It was the same jumble of buildings in the same corner of the base where I’d

Chapter Eight It was the same jumble of buildings in the same corner of the base where I’d reported a decade earlier, as a 19-year-old fresh from fironut, when the sayeret was still a gleam in Avraham Arman’s eye. Now, I was about to become the first of his successors to have been chosen from within the unit itself. As I called together the officers that first morning, I couldn’t be sure whether I would make a success of my two years in command. But I did know what I hoped that I, and we, would accomplish: to complete Avraham’s vision. To forge a true special- forces unit, at a time when the threats facing Israel seemed increasingly to demand one. Avraham’s initial hopes and expectations for the unit had been more than met. Sayeret Matkal had played the key role in erasing the traumas of Uri Ilan and Rotem, and restoring the morale and effectiveness of Israeli military intelligence. Time and again, operations which we said we could do — dismissed as too dangerous, or impossible, by others — proved achievable. Yet as I now told the team leaders and our other officers, this was no longer enough. Our intelligence operations still mattered. In fact, we would have to “push further” across Arab borders, deeper into enemy communications systems. Our intercepts had given Israel an important edge in the Six-Day War. I assumed — though naively, it would turn out — that they would be put to use in any future war. But if the sayeret was to retain its unique role, we had to become a fighting force as well. One reason, I didn’t even have to mention: we all remembered our frustration in 1967, when we’d been little more than bit players in the most important conflict since the establishment of the state. But for me, the main argument for change was what had happened since the 1967 war: the fact that Israel was facing a new range of security challenges which other army units, trained to engage and defeat enemy troops on the battlefield, were not equipped to meet. In the War of Attrition, we might not have lost a single inch of territory. But we had lost tanks and planes. Israeli soldiers and pilots were being held prisoner in Egypt and Syria. Arafat’s Fatah and the other armed Palestinian groups might not present a conventional threat. Yet while I’d been with my tank company in the Sinai, they were fighting a full-scale civil war against King Hussein’s army in Jordan. The catalyst: a multiple hijacking in September 1970, a sign that they were turning to non-conventional warfare, and to acts of terror. 111 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_027959