knew that would be a sensitive task. We spoke only briefly before he and

knew that would be a sensitive task. We spoke only briefly before he and Mookie drove back to the sayeret base to begin more detailed preparations. Yoni was insistent that he should be in charge. I told him I understood, and I did. In his position, I would have felt exactly the same way. But for a variety of reasons, Dan wanted me in command. Still, I stressed my determination not to detract from his authority. Yoni would lead in the main assault unit. He and Mookie would choose the other officers and soldiers, decide their roles and take charge of training, briefing and logistics. I could tell he was still not satisfied. But I told him and Mookie I’d join them later that night. We could talk further, ahead of the next full briefing, which Dan had set for nine o’clock on Friday morning on the sayeret base. When they left, I joined Dan, Motta and Kuti to go see Rabin. Shimon Peres was there too. He would later say that, as Defence Minister, he was a crucial voice in pressing to go ahead with the rescue mission. He’s right, and had he been sceptical, or opposed the idea of a recuse, 1t would have made things much more difficult. But his position was far easier than the Prime Minister’s. He lacked Rabin’s hands-on command experience, his grasp of the details of what we were proposing to do and the obvious risks. All Israelis were aware of this. I the operation failed, or if we decided in the end not to attempt it, it would be Rabin who would bear the responsibility and get the blame. Even under the best of circumstances, Rabin was naturally cautious — the flipside of the meticulousness with which he ran through the fine detail of every military mission. As I remembered from when he was chief of staff, in our slightly surreal conversation about the danger of a booby-trapped communications intercept exploding as I defused it, he would focus on everything that might conceivably go wrong with an operation before approving it. Now, he was also under huge additional pressure. From the start of the hijack crisis, there had been calls from the hostages’ families to do something to end the ordeal. But as I later discovered, one of the leading scientific engineers in Israel, Yosef Tulipman, had a daughter among the passengers. Like Yitzhak, he had been a Palmachnik. He’d come to see the Prime Minister and implored him not to attempt an operation that might endager her or the others. “I demand one thing only,” he said. “Don’t go on any adventures. Do not play with the lives of these people, with the life of my daughter.” After Entebbe, there would be suggestions that Rabin’s readiness to negotiate with the terrorists had been a ploy, designed to buy time. Yet his message to us that night was that if there was a military option with a 171 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028019