Christian, Shi’ite Muslim, Druse and ethnically mixed — with the aim of

Christian, Shi’ite Muslim, Druse and ethnically mixed — with the aim of reflecting the balance in each part of the south. Israeli troops might still have to cross into Lebanon, but only for brief, targeted operations to preempt preparations for a terror attack. “We need to remember what we’re there for,” I said. “We have no territorial claims. It’s to protect the north of Israel. But it will end up being about protecting our own troops inside the security zone. It will be like the Bar-Lev line in 1973, fighting for fortifications we don’t need.” I couldn’t persuade him. I’m sure he understood the argument, and he may even have agreed. But when Katyushas next fell on northern Israel, he as Minister of Defense, not I, would be the one in the political firing line. Far from straining our relations, our frank exchanges on Lebanon seemed to build further trust between us. We worked closely on a range of issues. When Sayeret Matkal or another intelligence unit planned an operation across our borders, both of us would present the action to the cabinet. During the operations, I’d be either in the kirva or a forward command post. Since nearly all of them happened after nightfall, Yitzhak would usually be back home, asleep, by the time they ended. I would phone him. The trademark voice — slow, gravelly, deep even when he was wide awake — would answer. I’d tell him the mission was over and — with only one exception during my period as head of intelligence — successful. “Todah,” he would say. “Lehitraot.” Thanks. Bye. He was never a man to waste words. For one of the very few times I can remember, He phoned me one morning in October 1985. It came a couple of days after an especially gruesome Palestinian terror attack. Even with Arafat now more than a thousand miles away in Tunis, much of Rabin’s focus was taken up in responding to, or trying to preempt, Palestinian terrorism. The issue was especially sensitive politically in the wake of a war in Lebanon that was supposed to have eliminated that threat. For Rabin, moreover, it had become personal. He’d had to sanction an unprecedented exchange of 1,150 Palestinian security prisoners earlier in the year to secure the freedom of three Israeli soldiers, including one of our men from Sultan Yacoub, who had ended up in the hands of the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — General Command. Now a group from another of the radical factions, the Palestine Liberation Front, had hijacked an Italian cruise ship called the Achille Lauro en route from Egypt to Israel. They murdered one of the passengers, a wheelchair-bound, 69-year-old Jewish American named Leon Klinghoffer, and dumped his body overboard. 217 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011688