Epstein Secrets

Sharon, Sharon turned to me and the army’s Chief of Staff, Rafael Eitan, and said: “Tell me. Why the hell is Arafat still alive?” He looked first at Raful, then at me, and added: “When I was 20 years younger than you are, I never waited for someone like Ben-Gurion or Dayan to ask me to plan an operation

ldiers crossed the border on an intelligence mission. It had happened in 1954, and it ended in a failure even more serious than Rotem. The target was the Golan Heights, inside Syria. The special technology unit attached to military intelligence had developed a bugging device designed to be placed on a telephone pole

club on the western edge of Damascus. We would land in transport helicopters a few miles away and unload a pair of armored cars captured in 1967. But Raful’s view prevailed. I could not get the approval of the Airya. I did take heart from Avraham Arnan’s support. He was now Golda Meir’s counter-terrorism

urprise attacks by Syria and Egypt — armies we’d not just defeated, but humiliated, six years earlier — had pinned down and pushed back our forces on the Golan Heights and in the Sinai. Without any advance call-up, many reservists were only now reaching the front lines. As hundreds of people pressed for seats on th

b’s terms for a wholesale evacuation. By this point, I was spending most of my time in the Airya, with periodic visits north, sometimes with Arik or Raful, to our positions on the eastern, Phalangist-controlled, side of Beirut. On several occasions, I helicoptered back with Habib or his deputy, Morris D

ade with him. The substance in any agreement, though politically difficult, was also more straightforward. We knew what Assad wanted: the recovery of the Golan Heights, in return for the absolute minimum level of political normalization with Israel. We knew what we wanted: security guarantees and assurances regardin

Sharon, Sharon turned to me and the army’s Chief of Staff, Rafael Eitan, and said: “Tell me. Why the hell is Arafat still alive?” He looked first at Raful, then at me, and added: “When I was 20 years younger than you are, I never waited for someone like Ben-Gurion or Dayan to ask me to plan an operation

ldiers crossed the border on an intelligence mission. It had happened in 1954, and it ended in a failure even more serious than Rotem. The target was the Golan Heights, inside Syria. The special technology unit attached to military intelligence had developed a bugging device designed to be placed on a telephone pole

club on the western edge of Damascus. We would land in transport helicopters a few miles away and unload a pair of armored cars captured in 1967. But Raful's view prevailed. I could not get the approval of the kirya. I did take heart from Avraham Arnan's support. He was now Golda Meir's counter-terrorism

urprise attacks by Syria and Egypt - armies we'd not just defeated, but humiliated, six years earlier - had pinned down and pushed back our forces on the Golan Heights and in the Sinai. Without any advance call-up, many reservists were only now reaching the front lines. As hundreds of people pressed for seats on the

ib's terms for a wholesale evacuation. By this point, I was spending most of my time in the kirya, with periodic visits north, sometimes with Arik or Raful, to our positions on the eastern, Phalangist-controlled, side of Beirut. On several occasions, I helicoptered back with Habib or his deputy, Morris D

ade with him. The substance in any agreement, though politically difficult, was also more straightforward. We knew what Assad wanted: the recovery of the Golan Heights, in return for the absolute minimum level of political normalization with Israel. We knew what we wanted: security guarantees and assurances regardin