left [Orly] airport quickly (with an American) without checking in’ with Canadian Embassy officials and had ‘not been staying at the hotel where reservations had been made’ for her. These were, the authors of the report hastened to add, ‘merely the impressions of some of the passengers, speculation induced by their surprise that even the lax security at the Athens Airport had permitted the introduction of substantial arms’.
Asked about the intentions of the hijackers, the Americans said they did not think they intended a ‘general killing of the Israelis or the young French passengers and crew’, but that they might start by shooting one or two Israelis first ‘to emphasize the seriousness of their demands’. Overall the terrorists’ optimism was justified ‘since they held all the cards and eventually even Israel would be forced to yield’.
Amin had warned the hostages that if an assault was launched from outside, or if there was an uprising from within, the terrorists would blow up the building. The Americans did not believe this, and thought the boxes allegedly filled with dynamite were ‘really designed just to block off a door’. In any event, ‘the chances of rescue or escape are nil’. The Israelis knew this, and while their distress had increased as two planeloads of passengers had left, they had ‘remained stoic’. Whether this would continue the Americans could not say. A few more days might ‘cause some of the old and infirm to break’.
Yoni Netanyahu waved good night to Ehud Barak and climbed the stairs to his apartment. Inside he was surprised to find Bruria asleep; she had been scheduled to work on a night flight that had clearly been cancelled.
Letting his clothes fall in a heap, he got into bed without showering. He was exhausted, but also intensely excited. This was the moment he had been waiting for all his life: to lead–albeit with Ehud Barak looking over his shoulder–Israel’s finest soldiers against its most implacable foe. If their mission was successful, and he had no doubt on that score, it would do much to erase the growing tension between himself and some of his men. They would finally understand that his methods were the right ones, and that his leadership in battle was second to none. Then, and only then, would he be happy to relinquish command of the Unit to another man, convinced that he had done his bit.
Yoni quickly fell asleep. But by 5.30 a.m. he was awake again. Watched by a bleary-eyed Bruria, he rose from the bed, dressed and left for the base without saying a word.
Only later did Bruria find on the kitchen table the four-page letter that Yoni had written to her in the Sinai but never posted. It moved Bruria to tears, particularly the closing passage: ‘I know I’m not with you enough… but I trust you, me, both of us to manage living our youth to the full–you, to live your youth and your life, and I my life and the last flicker of my youth. We’ll cope.’
It was still dark outside as Maggy rose from her mattress in the Old Terminal building and went to take the shower she had postponed a day earlier. Returning after her wash she discovered Jean-Jacques Mimouni reading a favourite journal of hers called Science et Vie. So she sat down next to him and together they discussed an article on sub-Saharan Africa that mentioned Uganda.
All around them people were beginning to stir, though dawn was still some way off. Excited by the prospect of their imminent release, few had slept well. ‘Everybody’s possessions are packed,’ noted Moshe Peretz in his diary, ‘and we await notification [of] when we move off.’
At 6 a.m., Shimon Peres woke from a fitful sleep with severe toothache. He had felt it coming on all week, but had tried to ignore it because he did not have time to go to the dentist. Now, with no option, he called Dr Langer and fixed an appointment for later in the morning. He then headed in to his office at the Kirya where a very welcome piece of news awaited him: Kenya had agreed to let the rescue planes ‘land on its soil in the event of difficulties during the flight’.
Peres was delighted that one of the major obstacles to the operation–how to get the planes safely back to Israel–had been overcome. He hurried across to Motta Gur’s office to deliver the news in person, and saw with satisfaction the glint in the chief of staff’s eyes. They both agreed that a solution to the refuelling problem made it possible to launch the operation on Saturday night. This was ‘much to be preferred, since the ultimatum would not have elapsed by then and negotiations would still be in progress’. As for the danger that the Kenyans might leak news of the plan, neither was worried. They knew that the Kenyans’ policy ‘was to continue denying that they held any of the terrorists demanded by the hijackers’–which technically was true, though they could not admit why–and that ‘their interest was in a successful operation by Israel’.
With Gur slowly warming to the idea of the Hercules rescue mission–and as the plan was ‘rapidly becoming operational’–Peres felt it was the right time to inform Yitzhak Rabin of its existence. So he called the Prime Minister’s Office and told Rabin that ‘at this moment, speaking personally rather than officially, I am convinced that we have a real military option available’.
Having repeated his view that releasing prisoners ‘would gravely demoralize the public at home and seriously weaken Israel’s standing and prestige abroad’, he described the plan in broad terms.
Rabin seemed unimpressed. ‘If it fails,’ he said, ‘the blow to the IDF and to Israel itself will be very great. Moreover it seems to me that the plan is flawed at its outset. What if the first plane is identified and attacked before the rest of the force has time to land and deploy? They won’t stand a chance. Anyway, I’m bound by the Cabinet’s decision.’
Peres knew that this last comment was not strictly true: technically the prime minister did need the support of his Cabinet before authorizing such a risky military operation; but in reality it was hard to believe that any minister would withhold his approval if the prime minister, defense minister and chief of staff were all supportive of a military strike. His toughest hurdle, Peres knew, was getting both Rabin and Gur on board. ‘You should know, prime minister,’ responded Peres, ‘that Benny Peled is confident that the first plane can land without arousing suspicions.’
Rabin grunted, as if that was typical of Peled.
Realizing that Rabin still needed some convincing–and that the person most likely to do that was the chief of staff–Peres said he would bring Gur to the Prime Minister’s Office at 10.30 a.m. As he put down the phone, his aching tooth reminded him of his dental appointment. He left at once for Dr Langer’s surgery. Naturally there was no mention of an upcoming military operation until the dentist, during a pause in his treatment, asked an open-mouthed Peres if he knew why his soldier son had had his weekend leave cancelled. The defense minister shook his head.
The hostages were surprised and delighted to see President Idi Amin enter the Old Terminal hall at seven in the morning. He was wearing a civilian suit and his cowboy hat, and was accompanied, once again, by his fifth wife Sarah ‘in a beautiful green dress’ and his young son Gamal Abdel Nasser Jwami. On his last two visits he had announced the release of hostages, and few doubted that was the reason for his return.
‘Good morning,’ said Amin in English, his expression stern. ‘I can confirm that yesterday your government agreed to negotiate with the PFLP, and that was the reason that more hostages were released. But since then Israel has not accepted the PFLP’s demands and this puts you in grave danger. This building is surrounded by TNT and will be blown up if the demands are not met.’
This was not what the English-speaking hostages expected to hear, and many murmured their dissent. Amin raised his hand for silence. ‘This morning I leave for the conference of the Organization of African Unity, of which I am president, in Mauritius. While I am there I will keep in touch with the various negotiators and will continue to do everything I can to secure your final release. To assist with that process I ask that you write a letter to your government, urging it to accept the PFLP’s demands, and that you have it ready for the one o’clock broadcast on Radio Uganda. I will come and see you on my return on Saturday. Goodbye.’
As Amin turned to leave, many of the hostages applauded, though not all had understood his words. The non-English-speaking Israelis had to wait for Ilan Hartuv to translate his words into Hebrew, while the French hostages in a similar predicament went to the pilot Michel Bacos for enlightenment. Once all had been updated, a huge depression fell over the group. They had been led to believe the night before that Israel had agreed to release the forty prisoners. Now they realized that this was not the case and that the negotiations were ongoing. The danger for them now was that the two sides would fail to reach an agreement.
With this in mind, some of the hostages argued vehemently that they should follow Amin’s suggestion and write a letter to the Israeli government; others disagreed. The split, noted Moshe Peretz, was between ‘most of the family men, and the crew members, except for the captain’, who were in favour; and the younger Israeli hostages, who were against.
For Ilan Hartuv, the Israelis’ unofficial spokesman, the decision whether or not to write the letter was an agonizing one. He and his fellow committee members–Yitzhak David, Uzi Davidson, Baruch Gross and Akiva Laxer–argued about it back and forth, and eventually decided to write a watered-down version that American-born Janet Almog translated into English. But for a long time they delayed giving it to the terrorists, in order both to miss the one o’clock broadcast and to show, as David put it, ‘that our spirit is not broken’. It was Bacos who eventually persuaded them to hand it over. ‘Look,’ he told Hartuv, ‘you have to give them the letter. They are very agitated and I don’t know what they’ll do.’
So together they went outside and gave the letter to Böse and the Peruvian. Addressed to the government of Israel, it read: ‘We, all the Israelis hijacked near Athens and flown to Entebbe airport, personally thank H[is] E[xecellency] Field Marshal Idi Amin, President of the Republic of Uganda, for his personal concerns for our safety and comfort and for his many visits to our group. The President informed us of his unflinching efforts to obtain our release. We, therefore, ask the Government to react positively to the effort to obtain the safe release and return of all our persons held here.’
Having read the letter, the Peruvian shook his head: ‘It’s not what we asked you to do.’
‘Look,’ replied Hartuv. ‘Our government knows Israelis and how they think. They know we would never ask them to release prisoners unless we had a gun to our foreheads. It’s the best we can do.’
The Peruvian shrugged and took the letter. It was not broadcast to the world, via Radio Kampala, until 5 p.m. the following day.
Sergeant Amir Ofer climbed out of the car with his pack, thanked the driver for the lift and approached the gates of the Unit’s base. He could see all the usual signs of an impending operation: tight security at the entrance and lots of activity beyond. But what hardened his suspicions that Entebbe was the target was the mock-up of the Old Terminal near the perimeter fence.
Inside the base he received the final confirmation from his team commander, Lieutenant Amon Peled, who had arrived the night before. ‘There’s going to be an operation to free the hostages at Entebbe,’ Peled told him. ‘The Unit will spearhead it, and our team will be the tip of the spearhead.’
Most of the Unit’s soldiers would have been both honoured and excited to hear that they had been selected for such a vital job. Not Ofer. He felt his chest constrict and a shiver of fear go through him. He knew only too well how dangerous it was to be among the first to enter a room full of hostages, and felt cursed that such a job had come up so close to his discharge. But he kept his thoughts to himself and merely nodded.
Leaving Peled, he went to recover his ammo vest that he had given to a young recruit in anticipation of his discharge, and then to the quartermaster’s hut to replenish his supplies. Other soldiers were swarming round the counter, and when it came to Ofer’s turn he asked for all the usual equipment. But as he was holding a helicopter landing light it suddenly dawned on him that no helicopter could rescue him from Entebbe, which was practically at ‘the end of the earth’. He handed the light back and carried the rest of his kit to a nearby barracks to prepare his ammo vest before the briefings and drills began.
Yoni Netanyahu, meanwhile, was giving the ‘warning orders’ for the operation to the Unit’s officers, including one or two like Peled who had missed the late-night briefing. The only major change from the plan agreed with Betser was that Netanyahu would now command one of the break-in teams. On hearing this, Betser and others tried to convince their commander to remain outside and let his subordinates storm the terminal. But Netanyahu was insistent: and the reason was that Ehud Barak, who had been given overall command of the assault, intended to position his command post in front of the Old Terminal. Knowing this, Netanyahu felt that if he did not take part in the assault he would be, in effect, redundant.
Once breakfast had been cleared away, Brigitte Kuhlmann entered the large hall and announced in English: ‘Could everyone take their mattresses and their belongings and move to the back wall of the room so that the Ugandan staff can sweep and polish. Do it now!’
Hebrew and French translations followed, but not quickly or accurately enough for everyone to understand, and as people dithered Kuhlmann lost her temper. ‘I asked you to go over there!’ she shouted, waving her pistol at the back wall, ‘now move!’
Hostages bumped into each other, and stumbled over their possessions, as they hastened to obey. Once most of the room had been cleared, three airport workers entered with brooms and proceeded to sweep the floor, while another pushed a large polishing machine. Some optimists saw the clear-up as a sign that they would soon be leaving; but most were resigned to staying a few days longer.
At 10 a.m. Wilfried Böse took Bacos and Lemoine, the pilot and flight engineer, out to the Airbus that was still standing on the apron in front of the Old Terminal. Once in the plane they were told to start the engines and taxi it closer to the building–for what purpose Böse did not explain. Having done this, Bacos and Lemoine were given permission to collect from the cabins any discarded books and magazines to distribute to the hostages who, five days in to their their Uganda stay, were running out of things to read. Jean-Jacques Mimouni was delighted to recover his copy of Atlas magazine, and turned to a report on the Poitou-Charentes region of France with a particularly beautiful photo of two peasants in front of a table filled with wine, country bread and Camembert cheese. When any of the non-kosher-eating Jews saw the picture, they were literally salivating.
Outside, the yellow bus was making regular trips to and from the plane, prompting Agnès to speculate that it was being cleaned for their departure. Certainly the terrorists in general, and the Palestinians in particular, seemed remarkably relaxed, as if the negotiations were nearing a satisfactory conclusion.
A stiff breeze was coming off the lake and providing some relief for the hostages sweltering in the large hall. It was also causing the Airbus’s engines to whine as the blades were spun round. ‘Why are the engines still on?’ Jaber asked Captain Bacos.
The Frenchman raised his eyebrows. ‘They’re not on. It’s the wind.’
Once his tooth had been fixed, Shimon Peres went to speak to Justice Minister Chaim Zadok. He reckoned that two members of the six-man ministerial committee–Yigal Allon and Gad Yaacobi–were likely to support his call for a military strike, and that one more would give him an outright majority. He tried to convince Zadok by saying that Zionism and Israeli sovereignty would be forfeit if the hostages were not rescued.
Zadok shook his head. ‘The question is not about that. It’s whether there is a plan for a military rescue–one with a high probability of success.’
‘There is such a plan,’ replied Peres.
Having explained in more detail, Peres left Zadok knowing he had ‘a firm ally’.
He next called a meeting in his office of Gur, Adam, Peled, Gazit and their senior aides, and Yitzhak Hofi, chief of the Mossad, to discuss the rescue. ‘What should our troops do,’ Gur asked Peres, ‘if they encounter resistance from Ugandan forces at Entebbe Airport?’
‘Shoot to kill,’ was the instant response.
Gur nodded in satisfaction. ‘That will make the detailed planning of the operation much easier.’
Next they discussed the news that Amin had left for the meeting of the OAU in Mauritius and would not be back in Uganda until Saturday evening at the earliest, and possibly Sunday. ‘In that case,’ suggested one of those present, ‘we should appoint one of our soldiers as a stand-in. We just need to find one of suitable height and girth, dress him up as Amin and black his face. The Unit is already planning to take a limousine so that the Ugandans think it contains a senior officer. Why not put our Amin “double” in it?’
‘Because,’ said another, ‘if he returns from Mauritius before our planes arrive the Ugandans are bound to smell a rat.’
Gur then summarized the flight plan and the various stages of the ground operation. ‘The planes will take off from Sharm el-Sheikh, the closest point, late on Saturday afternoon. They’ll fly straight down the middle of the Red Sea, only turning right when they reach Ethiopia, which does not have radar that can track high-flying aircraft. Finally they’ll approach Entebbe from over Lake Victoria, the route used by most commercial airlines coming in to land. The rescue will take a maximum of fourteen minutes: two for the lead Hercules to taxi to a halt; two more for the troops and vehicles to disembark, shortly after which the other planes would start to land; five minutes to reach the terminal building; and another five to complete the rescue.’
‘It sounds possible,’ said Peres. ‘Do you still have any concerns, Motta?’
‘I have a couple. First we need to examine what the level of risk to the hostages is. We still don’t know exactly where all the hostages are being held–whether they’ve been reunited in the big hall or split between the two rooms–and where the terrorists are stationed. We need more intelligence about this. I also need to know that the Hercules crews can land on an unfamiliar airstrip in darkness. I’ve asked Benny to arrange a demonstration for me tonight,’ said Gur, nodding towards Peled. ‘I’ll be in the cockpit and if I don’t come back you’ll know the answer.’
‘What about the air defences at Entebbe?’ asked Peres. ‘You were worried about them before?’
‘We don’t think there are any,’ said Hofi, ‘but we’ll know for sure when one of my men has taken photos of the airport from a light plane. He’s on his way to Nairobi where he’ll hire a light aircraft for the job. We should have the pictures by tomorrow morning.’
‘Good. Well, if that’s everything, I think it’s time for Motta to present the plan in detail to the prime minister.’
Peres took with him to this vital meeting Gur, Hofi and their aides. Greeting them in the conference room of the Prime Minister’s Office were Rabin and Freuka Poran. Rabin spoke first, bringing them up to date on General Ze’evi’s ongoing efforts in Paris to conduct negotiations with the hijackers. Then Gur outlined the rescue plan, with Rabin ‘interjecting questions about conditions on the ground’.
It was, said Rabin, the first operational plan that he ‘could consider as reasonably feasible’. But there were still, he felt, two unanswered questions: ‘How was the assault force to reach its objective by surprise? And how would it take over the area held by the terrorists and the Ugandan troops before they had time to kill the hostages?’
Initially, he had worried about Amin’s warning that the Old Terminal was rigged with explosives. But various reports from the released hijackers–including the latest from the Americans and Cojot–had caused him to doubt that was the case. Perhaps the clincher was the conviction that Amin would never have quartered some of his troops on the first floor of the Old Terminal, above the two halls where the hostages were being held, if the building really had been mined with explosives.
After an hour, the meeting was broadened to include Zadok and the other members of the ministerial committee. As Gur expounded his proposal anew, he kept stressing the ‘supreme importance of maintaining total secrecy’. When he had finished, Yigal Allon asked: ‘So it’s a flight without aerial defence?’
‘Yes,’ responded Rabin, ‘without. The problem, as you rightly point out, is interception en route.’
‘The plan does have an advantage,’ interjected Peres, ‘and that’s the element of surprise. They won’t know we’re coming.’
‘That’s as may be, but it’s still the riskiest operation we’ve known,’ said Rabin, adding that the final decision would rest with the full Cabinet, and that all ministers would be told to stay in Tel Aviv pending a meeting of the secret ministerial defense committee on Saturday. That way the Orthodox ministers, who did not drive on the Sabbath, would remain within walking distance of the government offices in Tel Aviv.
‘There are,’ concluded Rabin, ‘more than eighty Israelis trapped in that terminal. Yet the intelligence we possess is far from adequate. I am in favour of all the preparations going ahead, but I propose we still see this thing as subsidiary to ongoing negotiations.’ He paused, deep in thought, before continuing: ‘If only I could get them to release the women and children. That would change everything.’
Chapman Pincher, the debonair Daily Express investigative journalist and security expert, was writing in the study of his Surrey farmhouse when the telephone rang. It was a Mossad contact based in Paris. ‘Would you be interested,’ said the agent, ‘in an exclusive on what the released hostages told us about their experiences at Entebbe?’
‘Certainly. Tell me more.’
The agent did, concentrating chiefly on the hostages’ conviction that Amin was working hand in glove with the terrorists. He particularly stressed their claims that Amin had let other terrorists join the original hijackers, had given the terrorists extra weapons, including sub-machine guns, and had told Ugandan troops to help guard the hostages so that the hijackers could sleep. ‘I suggest,’ added the contact, ‘that you give it maximum publicity.’
‘I will,’ promised Pincher, and no sooner had he put down the phone than he began to write the article for publication in Saturday’s Daily Express.
After a while he stopped. Something was not right. He had detected from the tone of his informant that it was vital this information was published as quickly as possible: but why? He mulled it over for a while, and eventually decided it was part of a typical Israeli PSYOPS exercise–the dissemination of selected information to influence public opinion–against the hijack and all associated with it. He was, in any event, ‘completely confident about the accuracy of the statements’ because, having known the contact for many years, he had never yet been given false information.
He continued writing.
‘I actually noticed two of the hijackers when we were in the departure lounge at Athens,’ said George Good to the junior British diplomat who was driving him and his friend Tony Russell (the Yachtsman) to the airport for their flight back to London. ‘They were the German girl and the taller of the two Palestinians. He had long fair hair and looked a bit like Mick Jagger. The reason I remember him is because of his wild look.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ asked the diplomat.
‘Well, he had wild staring eyes as if he was high on drugs. He didn’t look right. Which makes me think that the most effective form of security at airports would be for trained observers simply to study the looks and deportment of passengers waiting to board international flights.’
‘Did the hijackers have explosives?’
‘I think so,’ said Russell. ‘They certainly attached what looked to me to be sticks of gelignite to the doors of the aeroplane at Benghazi.’
‘What was the low point of the week?’
‘It was when we were separated into two groups: Israelis and the rest. You could have cut the tension with a knife, and to reassure us one of the terrorists said there would be freedom of movement between the two rooms. That never happened. Access between the two rooms was blocked except for those Israelis who wanted to use the toilet.’
‘Any moments of light relief?’ inquired the diplomat.
George Good smiled. ‘A few. Like the time Idi Amin’s Stetson was blown from his head by the downdraught from his own helicopter. But that same downdraught also blew clothes that the hostages had hung out to dry on to the roof of the building.’
They pulled up in front of Departures. ‘It’s been quite an adventure for you hasn’t it?’ said the diplomat.
‘Yes,’ replied Russell. ‘But our families wouldn’t agree. My wife Edith has been through hell, and it’s not over for the relatives of the hostages still in Uganda.’
‘It wasn’t so bad for me,’ interjected Good. ‘I’m a widower and my children are grown up. I’ve had a good life so I wasn’t too worried.’
Once back at the British Embassy–the beautiful eighteenth-century Hôtel de Charost on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, the former home of Napoleon Bonaparte’s sister Pauline–the diplomat sent a report of this conversation to the Foreign Office in London. The only really useful information about explosives was almost certainly shared with the Israelis.
Just after 11 a.m., the excited chatter died away as Ehud Barak, Yoni Netanyahu and intelligence officer Captain Avi Livneh entered the packed briefing room at the Unit’s base. The temperature was in the high 80s and, despite ceiling fans and open windows, most of the waiting soldiers were perspiring freely. Barak and Netanyahu took their seats in the front row, next to Muki Betser, while Livneh climbed the steps to the dais where a diagram of the airport and a schematic drawing of the various halls in and entrances to the Old Terminal had been set up on a stand.
Livneh began by summarizing the available intelligence: ‘102 mostly Israeli hostages are being held in the Old Terminal at Entebbe Airport, either in the large hall, here,’ he said, tapping the schematic diagram with a stick, ‘or the smaller hall next door. Possibly both, but we suspect the Israelis have been put back with the others in the large hall. Seven to ten terrorists–the reports vary–armed with pistols and sub-machine guns, are taking turns to guard the hostages, patrolling from time to time inside the halls. The terrorists say they’ve booby-trapped the buildings with explosives, but we’ve just received intelligence from some of the released hostages in Paris that the explosives are fake.’
Livneh went on to say there were reports of sixty to a hundred armed Ugandan paratroopers guarding the terminal and working hand in hand with the terrorists. They were typically deployed thirty yards from the building, and spaced ten yards apart, but at nighttime most were barracked on the first floor of the building. At least once the Ugandans had been seen on the roof of the building.
Livneh finished his briefing by explaining the layout of this part of the airport: the adjacent control tower that dominated the surrounding area; the military base 200 yards to the east that contained one or two battalions of infantry and a squadron of MiG fighters; and a road that connected the north of the airport to the town of Entebbe, itself the location of Amin’s presidential palace and another garrison of troops.
As Livneh left the dais, Barak took his place. He had scarcely begun his briefing on the assault of the Old Terminal when a young duty officer entered the room. ‘I’m sorry, colonel,’ said the officer, ‘but I’ve just been speaking to General Adam. He wants you to report immediately to his office in the Kirya.’
‘What, now? Didn’t you tell him I was in a briefing?’
‘I did, sir, but he was very insistent. He wants you to hand over to Colonel Netanyahu and leave at once for Tel Aviv.’
Barak sighed and turned to Netanyahu. ‘Yoni, you’ll have to take over. I’ll be back when I’ve sorted this out.’
Netanyahu nodded, trying to hide his delight. Something told him Barak would not be returning.
Half an hour later, Barak walked into Kuti Adam’s office in the Kirya. ‘I’m sorry, Ehud,’ said Adam ruefully, ‘but there’s been a change of plan. We’re taking you out of the assault phase of the operation and putting Yoni in charge. Please call to let him know.’
Barak was stunned. ‘Why?’
‘We have another job for you that’s just as important. In two hours we want you on a flight to Nairobi. Your task when you get there is twofold: firstly, to guarantee that it will be possible for the planes to refuel in Kenya on their way back; and secondly to make contingency plans in case the operation fails, because it can fail.’
Back at the Unit’s base, Yoni was wrapping up the briefing. ‘Some of the assault teams,’ he said, ‘will be given bullhorns [megaphones] so they can give clear instructions to the hostages–particularly to tell them in the first moments to lie down and stay still. The hostages won’t necessarily respond as they might in a similar situation in Israel, where they’d expect the army to rescue them. At Entebbe they’ll be taken completely by surprise and their behaviour will be unpredictable. The bullhorns will help with this, and also after the shooting when some might panic and try to flee the building. Any questions?’
One soldier raised his hand. ‘Sir, you said the APCs would not move to support us until they were all on the ground. Wouldn’t it make sense for the first pair to move towards the Old Terminal as soon as they’re disembarked? That way we’ll have more firepower sooner.’
‘Good point. We’ll look into it. Anything else?’
‘Sir, what if we can’t take off from Entebbe, for whatever reason? What do we do then?’
Yoni smiled. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll have a huge amount of firepower, and if all else fails, we’ll use our vehicles and commandeer any others we manage to find, and cut our way through to Kenya overland. We’ll be taking maps that show the possible routes to the Kenyan border.’
‘Yes,’ quipped another soldier, ‘and we’ll be the only ones with enough vehicles to get that far. The paratroopers and Golani will have to stay behind, as usual.’
As the laughing subsided, Netanyahu asked: ‘Is that it?’
A stern-faced veteran raised his hand. ‘Sir, it seems to me that we’re breaking all the rules of combat with this operation. There might be as many as ten armed terrorists in the large hall when we arrive. That’s more than the six soldiers assigned to the hall’s two entrances. We’ll be outnumbered, as well as exposed and vulnerable. And because of the hostages we can’t throw grenades or use bursts of fire. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘Maybe not,’ said Netanyahu, ‘but we have no option. The first Hercules can only take so many vehicles and fighters. We’ll have to read and react to the battle as it unfolds. And don’t forget: we have the element of surprise and Shaul [Mofaz]’s APCs will be with us in no time. If everyone does his job, we won’t have a problem. It can be done.’
The usual lunch was delivered to the Old Terminal building at 1 p.m.–meat in sauce, rice, potatoes, a little bit of bread and half a banana–and was enlivened a little by the donation of olives and harissa from two of the hostages. Jean-Jacques Mimouni was prominent among the team of servers, making sure, as Moshe Peretz put it, ‘that no one is left without his portion, and that no one is deprived’. Exuding good spirits, the young French-Israeli had also been handing out tea and coffee, while demanding ‘nothing for himself’.
Dora Bloch, one of the grateful recipients, had no sooner eaten a mouthful of her meal than she began to cough uncontrollably.
‘What is it, mother?’ asked her son, Ilan Hartuv.
She pointed to her throat, as if something was stuck there. Hartuv sighed. Once before her doctor had removed a piece of meat that was lodged in a cavity in her throat. Now it had happened again. He thumped her on the back to no effect. Next he called over an Israeli doctor named Hirsch who tried and failed to remove it with his finger. Finally Yitzhak David’s wife Hadassa, a trained nurse, took Mrs Bloch to the toilet and tried to make her throw up. Nothing worked.
So Hartuv asked the nearest terrorist, Brigitte Kuhlmann, to fetch Dr Ayad, the Egyptian medic provided by Idi Amin. Ayad asked what was wrong and between coughs Mrs Bloch, who had grown up in Egypt, was able to explain in Arabic. Worried that she might choke in her sleep, Ayad persuaded the terrorists that she needed hospital treatment.
‘I want to go with her,’ said her son.
‘No, absolutely not!’ shouted Kuhlmann. ‘What an idiot you are to think we’ll let you both leave. She will go and you will stay here.’
So Dora Bloch, accompanied by Ayad and the Ugandan nurse, was taken by ambulance to the 1,800-bed New Mulago Hospital in northern Kampala, the largest and best equipped in the country. Though sorry that her son could not accompany her, Mrs Bloch was relieved to escape from the Old Terminal where the living conditions were increasingly smelly, uncomfortable and dangerous.
Health Minister Henry Kyemba was out of town and did not learn of her admittance to Mulago until the evening, by which time the piece of meat had been ‘easily removed by one of the surgeons in a minor operation’. Kyemba told the hospital director to let Mrs Bloch rest, and he would return to Kampala to visit her the following morning.
Yoni Netanyahu was waiting with members of his staff outside Dan Shomron’s office, sited on a base a couple of miles from the Unit’s, when he was called to the phone. He returned soon afterwards, a big smile on his face. ‘Ehud’s gone,’ he announced. ‘He’s cleared out. I’m in command of the assault.’
Moments later a relieved and excited Netanyahu was summoned into Shomron’s office to present his refined plan. It was approved without amendment. One of the last-minute changes that Netanyahu had made to the plan concerned his own role. With Barak out of the picture, he would direct affairs and not take part in the actual assault. That job would be left, as originally agreed, to Betser. Netanyahu and the command group, meanwhile, would station themselves outside the central entrance to the Old Terminal. From there, Netanyahu would be able to control the movement of all his troops, as well as enter the large hall if necessary.
By the time Netanyahu returned to his own base, the stretch Mercedes–such a vital component of the assault plan–had arrived. But apart from having three rows of seats, it was far from ideal. Muki Betser had stipulated a black Mercedes in good condition, similar to the type used by the military in Uganda. This one was old, white and falling apart. ‘It needs a lot of work,’ was the verdict of forty-two-year-old Master Sergeant Danny Dagan, an expert mechanic who would drive one of the APCs.
‘Whatever it needs,’ Betser told him. ‘But just make sure it works for the ride from the plane to the terminal. Put in a second ignition, just in case. And paint it black.’
Dagan began work on the car, but the extensive repairs–which included realigning the alternator, replacing the tyres, patching up the fuel tank, making a dummy number plate and fixing a little Ugandan flag to the bonnet–took up the rest of the day and most of the night. It did not help that the work was repeatedly interrupted as the car was taken away for various practice runs. All in all, it was hardly the ideal preparation for a major operation and was an example of the constant penny-pinching that all armies–even special forces–are faced with.
Meanwhile the men selected for the mission were drilled incessantly. ‘When the Ugandan soldiers see the Mercedes,’ Betser told them, ‘they are going to assume it’s an officer’s. They won’t try to stop a senior officer. As far as they are concerned, we will look just like a Ugandan brigadier and his escort. They are not going to shoot at us–at least not until we start shooting. And even if they aren’t sure about our identity, the dilemma will make them hesitate long enough for us to reach the terminal. But, if for any reason they do start shooting, let the back-up crews handle it. We concentrate on the break-in, eliminating the terrorists, and then defending the hostages until the time comes to get them on the plane.’
At 2 p.m., the eighteen members of the full Cabinet filed into Yitzhak Rabin’s conference room in the Kirya. The purpose of the meeting was not to inform them about a potential military plan–it was too soon for that–but rather to discuss the ongoing negotiations and to make sure the ministers stayed the night in Tel Aviv.
Rabin began by mentioning his conversation with opposition leader Menachem Begin of a day earlier. ‘Begin,’ he said, ‘advised the government not to get entangled in the pre-negotiation proviso that we won’t commit to the number of prisoners or their names. He was worried that we might be forced into another humiliating climbdown. My response was that I agreed with his proposal. We should all be aware that from the moment they separated the hostages into Israeli and non-Israeli, releasing the latter, it became Israel’s problem. No one will stand with us now. The decision will be ours, and ours alone. Frankly, the rest of the world couldn’t give a damn. At best, they’ll be sympathetic–or not. We have, as a result, no one to turn to except ourselves, and the decision isn’t going to be made by anyone but the Israeli government.’
Pausing, Rabin looked round the table, waiting for a comment. When none came, he continued: ‘We’re conducting negotiations regarding the release of the prisoners, but I’ve told our negotiators not to start arguing about numbers. Nor have we told them to exclude terrorists with blood on their hands. I wouldn’t want to see this whole thing fail.’
When it was Peres’s turn to speak, he gave the first hint that a military option was being considered. ‘Starting tomorrow,’ he told the room, ‘we only have half a day left, and I recommend that all ministers be prepared to stay here for a while. Tomorrow is going to be a dramatic day.’
With the news that the two released hostages, Tony Russell and George Good, had arrived safely back in Britain that morning on a flight from Paris, officials at the Foreign Office in King Charles Street withdrew their gaze from Uganda. As far as they knew, no more British passport holders were being held in Entebbe. It was, henceforth, an Israeli problem.
As the Foreign Secretary Tony Crosland was busy for most of the day in Cabinet committees and at the House of Commons, junior ministers and senior officials took on the responsibility of tying up the loose ends. It was, therefore, Peter Rosling, head of the East African Department, who instructed the acting high commissioner at Kampala, James Horrocks, to thank ‘Amin on behalf of HMG for his success securing the release of the British subjects from the hands of the hijackers’. He should add, said Rosling, ‘that HMG very much hope that [Amin’s] efforts to secure the speedy and safe release of the remaining hostages and the aircraft will be equally successful’.
On a more practical level, David Goodall of the West European Department informed senior colleagues that if Helmut Schmidt’s West German government chose to assist the Israelis by releasing some of its six prisoners–three of whom, all Baader–Meinhof terrorists, were being held in West Berlin–it made sense for Britain, as the current chair of the three-power Allied Kommandatura set up to govern the western half of the city in 1945, to agree in principle to provide air transport if necessary. The precedent for this was just a year earlier, during a similar hostage crisis at the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in Stockholm, when Britain had offered a Royal Air Force plane in West Berlin. ‘In the event,’ wrote Goodall, ‘the Federal Government decided not to accede to the terrorists’ demands, and the aircraft was not needed.’ This time, however, it might be different.
Officially, the spokesman of the FRG government was still insisting that all the countries concerned ‘should reach a common position’. Yet German press reports on 2 July were predicting that the Emergency Unit–a committee of senior ministers and opposition politicians set up a few days earlier to handle the crisis–was about to release the six German terrorists. Certainly the prisoners themselves believed that to be the case, and two in West Berlin ‘were said to have packed their bags and cleaned out their cells’.
In truth, Schmidt and his colleagues in the Emergency Unit were following the Israeli lead. On 1 July, Yigal Allon had assured the German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher that the Israelis would bring the Entebbe crisis to an end ‘on their own responsibility’. From this the Germans drew the conclusion that they should not take any hasty decision to release the hostages, ‘but should rather leave the Israelis the maximum freedom of manoeuvre’.
To coordinate the movement of the assault team with the plane taking it to Entebbe, Yoni Netanyahu and his senior officers held a meeting at their base at 3 p.m. with the crew of the Hercules: Lieutenant-Colonel Joshua Shani, his co-pilot and his chief navigator.
It was an uncomfortable hour for Shani. Their conversation was frequently interrupted by phone calls for Netanyahu who, between times, was absentmindedly taking apart and reassembling a silenced revolver. Every now and again the barrel pointed in Shani’s direction, causing the airman to shift in his seat.
But eventually the main points were agreed: the plane would land and taxi almost to the end of the new runway where there was an access strip on the right to the old diagonal runway. The assault troops would disembark here and use their vehicles to drive up the old runway to another access strip, this time on the left, that led to the front of the Old Terminal. It was to this second access strip that the fourth Hercules would taxi after the assault, to reduce the distance the hostages would have to walk or be driven to get them aboard.
Nothing was left to chance: they discussed which side of the Hercules they would drive by as they headed for the Old Terminal building; even the difference in height between the propellers and the top of the vehicles, in case they decided to save time by driving under the wings. Yoni also asked about the runway lights and what would happen if they were off when they arrived. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Shani, sounding more confident than he felt, ‘we have a radar that enables us to land in complete darkness. It’s not a problem.’
It was the first time that Shani’s co-pilot had worked with the Unit and he was hugely impressed with their professionalism and attention to detail. They seemed to him ‘amazing’ and from ‘another world’. He left the meeting convinced that the assault team could pull off its part of the operation. The question now in his mind was whether he and Shani could accomplish theirs. They would soon find out because, at 6 p.m., they were scheduled to fly Gur and Peled to Sharm el-Sheikh in the Sinai and demonstrate a landing in total darkness.
The hostages passed the afternoon with the usual activities: chatting, playing cards, reading and sleeping. Some handwashed their clothes and went outside to hang them on the improvised lines. They wore, in the meantime, borrowed shirts and towels around their waists.
People talked about their lives, jobs and families. A few discussed sport, chiefly the cycling Tour de France which had begun on 24 June with the Dutchman Joop Zoetemelk as favourite; the last anyone had heard, first-time rider Freddy Maertens of Belgium was wearing the leader’s Yellow Jersey. (Zoetemelk eventually finished second, behind the Belgian Lucien van Impe, with Maertens winning the Points classification Green Jersey.)
The subject of preference for the young French group, however, was sex. ‘I told you when we arrived,’ said the tall brown-haired man known as the Flirt, ‘that the youngest would stay the longest and have quite a party. Was I right?’
‘You tell us,’ said one of the group. ‘You seem to have been the busiest among us.’
The Flirt laughed. ‘I’ve done my best. During the flight I got talking to a cute young woman with a kid who told me her husband was the jealous type and she’d only got married out of desperation. We slept together the first night in Uganda, but never got beyond kissing because she was always busy with her kid. Then the evening before her departure, on a whim, and I’m not sure why, she dropped me and hooked up with a steward.’
‘Poor you!’ heckled a girl. ‘Who did you target next?’
‘I didn’t target anyone. Marianne’, he said, nodding towards a pretty dark-haired French girl, ‘approached me and we started chatting. That night we slept together behind the bar. We kissed and I felt her breasts, and a bit more than that. She fondled me in turn. But we stopped there.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really. Anyway, the following morning–that’s Wednesday–Marianne introduced me to another girl and, to cut a long story short, I slept with her that night in a “room” made by the first girl I was with. She relaxed without any problem. But as the paper on the mattress was making too much noise, we woke up Claude and asked if he would swap places. He agreed and we were finally getting down to business when…’
‘When what?’
‘… I lost the urge,’ said the Flirt, his face reddening.
Everyone in the group laughed. ‘Do you mean,’ said one, ‘you couldn’t get it up?’
‘That’s exactly what I mean. And I think I know why: they’re putting something in our food to make us less likely to rebel.’
‘Like what?’
‘Bromide, probably. I’ve heard they use it in prisons to make inmates easier to handle. But it was also given to troops in the First World War to curb their sexual urges.’
‘He might be right,’ said one of the girls. ‘I got together with someone and the same thing happened.’
The group started laughing so hard that an older Israeli woman came up and said: ‘Please, my lovelies, you must not make so much noise. You’re going to antagonize the Palestinians.’
But, far from being irritated, the terrorists joined in the laughter, as did the Ugandan sentries outside. None of them had a clue what the joke was about.
The hostages closest to the windows could see the Peruvian–easily distinguishable by his green cap and moustache–moving the Ugandan soldiers to a distance of at least fifty yards from the front of the building. Then he entered the main hall, a smile betraying his good humour, and picked up the megaphone. ‘Good news,’ he announced. ‘You can go outside and get some exercise. Older people and children go first. Then the rest.’
Most people complied with the Peruvian’s instructions, and an initial group of about fifty young and old went out to walk and play on the tarmac, with Wilfried Böse standing on a line they were forbidden to cross. After about half an hour, and unbidden by the terrorists, this first group started to come back in and were soon replaced by the remaining hostages. The sporty ones began to do stretching exercises, little sprints and star jumps, and often strayed further from the building than they should have. But the terrorists seemed unconcerned and let them get on with it. They were chatting among themselves, visibly relaxed, and their laid-back mood was transmitted to the hostages. This time, however, there was no fraternization between prisoners and keepers.
A tiny bead of sweat trickled down the side of Joshua Shani’s face as he squinted through the Hercules C-130’s windshield, trying to locate the runway of Ofira Air Force Base near Sharm el-Sheikh that had been chosen for the practice run because, like its counterpart at Entebbe, the final approach was over water. He was in the lead pilot’s left seat of the plane’s spacious cockpit. To his right sat his co-pilot, Avi Einstein, and behind him were squashed his navigator, Chief of Staff Motta Gur and IAF chief Benny Peled.
Shani and his crew had flown down to Ofira a couple of hours earlier to familiarize themselves with the airfield. Now they were back in total darkness to prove to Gur that they could land at night without lights. Shani felt the weight of the world on his shoulders: he knew that, if he failed to convince Gur, the operation could not go ahead and Israel would face humiliation. He looked down at the Adverse Weather Aerial Delivery System (AWADS) radar screen on the large instrument panel in front of him. It was showing a faint line that was in roughly the right place. But was it the airstrip? He would soon find out.
He slowly decreased altitude until he was just a couple of hundred feet from the ground, at which point he turned on his landing lights. Directly beneath him was the thin taxiway that ran parallel to the runway; the radar had locked on to the chain-link fence that ran along the taxiway. Realizing his error, he banked steeply to the left, straightened out over the runway and let the wheels almost touch down before quickly gaining altitude.
If Gur noticed something was wrong, he said nothing beyond: ‘Do it again.’
On his second attempt, Shani aligned the plane closer to the main runway, though not dead centre. Gur seemed satisfied. ‘I knew you could do it all along,’ he said with a grin, slapping the two pilots on their backs. ‘Let’s get back to Tel Aviv.’
After landing at the Unit’s base, ready for the full dress rehearsal of the operation at 10 p.m., Shani voiced his concerns to Peled. He was worried that with no moonlight it would be even darker when he tried to land at Entebbe. Therefore, he said, even if the radar could find the runway he intended to use the plane’s landing lights. But if the radar did not work, he would ‘get on the radio’ and tell the Entebbe control tower that he was ‘East African Airways Flight 70 with a general electrical failure’. He would then ask them to turn on the runway lights. There wasn’t an air traffic controller in the world ‘who wouldn’t flip the switch if he heard that’, said Shani. No one would be ‘crazy enough to take the risk of causing a plane with 200 passengers on board to crash’. By the time he realized what was happening, ‘the operation will be over’.
Peled gave his blessing. ‘It’s a good idea and you should use it if you have to. But keep it to yourself.’
Soon after arriving in Kenya on the scheduled El Al flight from Tel Aviv, Ehud Barak and his intelligence colleagues–including, according to some accounts, the legendary Mossad officer Mike Harari who had led the Wrath of God operation–were driven to Attorney-General Charles Njonjo’s house in Nairobi. The subject of discussion was the same as it had been a day earlier–Kenya’s cooperation in the event of an Israeli rescue mission–as were most of the personalities on the Kenyan side: Njonjo, Ben Gethi and Bernard Hinga. Only Bruce McKenzie was absent from the original negotiating team, having flown back to Britain that morning so as to distance himself from any involvement. He was, however, being kept informed of developments by telephone.
The exact terms of the highly controversial deal that was struck between the Kenyans and Israelis at this second meeting have been kept secret for almost four decades–and with good reason. But recently Charles Njonjo, the lead negotiator on the Kenyan side, confirmed who was present and what they spoke about. The conversation began with Njonjo asking the Israelis: ‘How can we help?’
‘First and foremost,’ said the chief Israeli negotiator (probably Barak), ‘we need the option to refuel all our planes at Nairobi Airport tomorrow night if we can’t get supplies elsewhere. Secondly we want to put a Boeing 707 with medical facilities, but with El Al livery, on the ground at Nairobi before the operation so that we can set up a field hospital, including an emergency room and an operating theatre. The casualties could be heavy, and we need to be able to treat them as quickly as possible. And lastly, if anything goes wrong and the planes can’t take off from Entebbe, we want your help to arrange an overland evacuation of troops and hostages from Uganda.’
Njonjo glanced at Gethi and Hinga who both nodded. ‘I think we can help you,’ said Njonjo. ‘We’ll cordon off a section of the airport for the 707 and the other planes. I’ll inform the airport director that you’re coming under the guise of El Al. When you know the planes are coming, make sure the El Al representative is in the control tower so there are no misunderstandings. The fewer people who know about this the better.’
As for the overland option, they would warn the border guards at Malaba that an Israeli military force might want to cross from Uganda and that they were to let it through. ‘We’re happy to assist you,’ continued Njonjo, ‘but you must realize that we can never admit publicly that this meeting took place. It would not make us popular with the others members of the OAU who, as you know, have a strong anti-Israel bias. When we’re asked if we knew about your plans in advance, we’ll deny any knowledge. We’ll simply say that you asked permission to refuel at Nairobi at the last minute, and that we agreed out of humanitarian considerations. The fewer people that know about this the better, which is why I haven’t even consulted my Cabinet colleagues.’
‘What about President Kenyatta?’ asked the Israeli.
‘No, we haven’t spoken about this yet. He’s not well and should not be bothered. That way he can say with complete honesty that he made no deal.’
‘I see,’ responded the Israeli. ‘Well, thank you, Mr Njonjo, you’re doing us a great service. Is there anything we can do for you?’
Njonjo paused, the faint trace of a smile on his lips. ‘There is one thing you can do for us. If Amin gets wind of what we’ve done, he might try a revenge attack. But it will have much less chance of success if you’ve already destroyed his air force.’
‘You mean his MiGs?’
‘Yes.’
‘I think we can manage that.’
‘And if, of course, Amin happens to be at the airport and is killed during the operation, that would be a bonus.’
‘For us too,’ said the Israeli.
The two sides shook hands on a deal that, had it been made public, would have badly damaged Kenya’s credibility in the eyes of its fellow OAU members: not only was Kenya plotting with a country that had been blacklisted by the OAU but the chief target of the plot, President Idi Amin of Uganda, was the serving president of the OAU (albeit one who was coming to the end of his year in office).
Yet the benefits of the deal for both sides were significant. The Israelis now had landing facilities close to Entebbe that would enable them to treat their casualties and refuel their planes for the journey back to Tel Aviv, not to mention a fall-back plan if the planes could not take off. Without this assistance, Operation Thunderbolt would almost certainly not have been authorized. For the Kenyans the agreement promised sweet revenge for Amin’s recent hostility–particularly his support for a terrorist act on Kenyan soil–in the form of an Israeli attack on his international airport and the destruction of his air force which would tip the local military balance in Kenya’s favour. Amin’s assassination would be the icing on the cake.
‘Shabbat Shalom,’ said a smiling Shimon Peres, holding the door open for his American dinner guest. ‘Welcome to my home.’
Spending the evening with a man he had never met before, even one who was tipped to become the next US president’s national security advisor, was not an activity Peres would have chosen at such a time. He wanted to keep an eye on the preparations for Operation Thunderbolt, particularly the dress rehearsal. But the dinner invitation had been issued some weeks earlier, at the behest of the Foreign Ministry, and to cancel at the last minute might have aroused suspicions.
‘Thank you, Mr Secretary,’ said the guest, Professor Zbigniew Brzezinski, ‘I’m delighted to be here.’
Peres led Brzezinski through to the lounge where his wife Sonia and the other guests were waiting, drinks in hand, to be introduced. They included two of Israel’s senior soldiers–Kuti Adam and Shlomo Gazit–who, like Peres, had their minds on other things. Gur, too, was originally on the guest list with his wife Rita; but Rita’s father had died that day and Gur was needed elsewhere. In his absence, Adam and Gazit played their parts to the letter, chatting amiably and never allowing a nerve in their faces to betray the tension they must have felt.
Another guest was Gershom Schocken, editor-in-chief of the leading liberal newspaper Haaretz. As he knew nothing of the plan, it was only in retrospect that he could appreciate ‘the great performances of his fellow diners’.
The most uncomfortable moment for Peres came when Brzezinski asked him why Israel was not sending a military rescue operation to Entebbe. Unwilling to lie, yet unable to tell the truth, he lamely trotted out the potential obstacles: distance; lack of reliable intelligence; the presence of ‘hostile’ Ugandan troops. With Brzezinski seemingly unimpressed, Peres turned to Schocken, a well-known ‘dove’ in foreign and security affairs, in the hope that he would support his argument. But Schocken held his tongue.
Only later, after Brzezinski had left, did the editor speak his mind. ‘I didn’t say anything earlier because I didn’t want to embarrass you in front of your American guest,’ he told Peres. ‘But you should know that I’m completely against the government’s decision to do a deal with the hijackers and would wholeheartedly support a rescue attempt.’
This time, Peres was silent.
Chapman Pincher and his third wife Billee often dined with Bruce and Christina McKenzie at the latter’s imposing Regency manor house Knowle Park, just a couple of miles away from their own Tudor farmhouse in the village of Ewhurst. What made this evening different was that Pincher was desperate for the ladies to retire so that he could discuss with Bruce, just back from Nairobi, the story he had written about Ugandan collusion with the hijackers. Pincher was aware of his friend’s close contacts with both the Kenyan government and the Mossad, and knew that if anyone could verify the validity of the story, he could.
Yet he found McKenzie in a ‘very mysterious mood’, unwilling to say much about the situation at Entebbe beyond the fact that he hoped the Daily Express would make the ‘fullest use’ of the information Pincher had been given which he ‘knew to be true’. The only other thing McKenzie let slip was that he had ‘hardly been off the telephone’ since his return. To whom, he would not say.
As the evening wore on, the terrorists guarding the large hall became increasingly tetchy and tense, nervously fingering their trigger guards and shouting at any hostage who did not at once do their bidding. The contrast with their earlier good humour was stark.
Suddenly a car pulled up outside and Faiz Jaber got out. Stern-faced, he came into the room and ordered an immediate head count of the hostages. Two terrorists did separate counts, to avoid error, and came up with different totals: 103 and 104. So they both recounted–only this time with the hostages lined up one behind the other–and agreed on 104, of whom ten were under the age of ten, seventy-eight were of Israeli or part-Israeli nationality, two were Americans (the stockbroker and his wife, though most people in the room assumed they were Israeli-Americans), two were Belgians (the Weills), one Swedish (the stewardess Ann-Carina Franking) and the rest French (including eleven members of the crew).
As soon as the count had been completed to his satisfaction, Jaber left the room and the hostages settled down for the night. Jean-Jacques Mimouni, Willy and Isa–a twenty-two-year-old French interior designer who had spent the last three years travelling in Afghanistan–pushed their mattresses right up against the windows at the front of the room. This annoyed the terrorists, who had earlier insisted the hostages leave a walkway in front of the windows of at least three yards, and they were forced to move them back a little.
Once everyone was lying down, Jean-Jacques’ group began to speculate on the terrorists’ change of mood, concluding that the negotiations with the Israeli government must have hit an impasse. Their nervousness was exacerbated by a rumour that soon spread round the room that, for reasons unknown, the terrorists were on a high state of alert. They were soon given evidence of this when Khaled, who was guarding the door, refused to allow any of the lights to be turned off. The only dark part of the room was above Willy, Jean-Jacques and Isa, where a row of neon lights was not working.
As the hostages prepared for bed, Gilbert Weill and some of the Orthodox Jews were determined to observe the onset of Shabbat, the Hebrew term for the Jewish holy day–in Yiddish it is Shabbos–that traditionally begins just before sunset on Friday and ends on Saturday night. They would normally have lit candles; but, as none was available, Weill took the advice of a woman who had been at Auschwitz and lit two matches instead. Ruthie Gross simply walked up to the window and ‘chose two stars in the sky’, and they became her candles. As she contemplated their predicament she burst into tears and prayed that she, her husband Baruch and son Shay ‘would get another chance to light candles back home’.
Then drying her eyes she rejoined Weill and the other Orthodox Jews who were chanting the zemiros–the blessing–and sharing bananas and a bottle of cola as their festive meal. They followed this by quietly singing religious songs, at which point a nervous Michel Bacos tried to intervene. ‘Please stop!’ implored the French pilot. ‘You’ve seen how tetchy the terrorists are tonight. If you sing you’ll make them angry and who knows what they’ll do to us.’
They continued singing despite his protest, and Weill felt it was ‘the nicest Shabbos of my life’.
‘There’s just one problem that I can see,’ said Motta Gur. ‘What are you going to do about the control tower? A single soldier up there with an automatic rifle will be able to dominate the ground in front of the Old Terminal.’
Gur and other senior officers–including Adam, Peled and Shomron–had just listened to Yoni Netanyahu’s final briefing at the Unit’s base before the full dress rehearsal. It was the last opportunity to fine-tune the plan of assault.
‘I’m aware of that, sir,’ replied Netanyahu. ‘But we simply don’t have enough men on the first Hercules to be able to assault the control tower as well as the main building. The hostages are the priority. We’re taking a calculated risk, but if all goes well we’ll be in the building before the terrorists and Ugandans know what’s happening. If necessary, the covering force in the Land Rovers can tackle the tower; and if they don’t silence it the APCs will.’
With the briefing over, the officers were driven the short distance to the adjacent base where the dress rehearsal was due to take place. While Netanyahu and Shomron joined the assault troops on the first Hercules, Gur and the other senior officers climbed into a Jeep so that they could watch the exercise as it unfolded.
The first Hercules trundled down the runway as if it had just landed, disgorging the paratroopers with their lights. But as it came to a halt and the rear ramp was lowered, the Mercedes refused to start. It could not be jump-started because it was an automatic, so its driver Amitzur Kafri shouted to the occupants of the Land Rover behind to give it a shunt to shake up the starter motor. He knew that the success of the practice run, and therefore the operation itself, was hanging in the balance. Fortunately the blow worked: the engine roared into life, and Kafri drove the car off the plane and headed towards the mock-up of the terminal, followed by the two Jeeps.
Once the rehearsal was over, and the Unit’s assault troops had gathered round the vehicles again, Gur said to Netanyahu: ‘The one thing I didn’t like was the overcrowding on the Jeeps. You’re drawing attention to yourselves and it looks chaotic. They’ll get in each other’s way. You need to take a couple of men off each vehicle.’
‘Sir,’ said Netanyahu, ‘if I do that we won’t have enough firepower to secure the Old Terminal. We’ve worked this way before without any problems.’
‘Yoni, I’m not asking, I’ll telling you. Lose the men.’
‘What if I take one off each, sir? That way we’re both happy.’
Gur looked from Netanyahu to the Jeeps and back again. ‘Okay, one it is,’ he said, before turning to his adjutant. ‘Yegev, assemble the senior officers and unit commanders in the field tent. The debrief will begin in five minutes.’
Once all the officers were together in the tent, sitting on wooden benches at the folding tables that had served as a mess for the paratroopers and Golani soldiers, Gur asked them one by one to give their opinion on the mission’s chance of success. Dan Shomron spoke first. ‘It will succeed,’ he said, ‘if the first plane lands without detection. But it all depends on that first plane.’
Others agreed, including the Tzanchanim commander Matan Vilnai whose job was to secure the New Terminal building, the runways and the fuel tanks. Though he did not say it, he felt the rehearsal had been ‘very bad’. But that did not worry him, because in his experience ‘you need to have a bad rehearsal’ for the actual operation to go well. He, too, was not in any doubt that the mission could, and would, succeed.
The final officer to speak was Netanyahu. He had had little sleep for the last few days and looked exhausted. But his tone was upbeat.
‘I think, sir, after the rehearsals and training we’ve done, that it’s going to work. There are a few points that need touching up a little, but nothing we can’t handle. Yes, I think the risks are acceptable. If the hostages are where we think they are, we can do it.’
Gur stood up, and paused before he spoke. The decision he was about to make was the hardest of his life. He had been sceptical about a rescue mission from the start. Entebbe was too far away; the intelligence picture was incomplete; and the probable hostility of the Ugandans made the element of surprise doubly hard to achieve. But the events of the last forty-eight hours had changed his mind. He now felt confident that the pilots could land the planes unnoticed, and that once on the ground the hand-picked troops he had just watched perform–the best the IDF had to offer–would do the rest. The problem of refuelling had also been solved.
Yet he knew that it was still a hugely risky operation with potentially disastrous consequences: either the death of most or all of the hostages before the soldiers could reach them; or the loss of the cream of Israel’s special forces if they were unable to withdraw by air. Either scenario would be a military and political catastrophe from which Israel would find it hard to recover. But Gur–heavily influenced by the optimistic Peres–managed to banish such gloomy thoughts from his mind. ‘From what I’ve seen tonight,’ he told the assembled officers, ‘and from what I’ve heard, I also think you can do it and I’m going to recommend to the defense minister that the operation be approved.’
Many of the officers present breathed a sigh of relief, aware that a major obstacle to the mission had just been removed. But there were still more hurdles to be cleared, as Gur stressed. ‘It’s now up to the prime minister and the Cabinet,’ he continued. ‘In the meantime the planes and vehicles will be moved to Lod to be ready for the flight to Sharm el-Sheikh tomorrow. Thank you and well done.’
It was after midnight when Netanyahu, Betser and their men returned to base. The two officers retired to Yoni’s office to discuss the rehearsal and to tie up any loose ends. All the while Betser was thinking, but not saying out loud, that in the light of his experience at Ma’alot the number of dead hostages was likely to be as high as ten, and perhaps even twenty. Once their discussion was over, Netanyahu called in the squad commanders for another briefing. They were, he said, to make certain that all the terrorists were dead before they tried to move the hostages.
The men, meanwhile, were checking their equipment, fitting sighting lights to their assault rifles, and studying the intelligence material in their mission files, particularly the layout of the Old Terminal and the runways and roads near to it.
Like most of his colleagues, Amir Ofer filled his ammunition vest with as many bullets and grenades as it could hold, and fastened a second magazine to the one in his Kalashnikov, thus reducing the time it would take to load the new clip. He also practised the best way to carry the megaphone for warning the hostages and the kit for breaking open locked doors. One man per team was to carry this extra kit and Ofer had drawn the short straw.
Too nervous and excited to sleep, he sat up for hours studying the photos and diagrams of the Old Terminal. His job was to follow his commander Lieutenant Amnon Peled through the right-hand entrance into the large hall where the hostages were being held. But if anything happened to Peled he could not afford to go through the wrong door. He voiced the concerns of many when he told a soldier in his room: ‘It will either be the IDF’s most successful operation of all time, or its biggest failure.’
Ofer’s pessimism had been enhanced by what he saw as a hopelessly unrealistic dry run. ‘In a real rehearsal,’ he noted, ‘you should take a flight of eight hours to see how you function and storm a “real” building. We just hung some fabric to imitate the… terminal. We didn’t even shoot. God knows why Motta Gur was happy with the dry run and approved the mission.’
Similar doubts were being expressed by a small group of the Unit’s junior officers–most of whom had never warmed to Netanyahu’s style of command–in a room near the flagstaff. They had been working on the rescue plan–one of the most audacious ever conceived by the IDF–for just eighteen hours when it was approved by the chief of staff. It seemed to them the height of madness. Typically they would prepare for weeks, sometimes even months, for an operation of this magnitude. At the very least they would expect to practise on a real building, not on a few pieces of burlap and masking tape. One spoke for all when he declared: ‘The top brass are leading each other on. The troops aren’t ready. It wasn’t a proper dry run. The intelligence isn’t convincing. We can’t even be sure the hostages are where they say they are. It’s all a load of baloney. The Unit is fooling itself and the army, Shomron is fooling his superiors, and on up.’
‘I agree,’ said another, ‘and the only way to stop this, before it ends in disaster, is for us to go over Yoni’s head, even over Gur’s head, to one of the ministers so that the Cabinet knows what the situation really is.’
But for the others in the room this was a step too far–tantamount to mutiny–and the meeting ended without a decision. Sullen and resentful, they would wait on events. Their mood, however, and the serious reservations they had about the mission, held the potential for disaster.
Peres picked up his home phone at 1 a.m. ‘Hello.’
‘Shimon, it’s Motta,’ said Chief of Staff Gur. ‘There’s no point in my coming over so late. I just wanted to tell you that the rehearsal went well and I think the plan will work. To reach Uganda at the optimum time–which is 11 p.m. here–the planes will need to leave by 3.30 in the afternoon. So I just need your authorization to fly the planes down to their jumping-off point at Sharm el-Sheikh before the Cabinet meets.’
‘You have it,’ said Peres. ‘Thank you. We’ll meet at my office at nine. Good night.’
‘Good night.’
Peres closed his eyes in gratitude. With Gur now fully supportive, Rabin would find it almost impossible not to approve the military option. He would tell him in the morning.