Nothing happened for several months. By the early spring of 1973, with my

Nothing happened for several months. By the early spring of 1973, with my two-year term as sayeret commander winding down, I assumed the operation had been vetoed. I could understand why. As we worked on our plan, it had become clear that getting into the heart of the Lebanese capital, hitting the apartments and getting out again without starting a minor war would be by far the most difficult mission we had attempted. I did not doubt that Sayeret Matkal offered the best chance of success. But it wouldn’t be easy. I figured that whoever was making the decision had come to the same conclusion. I was on a weekend away with Nava and Michal in the Red Sea resort of Eilat when things suddenly began to move. At around noon on Saturday, I got a call from Talik’s deputy in the kirya. “Ehud,” he said, “we need you back here as soon as possible.” When I asked why, he said: “You remember how you were approached by someone with some questions, and you went back to them with a list of other questions for them to answer?” I told Nava I’d been summoned to a meeting at the chief-of-staff’s office — the kind of call of duty that both of us were now used to — and grabbed the first commercial flight north. It got the the kirya early in the evening, and joined a meeting that was already well underway. Dado was in his usual seat on the right-hand side of the table he used for staff discussions, flanked by Talik. Across from them was Manno Shaked, the officer who had phoned me to tell me about the Sabena hijacking and who had now succeeded Raful Eitan as katzhar, overall chief of the infantry and paratroopers. Beside him were the two Mossad officers with whom I’d had most of my dealings about Beirut. They were all staring at an aerial photo of the Lebanese capital, with an area marked in blue pen around a street called Rue Verdun. I entered and took one of the remaining chairs. Gesturing toward the image of Beirut, Dado turned to me. “Do you know this place?” he asked. Yes, I said. I’d seen the photo. Nodding toward the Mossad men, | said: “These two officers showed it to me.” “Do you have an idea how to do this operation?” I told him that we didn’t have a fully detailed operational plan. But I said we’d looked into the problems we'd face. “We believe we can do it.” When he asked how, I outlined the approach we’d settled on: a small force, thirteen men, plus two from Mossad to act as drivers. We would need the Mossad men to go to Beirut ahead of us, and rent a pair of nice American cars, the kind typical tourists would use. We’d land on the waterfront, well south of the most built-up parts of the city coastline, and meet up with the rental cars. When we reached the apartment blocks, three 135 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011606