Lod. Two days later, Israeli television received a videotape showing the 19

Lod. Two days later, Israeli television received a videotape showing the 19- year-old, hands and feet bound, pleading for his life in return for the release of the founder of Hamas, whom we had arrested and jailed in 1989. “The group from Hamas kidnapped me,” he said. “They are demanding the release of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and another 200 people from Israeli prison. If their demands are not met, they will execute me on Friday at 8 pm.” As soon as we got word he was missing, I spoke to Rabin. Since we assumed he was being held in Gaza, I ordered a unit from Sayeret Matkal to head south and co-ordinate efforts to locate him with the Shin Bet and the southern command. But it gradually became clear he might be much closer to where he’d been seized. The Shin Bet got a description of the kidnappers’ car, and found it was a rental that had been picked up and returned in east Jerusalem. They tracked down the man who rented it. A little before dawn the morning of October 14, barely 12 hours before the Hamas deadline, Shin Bet established that Wachsman was being held in a village on the road to Ramallah, north of Jerusalem, in a house owned by a Palestinian who was living abroad. The hostage soldier’s ordeal was made even worse by the fact his mother, Esther, was a Holocaust survivor, born in a displaced-persons camp in Germany at the end of the war. Rabin had been ready to approve a rescue attempt from the outset, assuming we could locate Wachsman and come up with a plan that might work. But as with Entebbe, he said that if we couldn’t be reasonably confident of success, we would negotiate. Now that we knew where Waschsman was being held, I ordered Shaul Mofaz, the commander with responsibility for the West Bank, to prepare for a possible rescue. Before going to brief Rabin, I arranged for another commando unit to begin visible preparations for an operation in Gaza, in an effort to reassure Hamas we still believed he was being held there. Assuming we could retain the element of surprise, there were several things working in our favor. The house was relatively isolated. It was in an area where Israel, not the incipient Palestinian authorities, still had control. And Sayeret Matkal had expertise and experience in this kind of mission. Still, no plan could be foolproof. I told Rabin that the fact Hamas was holding a single hostage meant that if our assault teams were delayed for any reason at all, the kindappers might kill him before we got in. But I said we had to weigh the risks of not acting. We were no longer trying to find a missing soldier. We knew where he was. We had a unit ready. Unless Hamas relented, he was facing death within hours. In those circumstances, the 266 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028114