/ BARAK / 115 Minister, I felt it was not my place to criticize Olmert publicly when Israeli troops were in action. Two days in, in fact, I told a television interviewer that the government had every right to respond and was doing so effectively. Olmert phoned to thank me. When he, like Shimon, asked what I thought the government should do next, I was straightforward: "Do your best to bring things to an end as soon as you can." I said that Halutz and the other generals would be caught up in the operational details, which made his role and that of the cabinet even more critical. "In any operation, you'll have an idea about what represents a satisfactory exit point. But there will be a temptation, when you get close to that point, to take just one more step, to keep going until you're absolutely sure you've reached it." Resist that temptation, I told him. I said there was a danger that, before they knew it, he and the other minister would be in way over their heads. In pure military terms, there were just two realistic choices in responding the Hibzollah attack: a deliberately limited and fairly brief operation, or a full-scale war. We ended up doing neither. The result was an operation that lasted 34 days, nearly twice the length of the Yom Kippur War. Our air force flew 12,000 missions, more than in 1973 and nearly twice as many as in the 1982 Lebanon War. Hizbollah fired about 4,000 rockets into Israel - from a stockpile we estimated to number nearly 20,000 - and not just at the border settlements but as far south as Hadera and Haifa, keeping hundreds of thousands of Israelis under effective siege. More than 120 Israeli soldiers and 44 civilians were killed. So were hundreds of Hizbollah fighters and, inevitably, many Lebanese civilians as well, with a predictable surge of criticism from much of the outside world. Only President Bush and Britain's Tony Blair steadfastly reminded the critics of how the war had actually begun. The one putative victory for Israel was the UN cease-fire resolution that Tzipi Livni helped to negotiate in August. At least on paper, it contained a commitment to a "long-term solution" including the disarmament of Hizbollah and the "unconditional release of the abducted Israeli soldiers, which has given rise to the current crisis." But as Israeli newspapers began speaking to the returning soldiers and officers, a picture emerged not just of a long and difficult war, but a lack of clearly communicated military objectives, and an often-chaotic chain of command, which ended up costing Israeli lives. Our final advance, alone, shortly before the cease-fire, claimed the lives of some 30 soldiers. And for what, many Israelis were soon asking themselves. One of the newspapers most supportive of the operation at 401 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028249

/ BARAK / 116 the beginning summed up the feeling of most of the country at the end: "If you don't win, you lose... Hizbollah survived. It won the war." Without the botched handling of the war, I might well have remained a mere member of the Labor Party and a private citizen. But when the commission of inquiry released its report in April 2007, three people were singled out: Olmert, Amir Peretz and Halutz. Olmert was portrayed as a military novice who'd gone into battle without understanding the wartime role and responsibilities of a Prime Minister. Halutz's "excess of charisma" was held responsible for keeping ministers, and military officers as well, from questioning his judgement or pressing him for alternatives. Amir Peretz was found to be the wrong man in the wrong cabinet post at the wrong time. Of the three, only Halutz seemed ready to take personal responsibility. Even before the report came out, he resigned. Olmert and Peretz were determined to stay put, despite calls to quit not just from the opposition but from Tzipi Livni. Inside Labor as well, the war produced a clamor for change. When a vote for party chairman was held in June 2007, I was chosen to return in Peretz's place. Within days, I replaced him as Defense Minister as well. Yet the main item in my in-box would no longer be Lebanon. I had been briefed a few weeks earlier by Olmert on a threat hundreds of miles further away: a construction site in northeast Syria, along the Euphrates River, where Mossad had uncovered evidence that the Syrians, with technical help from North Korea and funding from Iran, were building a nuclear reactor. *** I had got to know Olmert fairly well over the years, initially when I was in the kirya and both he and another rising Likud politician to whom I became closer, Dan Meridor, were members of the Knesset's defense committee. But from the day I returned to the Israeli government in June 2007, there was growing tension between us over dealing with the Syrian nuclear threat. It was not about whether we should take military action to destroy the reactor, before the fuel rods arrived on site and it could begin producing bomb-ready material. Just as under Menachem Begin in 1981, when we'd launched our preemptive strike on Saddam Hussein's 402 HOUSE _OVERSIGHT_028250

/ BARAK / 117 reactor near Baghdad, there was never any question that we would take any and all possible measures to prevent Syria from getting a nuclear weapon. An immutable, core assumption in Israel's security strategy was the need to retain our ability to deter, and if necessary defeat, our enemies. A nuclear Syria - or Iraq, or Iran - would dramatically alter the balance of power in the region, at obvious risk to Israel. Syria posed a particular threat, as part of an increasingly close alliance with Iran, and with Hizbollah in Lebanon. The question, however, was how and when to strike the reactor. Olmert wanted to attack within days. He seemed to assume that, as a former chief of staff, I'd nod enthusiastically and go along with him. I did understand the reasons for his sense of urgency. Not only did we have to make sure we attacked before the fuel was on site. There was always the risk the Syrians would find out that we were aware of their nuclear facility, putting them on even higher alert. But the operational challenge was complex. We need a fail-safe plan to destroy the reactor. We had to do it in such a way as to avoid a full-scale military confrontation with Syria if possible. And we had to ensure we were ready for that, if it did happen. It took very little time for me to realize that none of those prerequisites was yet in place. Not unlike the recent Lebanon war, we were choosing between two off-the-shelf plans from the kirya. One involved using a large military force, and would almost certainly draw us into a major conflict with Syria. The other was a smaller, targeted operation. But it remained untested, and there was no certainty it would actually destroy the reactor. Over the next few months, Olmert got more and more frustrated with the fact we hadn't yet attacked, and frustrated with me as well. We held dozens of meetings, sometimes two or three a day, chaired by the Prime Minister, sometimes by me as Defense Minister, or by the chief of staff or service commanders. Invariably, I began my remarks by saying: "We have to destroy the reactor." This was not because I felt that any of us seriously doubted that. It was because Olmert was beginning to suggest to the few ministers and senior officers aware of our planning that I was against attacking the reactor. In fact, I was working with the military and Mossad to ensure we had a plan that would succeed, with the minimum possible risk of drawing us into a major clash with the Syrians after the facility was destroyed. I was also working - with the help of the Americans - to make sure we could get the forces and munitions in place in the north of Israel to 403 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028251

/ BARAK / 118 deal with a major conflict with the Syrians. All of this, under a tight seal of secrecy. Finally, in early September 2007, everything was in place. Olmert briefed the cabinet, and secured the ministers' approval to destroy the reactor, with the understanding that the precise timing of the operation would now be left to the Prime Minister, the Defense Minister and the Foreign Minister: Olmert, me and Tzipi Livni. The three of us met immediately after the cabinet discussion. Olmert argued that the risk of leaks justified attacking that night, and I agreed with him. Tzipi was reluctant, but Olmert turned to her and said: "Are you sure you're comfortable with an attack being ordered by me and Barak, while you chose to abstain?" She thought it over, and added her approval. We struck just after midnight, in an intricately coordinated air attack that evaded not only a Syrian response, but Syrian notice. The reactor was destroyed. Although even today the exact details remain subject to Israel's military secrecy regulations, accounts published abroad in the weeks and months that followed painted a surprisingly accurate picture, including the pioneering use of electronic warfare capabilities to deal with risk of radar detection. But in the immediate aftermath of the attack, Israel deliberately made no public comment. We refused to say whether we'd had anything to do with an attack. As we he had hoped, this allowed the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, both the space and a good reason to deny that it had ever happened, deny that he'd been trying to make a nuclear weapon, and thus feel no compelling reason to retaliate. The reactor operation, however, marked the start of an increasingly tough period in both my and Tzipi's relationship with Olmert. Policy was not the problem. There were no major security crises in the months ahead. But in the spring of 2008, it became known that the Israeli police were investigating Olmert's relationship with an American businessman named Moshe Talansky. The suggestion, initially in a New York paper and then the Israeli press, was that Olmert was guilty of taking bribes. In his first public response, he didn't deny 404 HOUSE _OVERSIGHT_028252

/ BARAK / 119 receiving money from Talansky. But he insisted it was all a part of election campaign contributions. Publicly, I reserved judgement. "I hope, for everyone's sake, and for Prime Minister Olmert's sake, that the suspicions now circulating turn out to be baseless," I told a reporter. "Let's be patient." Privately, I urged him to take a leave of absence and clear his name. Yet with other ministers convinced that would make things worse, I held off doing anything else until there seemed to me no choice, after Talansky gave evidence in Jerusalem's District Court. Though he genuinely seemed not to have expected anything specific in return, he said he had given Olmert something like $150,000 in cash. I called a news conference the next day. I didn't say whether or not I thought Olmert was guilty. I did say that I believed he couldn't continue leading the country while resolving his "personal matters". Things finally came to ahead in September 2008. When Kadima held fresh leadership elections, Tzipi Livni won. Olmert confirmed he would step aside for his successor. But under Israeli law, he would remain Prime Minister until she either succeeded in forming a new government or called early elections. She opted in the end for Option B, and the election was set for February 2009. That meant Olmert would still be Prime Minister for another three months. We'd long been discussing the increasingly worrying situation in Gaza. After Arik pulled out, an election had placed Hamas in power, after which the Islamists embarked on a violent purge of Fatah loyalists. Arms smuggling through tunnels from the Sinai had become rife. Rockets from Gaza were now landing on southern Israel. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis were living with the reality of a warning siren and a rapid dash into their shelters. For a while, amid negotiations through Egypt to end the rocket fire, we limited ourselves to sending small ground units into Gaza to target the source of specific rocket attacks. But that was always going to have only a limited effect. It also ran the risk of our soldiers being abducted, or killed. Pressure was building for a major military operation. With the election drawing nearer, Bibi Netanyahu was reminding voters that he'd been against the pullout from Gaza, and saying that we should now hit Hamas hard. Both Olmert and Tzipi, along with most of the cabinet, were also in favor of doing so. But my long-held view, reinforced by the recent war against Hizbollah in Lebanon, was that we had to begin by deciding what we wanted to accomplish, and what was possible. Only then could we take action. I told the cabinet that, operationally, we were perfectly 405 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028253

/ BARAK / 120 capable to taking over Gaza. But what then, I asked. Unless we were prepared to resume open-ended Israeli control, we'd be left with no one to run Gaza afterwards. The obvious candidate, Egypt, was even less interested than we were in assuming responsibility for the more than one-and-a-half million Palestinians who lived there. I doubted that even Arafat would have been ready to do so. But relations had only worsened, since his death in 2004, between the Fatah old guard in the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank and the Hamas overlords in Gaza. I doubted very much that Abu Mazen would want to get involved. I did send an aide to see him to ask whether, in principle, he was open to reassuming control of Gaza following an Israeli takeover. His answer was unsurprising and unequivocal: no. I secured cabinet support for the more limited aim of restoring a period of calm for Israeli citizens in the south. I said the military operation had to be as sharp and short as possible, and end with some kind of political understanding that the rockets would stop for a significant period of time. The final plan was presented to ministers a few days before the operation. It would begin with surprise air strikes and a naval bombardment, followed by a limited ground incursion to hit remaining Hamas targets outside of the major refugee camps, which I was determined to avoid. The whole operation was intended to last for two weeks at the most. Hopefully, closer to a week, with diplomatic efforts through Egypt to secure a lasting cease-fire and, ideally, prevent Hamas from resupplying its rocket stockpiles through its smuggling tunnels from the Sinai. When we launched Operation Cast Lead on the morning of December 27, nearly all the Hamas forces were where we'd expected them to be. Two waves of air strikes, with over a hundred jets and attack helicopters, killed 350 Hamas fighters. We destroyed Hamas's headquarters and dozens of its government and police installations. The attacks continued in the days that followed. We took a range of actions designed to minimize civilian casualties. We dropped leaflets before bombing sorties, phoned residents, and fired light missiles before heavier ordnance was used. Still, I realized that civilian casualties were unavoidable - if only because Hamas, like Hizbollah in Lebanon, was deliberately firing its rockets from civilian areas, sometimes even near schools or hospitals. Civilian casualties were obviously tragic in themselves. They also made it inevitable that the longer the operation went on, the more likely we were to face international criticism, and diplomatic pressure to bring it to an end. That was an additional reason I had insisted that the operation be well defined and time-limited 406 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028254

/ BARAK / 121 But both Olmert and Tzipi soon fell prey to the same self-defeating temptation that had worried me during the meandering war against Hizbollah. Our ground incursion began a few days into the operation. The intention was to stay for a few more days and then, responding to inevitable international appeals, call a halt to a campaign that had already achieved nearly all of its targets. Perhaps wanting to balance the failures in Lebanon there with "success" in Gaza, Olmert wanted us to continue, and expand our attacks deeper into Gaza. I reminded him that we'd agreed the aims beforehand. The longer we stayed, the less clear any gains would be. Yes, our ground forces had so far faced virtually no resistance or casualties. "But that's because we're outside the main populated areas," I said. "The deeper we get in, the better it will be for Hamas. They gain simply by surviving, like Hizbollah." Yet Olmert kept insisting that we'd succeeded so far, so let's not stop. It wasn't until January 17, three weeks after the operation began, that we announced a cease-fire. Militarily, the operation was a success. While Hamas launched nearly 3,000 rockets into Israel in the year before our attack, there were only 300 in the year that followed. But politically and diplomatically, the extra week reduced, rather than helped, the chances of reaching an understanding for a longer-term reduction of the attacks. To the extent there was any political gain, it was to burnish Tzipi Livni's credentials as a tough potential Prime Minister ahead of the election. That was not her intent. Of all the politicians I've known, she is among the least interested in such games, especially with lives at stake. But it was one of the effects. She won the election, in a photo finish, with opinion polls suggesting she'd been effective in shaping the campaign as a choice "between Tzipi and Bibi." Kadima got 28 Knesset seats, to 27 for Bibi and the Likud, which gave her the first crack at forming a government. There's no way of disguising the fact that Labor's result in my first election back in charge was a disappointment. We went down six seats, to 13. The big gainer was a far-right, stridently anti-Arab party called Yisrael Beitenu, led by a former Likudnik named A vigdor Lieberman. Tzipi's attempt to form a coalition became less a political process than a contest between rival stalls in a Middle Eastern bazaar. Bibi was holding parallel talks with the Orthodox parties critical to assembling a parliamentary majority. He was matching and raising every assurance of a ministerial seat or budgetary concession that Tzipi was prepared to offer. In the end, she threw up her hands, saying she refused to draw out a process which was not so much a negotiation as organized extortion. I am 407 HOUSE _OVERSIGHT_028255

/ BARAK / 122 sure she won the respect of many Israelis for taking an all-to-rare stand of principle. She certainly won mine. But I was not alone in wondering whether it was worth the price that she, Kadima, and the country would pay as a result: Bibi's return as Prime Minister in a Likud-led coalition. Though I was not surprised when he asked me to remain as Defense Minister, and to keep Labor inside the coalition, that was not an easy argument to make to my reduced Knesset contingent. They saw joining Bibi, especially in a government with the right-wing Lieberman as Foreign Minister, as a betrayal of all the efforts that they and I had made to achieve peace with the Palestinians. Still, the decision on whether to join the coalition ultimately rested with the party central committee, almost every one of whose members was on a local government council. For them, the choice was between a share of power, however limited, and the wilderness of opposition. So we joined Bibi's government. I was personally in favor of our doing so, but for more complicated reasons. I knew that Bibi's background, his instincts and his undeniably powerful political rhetoric were all firmly rooted on the political right. I recognized that he was often more interested in politics than policy, and perhaps above both of those, in the tactical maneuvering required to consolidate his political position. But I had known him long enough to dismiss the suggestions of many of my colleagues that he was intellectually shallow. I felt he was capable of doing what was best for Israel, and that he had a basic pragmatism that would guide how he got there. All that, however, was just a reason for not saying "no" when he asked me and Labor to stay on. The reason I felt it was right to say yes had to two with specific policy challenges. The first was to ensure there at least some peace process with the Palestinians. But that, in turn, was in large part because I believed it would win us the diplomatic support, especially from the Americans, needed to tackle a more urgent threat. It again involved an enemy state trying to get nuclear weapons. But not Syria. The Islamic theocracy of Iran. We'd been aware for a number of years about Iranian efforts to go nuclear. The Mossad had notched up a series of successes in delaying the Iranians from getting there. But they were getting inexorably closer. In fact, when I'd taken over as Defense Minister under Olmert, I formally directed the new chief-of-staff, Gaby Ashknazi, to get to work on a plan to attack the most important facilities in the Iranians' nuclear network, with the aim of pushing back the point at which they might develop a bomb by five to six years. But it became clear we didn't have the 408 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028256

/ BARAK / 123 operational capacity to mount such an attack, in part because we lacked the necessary bunker-busting bombs and the tanker aircraft to get us to Iran and back. I did seek help from the Americans. I met Defense Secretary Bob Gates, CIA director Mike Hayden, National Security Adviser Steve Hadley and even President Bush himself. While not explicitly mentioning that we were planning military action against Iran, I sounded them out on the prospects of getting more heavy munitions, and possibly leasing several US tanker aircraft. Yet in our final meeting with President Bush, during a visit to Israel in June 2008, he made it clear to Olmert and me that he knew what we were up to. Olmert hosted a private dinner for the President. Afterwards, Bush asked to talk privately. Olmert poured us each a glass of whiskey and lit a cigar, and we sank into brown leather armchairs. Smiling, the president looked straight at me, and said to Olmert: "This guy scares the living shit out of me when he tells me what you want." He told Olmert how I'd asked for heavy munitions, tankers and a variety of other military equipment. "Remember. I'm a former F-16 pilot," he said. "I know how to connect the dots." Then, turning more serious, he added: "I want to tell both of you now, as President, the formal position of the US government. We are totally against any action by you to mount an attack on the nuclear plants." The effect was all the more dramatic because of his Administration's support for our attack on the reactor in Syria the year before. "I repeat," Bush said, , "in order to avoid any misunderstanding. We expect you not to do it. And we're not going to do it, either, as long as I am President. I wanted it to be clear." Olmert said nothing, so I replied. "Mr President, we're in no position to tell you what the position of the United States should be. But I can tell you what I believe history will have to say. I'm reminded by what we call, in field artillery, "bracketing and halving.'" I said that in the wake of the Al-Qaeda attack on the Twin Towers, he had fired one shell long, in Afghanistan, and another one short, in Iraq. "But when the time came to hit the real target - Iran - it ended up you'd already spent two terms, and all your political capital." He seemed neither insulted nor unsettled by my remark. He simply nodded. Perhaps, in part, because he was pretty sure that we lacked the ability to attack the Iranian facilities anyway. We still lacked that capacity when I became Defense Minister in Bibi's government in May 2009. But the main reason I'd stayed in the job, and my main 409 HOUSE _OVERSIGHT_028257

/ BARAK / 124 focus from the day Bibi's government took office, was to do all I could to change that. 410 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028258

/ BARAK / 125 Chapter I wenty-Five I had hoped that in facing down the nuclear threat from Iran, I could nudge Bibi towards a reengagement with the Palestinians - not with great enthusiasm, but as an act of pure political pragmatism. There were only two ways we could stop the Iranians from getting a nuclear weapon: for the Americans to make sure that happened, or not to hinder Israel from doing so. Either was going to be a lot harder if there was tension with the new American president, Barack Obama, over moves to revive the peace process with the Palestinians. I didn't expect it to be put to the test so soon. Yet within weeks of our taking office, President Obama launched an effort to restart negotiations, declaring it "intolerable" that there was still not a Palestinian state. He was explicit about what Israel needed to do. In an Oval Office meeting with Bibi in May 2009, and in a speech in Cairo the next month, he called for a total halt to settlement construction on the West Bank. US opposition to settlements wasn't new. For years, Washington's position had been that they represented "an obstacle to peace." The main issue wasn't even the creation of new settlements, since there had been almost none in recent years. It was the expansion of existing ones. The Jewish population on the West Bank had been about 190,000 when I became Prime Minister. In the decade since then, it had grown to 315,000 - more than half-a- million if you counted the Jewish neighborhoods built inside the expanded, post- 1967 boundaries of Jerusalem. The expansion - "natural growth" as we euphemistically described it to the Americans - was what President Obama now wanted Bibi to end. I had no illusions about how hard it would be to get him to agree. With each passing year since Camp David, the pro-settlement right wing in Israel had become more confident and influential. In a way, the settlers and their supporters - passionately devoted to a "Greater Israel" and opposed to any Palestinian state - had become the 21"-century equivalent of the kibbutz avant-garde of a half-century earlier. The rise of Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party was the latest sign, alongside a move rightward within the Likud itself. For Bibi to say yes to a settlement freeze would mean putting aside his own short-term political interests in recognition of the importance of our alliance with the Americans. He'd actually done this, twice, during his first term as Prime Minister. He had agreed to give the 411 HOUSE _OVERSIGHT_028259

/ BARAK / 126 Palestinians control of most of Hebron, and accepted further withdrawals under the Wye River agreement. But amid predictable protests from the right, he had promptly retreated from his Wye commitments. I knew that his default response to Obama's call for a settlement freeze would be "no." And it was, delivered first to the cabinet and then to the public, as soon as he got back from his talks with the President. In my repeated meetings with Bibi in the weeks that followed - both one-on- one, and within the informal group of close ministers and aides known as the Group of Eight - I tried to persuade him that, if only because of America's key role on Iran, we needed to show some sign of engagement with Obama's efforts. I was not entirely alone. One ally was an old friend: Dan Meridor, who had rejoined the Likud before the election. Another was more unexpected: Avigdor Lieberman. He was never going to accept a settlement freeze. Not only did his heart, and political interests, lie on the West Bank. He lived there. But like many in the party he led, he had come to Israel from the former Soviet Union, shaping a worldview that in many ways remained European, and pro-Western. He was worried about creating the impression of blanket Israeli intransigence toward a popular new American President, and isolating ourselves internationally, if we didn't go some way towards helping to restart talks with the Palestinians. Though Bibi showed no signs of retreat on the settlement freeze, he did accept that broader point. Ten days after Obama's Cairo speech, he publicly accepted the idea of a Palestinian state for the first time, having ruled it out as recently as the month before in his White House talks with the President. The shift was dismissed as trivial not just by the Palestinians, but by many in my own Labor party and almost everyone else on the left. I disagreed. I knew how deep, genuine and longstanding Bibi's resistance to Palestinian statehood was. But I had another, serious concern about the "peace plan" he announced: an entirely new precondition he insisted the Palestinians must meet if peace was ever going to be possible. He said they must "clearly and unambiguously recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people." On a whole series of levels, that made no sense to me. We hadn't asked Egypt or Jordan to grant us explicit recognition as a Jewish state when we made peace with them. Even when Bibi himself had briefly tried to open negotiations with Damascus in his first period as Prime Minister, we'd never felt the need to ask it of the Syrians either. To the extent there was any logic in demanding it of the Palestinians, Bibi's reasoning seemed to be that this would 412 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028260

/ BARAK / 127 neutralize any recidivist claims to all of Palestine, especially since we had around 1.5 million Arab citizens living inside our pre-1967 borders. But as I told Bibi, that was a red herring. There was a more straightforward, legally binding answer: a peace treaty which, as with Egypt and Jordan, declared an end to our conflict and to any further claims on either side. My main concern was more fundamental. Bibi's new approach contradicted the central thrust of Zionism: that after centuries of powerlessness and persecution, Jews would finally take control of their own destiny. We now had our state. It was more than six decades old. "Why do we need the Palestinians, or anyone, to validate us as a Jewish state? Why propose something that implies the Palestinians somehow have a say in what kind of state we choose to be?" Yet the more I pressed him, the clearer it became that the substance didn't much matter to Bibi. His move was political, and tactical, aimed at staking out a position of power in the diplomatic process. Besides, he didn't expect any new negotiations to make real progress anyway. As Defense Minister, I had scope for taking steps with the Palestinians on my own. With Bibi's knowledge and tacit acceptance, I established a particularly strong relationship with Abu Mazen's Prime Minister, Salaam Fayyad. A respected economist, he operated on the assumption that neither violence nor negotiations seemed likely to lead the Palestinians to statehood as things now stood. He saw his role as doing an end-run. He would put in place the institutions, the infrastructure, the economy, the internal security and the stability needed for an eventual state to succeed. He was trying to do for the Palestinians what Ben-Gurion had done before 1948. He and I met and talked often but discreetly - sometimes in his office in Ramallah, sometimes in mine, sometimes over dinner in the 3 1st -floor flat I was renting in central Tel Aviv. I remember one dinner in particular. I led him onto the terrace after we'd eaten. It was a startlingly clear night. You could see as far north as Lebanon and, since the West Bank was barely a dozen miles away, the twinkling lights of Ramallah as well. He gazed in that direction, then at the bright lights of the avenues and restaurants and cafés far below us. Smiling, he said: "Ehud, why do you need Ramallah when you've got Tel Aviv?" I smiled back. There was no need to reply. He knew my views. Not only didn't Israel need Ramallah. I was more convinced than ever that it was in our own interest, by treaty if possible and unilateral disengagement if not, to remove Israel from all of the major towns and cities of the West Bank. 413 HOUSE _OVERSIGHT_028261

/ BARAK / 128 I issued a standing directive in the kirya that we should agree to anything Fayyad asked for, as long as there no security reason to say no. We ended up arranging a direct source of fuel supply to Jenin, on the northern edge of the West Bank, and built new terminals to handle it. We facilitated construction permits for a new industrial zone. For a conference of international economists and business people, we set up VIP treatment at Ben-Gurion Airport, and limousine transport to the conference venue. I believed that if Fayyad succeeded in what he was trying to accomplish, it would be a benefit not just for the Palestinians, but for Israel too. Bibi was agnostic on Fayyad's efforts. Yet he recognized they did no harm. And in a way, my support for them was politically convenient. To the extent the international community, especially the Americans, appreciated our efforts to help the Palestinians, Bibi and others in the government could, and did, claim credit. When there were complaints from the right, Bibi could and did say: "It wasn't me. It was Barak." My part in our relations with the Americans was more politically delicate. As I continued to prod Bibi toward accepting a settlement freeze during the summer and autumn of 2009, my de facto role became to help smooth over the increasingly rough edges in our ties with the Obama administration. I knew key figures from earlier incarnations in their public lives and mine: Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, who had been President George H. W. Bush's deputy security adviser in the first Iraq war and then head of the CIA; and Hillary Clinton, now Secretary of State. During a series of early trips to the US as Defense Minister, I met Gates, Hillary and other senior figures in the administration both formally and informally. In part because they were aware I favored agreeing to a settlement freeze, they clearly found it a lot easier to talk to me than to Bibi. On one visit, to my regret and Bibi's evident frustration once I'd got home, the press highlighted this dramatic difference in mood. Emerging from talks with me at the State Department, Hillary told reporters that our talks had gone "wonderfully." She added: "As longtime friends do, much was said. And much didn't need to be said." Still, I was careful to avoid any explicit criticism of Bibi in my meetings in the US. I would point out the domestic political pressures on him in deciding how to proceed. And in any case, the Americans knew that no matter what I might say to them, it was Bibi's actions that ultimately mattered. He, not I, was Prime Minister. I was as surprised as they were when he finally announced a settlement freeze in November 2009. As with nearly everything else he did regarding the peace 414 HOUSE _OVERSIGHT_028262

/ BARAK / 129 process, it was hedged with several conditions. The freeze would not be open- ended, but last for 10 months, as a way of boosting the effort to restart negotiations. It would apply to new construction, not work already underway. And it would exclude the post-1967 neighborhoods inside the expanded city limits of Jerusalem. Like his other moves, it was also dismissed as insignificant by the Palestinians. Though there was a formal restarting of the talks, they went almost nowhere during the period of the freeze, which Bibi cited as a reason for not extending it further. From then on, the negotiations produced even less. I didn't buy the narrative that this was entirely Bibi's fault. Abu Mazen remained steadfastly, deliberately passive. Obviously not inclined to take the risk of further widening his rift with Hamas in Gaza, he was content to echo the Obama administration's argument that nothing could happen until there was a settlement freeze. Once the freeze was announced, he went through the motions, avoiding all the difficult issues, in the expectation Washington would ensure the freeze was renewed. President Obama's initial Mideast moves had made it much easier for Abu Mazen to avoid any serious engagement. In contrast to past presidents, Obama had placed almost all of the onus for progress on Israel. But the end result also suited Bibi. Though I never entirely gave up hope of persuading him it was in Israel's interest to seek a resolution of our conflict with the Palestinians, it became more evident as the months went on that his aim was simply to keep things ticking over, and avoid any major new crisis. He appointed an old personal friend - a corporate lawyer named Yitzhak Molcho - as our negotiator. I finally realized how pointless the exercise was when, during a visit to the United States, I found myself in New York at the same time as Molcho. We met at the Israeli consulate. We spoke in detail about the state of the negotiations. With Molcho still in the room, I phoned Bibi in Jerusalem on the secure phone line. I said I'd just been updated on the talks, and it seemed clear there were a number of suggestions Israel could make, with no domestic political risk but with every prospect of improving the atmosphere and accelerating progress. "Yitzhak is one of Israel's top lawyers," I said. "He's struck dozens of deals in his life. But he strikes a deal when that's what his client wants. You are the client. If you tell him: bring me back the best deal you can - not a peace treaty, just a deal on a specific issue - he'll do it. But if his brief is simply to negotiate, he can go on negotiating forever. And it's pretty clear me that's his brief." Bibi insisted I was wrong. He said that what I saw as time-wasting was simple prudence, to make sure the negotiations bore fruit. But his approach never changed. Whenever it came 415 HOUSE _OVERSIGHT_028263

/ BARAK / 130 up in our inner Group of Eight discussions, I could usually count only on Dan Meridor, and occasionally a handful of others, to argue in favor of any form of initiative on our side. In private meetings, Bibi did sometimes engage in discussion about what Israel might do. But he invariably steered the conversation elsewhere, insisting that the real issue was the Palestinians' lack of any interest in making peace. My main worry wasn't the immediate future of the negotiations. For now, the chances of an agreement seemed close to zero. It was the longer-term damage Bibi's approach would do in further delaying any serious move by Israel to put our relations with the Palestinians on a more stable and sustainable footing. The dithering, delay and deadlock suited him politically. Ironically, my own efforts on the security front had also made it easier for us to do next to nothing. Intermittent outbreaks of violence always remained a threat. Yet the West Bank security fence, along with our military, police and intelligence measures, meant it was very unlikely we'd see a return to the full-blown terror war of the second intifada. I was also working to secure US support for our development of increasingly effective anti-missile weapons to reduce the threat from Hamas in Gaza. The overall result was that for many, if not most, Israelis, the conflict with the Palestinians didn't impact on their day-to-day lives. It was unseen and largely unfelt. Still, the effect of the stalemate on our relationship with Washington did matter: both for our security cooperation on things like the anti-missile weapons and, crucially, the challenge which had led me into Bibi's government in the first place: keeping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. * It was a race against time. The Iranians were producing more and more yellowcake, building more advanced centrifuges, accumulating more low-enriched uranium. They were getting better at hiding and protecting the network of facilities being used to try to produce a nuclear weapon. And in the early months of Bibi's Prime Ministership, the question we faced wasn't even whether to take military action against Iran - something I knew, from Bob Gates and others, that the Obama administration viewed no more favourably than George W. Bush. It was 416 HOUSE _OVERSIGHT_028264

/ BARAK / 131 whether that would even be possible to strike before the Iranians entered their "zone of immunity" — the point at which the amount of damage we could do to their nuclear program would be too negligible to be worth the operational, political and diplomatic risks from such an attack. In the early months, my priority was to ensure we at least had a military option. A full year before joining Bibi's government, as Defense Minister under Olmert, I'd first tried to put an operational plan in place, only to find that the lack of heavy munitions and refuelling aircraft made it impossible. That was especially frustrating because at that point, our experts calculated that a successful strike could have set back the Iranian nuclear effort by about six years. Given the Iranians' knowledge we could attack again, and their need to restart clandestine efforts to secure key components abroad, that meant a very real prospect of ending the nuclear program altogether. On joining Bibi's government, I began working, both with the kirya and the engineers and technological experts in our military industries, to make sure we had the weaponry and equipment, and an operational plan for a surgical strike. It was not until mid- 2010, a year into Bibi's government, that I was confident we'd reached that point, in part thanks to Israeli-produced heavy bombs and tanker aireraft. Our experts estimated we would still be able to set back the Iranian nuclear efforts by up to four years, almost certainly enough to end them indefinitely. Yet making military action possible proved to be the easy part. The question now became whether we should be prepared to launch a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. Answering it was like a contest of three-dimensional chess, involving both an internal debate among Israel's political and military leadership and discussions with an Obama administration whose priority remained to negotiate an end to Iran's nuclear program. On major security decisions in Israel, two ministers always mattered the most: the Prime Minister and Defense Minister. Neither Bibi nor I doubted we had to ready to strike if that proved necessary. Nor did Foreign Minister Lieberman. Even for us, it was an option to be considered only when all other ways to rein in the Iranians were failing. We also agreed on two other preconditions. We would have to secure international legitimacy, most of all from the Americans, for what would be a clear act of self-defense. And we'd need to demonstrate an imperative urgency to act, with the approach of the "zone of immunity" that would take any military option off the table for good. Ideally, we hoped the US-led campaign of economic and diplomatic pressure would get Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions, as Libya had done in the wake of 417 HOUSE _OVERSIGHT_028265

/ BARAK / 132 its terror attack on a Pan American airliner in the late 1980s. Or, as in South Africa, that a change in nuclear policy might come from a change in régime in Tehran. Yet realistically, we couldn't count on either. And there was no doubt in our minds that a nuclear Iran represented a hugely serious threat. If the Shi'ite Muslim regime in Iran did get a nuclear weapon, Sunni Arab states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and Turkey as well, would try to go nuclear. Neither they nor we could assume that Iran was developing a bomb as a mere act of deterrence. We couldn't exclude the possibility that, especially in a crisis threatening the survival of the ayatollahs' rule, Iran would use the weapons it was developing. It could even send a nuclear device in a container smuggled on board a commercial vessel docking in one of Israel's ports. While few in Israel disputed the seriousness of the threat, a number of top political and military figures had deep misgivings about military action. Given the need for secrecy, most of our discussions took place within the so-called Group of Eight, often also including the chief of staff and other top generals from the kirya. Both Dan Meridor and Benny Begin, Menachem Begin's son and a minister without portfolio, were opposed to an Israeli attack from the start. They were convinced that the implications for the region, and for our relations with the wider world, were difficult to predict and potentially dire. Dan raised a further concern. He feared an Israeli attack might actually intensify Iran's effort to get a nuclear bomb, only now with political cover, because it would argue it was acting in self- defense. The view of those opposed to an Israeli strike was that we should rely on American economic and political pressure to deal with the threat. And, if that failed, on American military action. In November 2010, the internal debate came to a head, at a meeting involving the Group of Eight as well as the chief of staff, the head of military intelligence and the commander of the air force. We convened in a villa that the Mossad kept for clandestine foreign visitors, near the coastal road north of Tel Aviv. The meeting began with a presentation by the generals of our attack plan. There was still a core of ministers opposed: chiefly Dan Meridor and Benny Begin, but also Boogie Ya'alon, a former Sayeret Matkal commander and chief of staff who Minister of Strategic Affairs. But the confidence and detail with which the plan was laid out, and the fact that Bibi, Lieberman and I were in favor of being prepared to act, gave me the sense that a majority would back military action if it became necessary. The proviso would be the need for the chief-of-staff, and ideally 418 HOUSE@ _OVERSIGHT_028266

/ BARAK / 133 the heads of military intelligence and Mossad, to sign off on the operational viability of the plan. That was what now ended any prospect of military action, at least for a few months. Bibi, Lieberman and I withdrew into a side room to talk with the chief of staff, Gaby Ashkenazi, as well as the heads of military intelligence, the Mossad and and Shin Bet. We emphasized that no final decision on whether to attack had been taken. That would require a further meeting with the Group of Eight, and then the full cabinet. But we asked each of them for their views on the operation. We knew they had political reservations, along the lines of those voiced by Dan Meridor. On an issue of this magnitude, it was accepted practice that military and intelligence commanders could weigh in on the political implications as well. But their formal role was operational and professional. Ashkenazi and the other generals did concede that in every area - planning, materiel, training and intelligence - our attack plan was far ahead of where it had been a year earlier. Yet Ashkenazi, in particular, concluded that the preparations had not yet "crossed the threshold of operational capability" I was furious. I respected the considered opposition of ministers like Dan or Benny Begin. I had no problem with the chief-of-staff or other generals expressing similar views on the political or geo-strategic implications of an Israeli attack, even though our intelligence assessments suggested the concerns were almost certainly unfounded. Yet what I found astonishing was Ashkenazi's suggestion that the "operational threshold" had not been crossed. Yes, this would be a demanding mission. It was not without risks. No operation was. But having followed every stage and detail of the preparations - and as a former chief of staff and intelligence chief myself - I believed it was simply wrong on a professional level to say that we lacked the capacity, and a workable plan, for a military strike if the order was given. Ashkenazi's objection did mean there was no way we were going to attack at least until well into the new year. Our discussions would continue, as would our refinement and strengthening of the attack plan. So would Iran's progress toward its "zone of immunity," which we now believed would begin late in 2012, a couple of years away. As that point drew closer, we'd face an ever-more-pressing need to decide finally whether military action was necessary. 419 HOUSE _OVERSIGHT_028267

/ BARAK / 134 Yet the delay in getting to that point had serious implications for my role as Labor Party leader. Since the negotiations with the Palestinians were stuck in neutral, I was under increasing pressure from within Labor to pull out of Bibi's government. What on earth was the point of staying, they asked. All I was doing, from their perspective, was giving Bibi political cover for abandoning any serious effort to get a peace agreement. Their argument was entirely reasonable. My frustration was that, due to the need for military secrecy, the counter-argument was impossible for me to make: that I felt I had a responsibility to stay at a time when there remained a real possibility Israel might need to take military action against Iran. To a mix of consternation and anger among many Labor colleagues, I ended up taking what seemed to me the only realistic option. In January 2011, I left the Labor Party. With three other of our ministers in the government - who were, of course, aware of the ongoing Iran discussions - I set up a new "centrist, Zionist" party called Ha'Atzmaut, or Independence. We remained in Bibi's government. My main focus was now on the Americans. In order to secure the "international legitimacy" any Israeli attack required, we had to win at least their understanding that we might feel it necessary to act. Fortunately, I had built up a good relationship with the key figures in the Obama administration. That had not always been easy, given the tension between the Americans and Bibi. That wasn't just because of the deadlock in the peace process, still a priority for President Obama. There were other complications. Ever since the initial pressure for a settlement freeze, right-wing politicians and commentators, and Bibi himself, had taken to portraying President Obama as fundamentally unsympathetic to Israel. After the Republicans' victory in the mid-term Congressional elections in November 2010, Bibi went a step further. He began cozying up to congressmen and senators on the other side of the aisle. This overt meddling in the internal politics of our closest ally was not just a breach of longstanding tradition, but of common sense. Members of the Administration began privately calling Bibi "the Republican senator from Rechavia" - a reference to the Jerusalem neighborhood where the Prime Minister's residence was located. 420 HOUSE _OVERSIGHT_028268

/ BARAK / 135 Yet especially with my main points of contact in the administration - first Bob Gates and then his successor, Leon Panetta, as Secretary of Defense - our broadly shared views, mutual respect, and the strength of the US-Israeli alliance outweighed any of that. Neither they, nor indeed President Obama, wavered from their commitment to the principle that Israel needed to retain our "qualitative military advantage" over any combination of threats we might face, nor to the $3 billion package of annual US aid that underpinned it. We were even able to agree on additional US backing for our increasingly effective range of anti-missile systems: the Arrow, against long-range ballistic missiles, developed in coordination with the US defense contractor Raytheon; "David's Sling," to target enemy forces' mid-range missiles, cruise missiles and aircraft; and our new Iron Dome system, integrating sophisticated Israeli radar and guidance technology and designed to deal with the missile threat from Hizbollah on our northern border and Hamas in Gaza. It had not yet been used in battle. But from test firings, we were confident it could destroy incoming rockets with nearly 90-per-cent success. By late 2011, the issue of Iran had taken on much greater urgency. There was still no sign the American-led diplomatic efforts were succeeding in removing the nuclear threat. As for an American military strike, though the President intermittently declared that "all options" remained on the table, I knew from senior administration members that it was extremely unlikely to happen. Iran, meanwhile, had been acquiring thousands more centrifuges, more uranium, and heavier protection around its key sites. And the "window of vulnerability" was now only about a year away. Operationally and politically, at least now a majority of the key players in Israel agreed that we had to be prepared to take military action if there was no alternative way to rein in the Iranians. Ashkenazi's successor as chief-of-staff, Benny Gantz, had signed off on the attack plan. While the Iranians were getting ever closer to nuclear-weapons capability, the strike force that we were assembling was also better equipped, trained and prepared to mount a complex, yet almost certainly successful, operation. The damage to Iran's nuclear ambitions would be considerably less than if we had acted earlier. But our intelligence analysts still estimated we could set back the Iranians' program by about two years. The immediate problem turned out to be timing. A major joint military exercise with the Americans, agreed on two years earlier, was due to take place in Israel in April 2012. It would include Patriot missile batteries, naval vessels, and thousands 421 HOUSE _OVERSIGHT_028269

/ BARAK / 136 of uniformed US personnel. The focus was, of all things, on defense against a missile attack from Iran. I contacted Leon Panetta to see whether we could delay it. The official reason cited by the Americans, when they agreed to do it, did have the merit of being true: that Bibi was coming under pressure to shift our budgetary priorities away from defense toward social and economic issues. But Panetta understood that my request for a delay meant we were at least considering military action. He also realized that if we did launch an attack, it was in the Americans' own interest for their troops be as far away from Israel as possible. We agreed to reschedule the exercise for October 2012. That meant that if we did decide to attack, we'd have until well into September, when significant numbers of US troops would begin arriving. As we weighed our final decision, I held a series of high-level meetings in Washington: with Panetta, national security adviser Tom Donilon, Hillary Clinton, and President Obama himself. Though not explicitly saying we were ready to attack, I left no doubt that we were seriously considering it, and explained the reasons we believed our country's fundamental security interests might make it necessary. The message from all of the Americans I met was that the administration shared our basic goal: to prevent, or at least seriously impair, Iran's drive to get a nuclear bomb. But they continued to believe that non-military pressure was the best way to do it. The Americans knew we were skeptical that the non-military route would work, and that we were deeply worried about the implications of not taking military action if it failed. I discussed our thinking - and, in general terms, our plans - in my meetings with Panetta. He already had a pretty good idea of the broad contours of what we were contemplating, since US radar systems and electronic intercepts had been recording the volume and nature of air force exercises we'd been conducting over recent months. Leon and I had by now got to know each other well, having first met when he was in charge of the CIA at the start of the Obama administration. In one of our early meetings at CIA headquarters in Langley, there had been a small bunch of grapes on his desk and I plucked a few in my mouth with obvious enjoyment. Now, at the Pentagon, he had a big bowlful ready whenever we met. The fact that he opposed an Israeli military operation made him no less of a pleasure to deal with. He was unfailingly calm and even tempered. He had an encyclopedic grasp of issues of defense, intelligence, budgets and policy. He was always rock-solid in America's commitments to Israel. It's worth 422 HOUSE _OVERSIGHT_028270

/ BARAK / 137 remembering that, in spite of Israel's insistence from 1948 onward that we would never ask others to do our fighting for us, even as Leon and I were meeting, US radar operators were working around the clock to provide us with early warning against any incoming Iranian missiles. Patriot batteries were ready to deploy in Israel within 72 hours of any attack. AEGIS naval vessels were within 96 hours of our shores, to reinforce Israel's Arrow missile defense system with sea-launched weapons. Panetta made no secret of the fact he didn't want us to launch a military strike, effectively killing off the many months of intensive work the Americans had devoted to building international political and economic pressure on the Iranians. He urged me to "think twice, three times," before going down that road. But he recognized that Israel would be affected far more dramatically by a nuclear Iran. "It's your conflict. It's your neighborhood," he said. At one point, he asked me outright: "If you do decide to attack the Iranian facilities, when will we know?" I told him we couldn't give him more than a few hours' notice. Otherwise, the Americans would have to alert their bases in the Gulf, and worldwide. That might well put Iran on guard before our operation was launched. But I did recognize our responsibility not to leave the Americans in the dark, not only because they were a key ally but because their own military and naval personnel might be at risk from any Iranian retaliation. "We know your command-post deployment and the communications protocols with your forces," I told him. "We'll make sure you have enough time to tell your people," I said. "We won't endanger a single American life, any of your positions or your personnel." My most important meeting was with the President. Though I knew him less well than I did Panetta, we had met on a number of occasions. The first time was when he was still Senator Obama, on a visit to Israel during the 2008 presidential campaign. As Defense Minister, I escorted him to Sderot, the town in southern Israel bearing the brunt of Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza. Back in Jerusalem, we spent a half-hour talking in my office: about Iran. I argued that a nuclear Iran was a challenge not only for Israel and the Middle East, but for America, too. I urged him, if elected, to commission an early study of what the Iranians were seeking to do and what could be done to stop them either by diplomatic means or, if necessary, by force. Also, what the Iranians could, or more relevantly could not, do in response to an American or indeed an Israel attack, since our intelligence assessments suggested their options for retaliation would be fairly limited. Obama 423 HOUSE _OVERSIGHT_028271

/ BARAK / 138 struck me from that first meeting as strong, cool-headed, highly intelligent and intensely cerebral. Though we didn't go into the details of the Iranian nuclear threat, he did talk at some length about the implications for the region, and about broader Middle Eastern security challenges. He displayed a grasp of the cultural and political nuances of an increasingly diverse and complex world that was more impressive than many of the other American political or military leaders whom I'd met. When he and I now returned to the issue of Iran, in the White House, he had an undeniable command of the details of Iran's nuclear program, and of the American military options, should he choose to use them. He opened by summarizing the US position. He emphasized that his and our objective was the same: the keep Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. We were already cooperating to achieve that, for instance through cyber-attacks to slow down the nuclear program. The difference, he said, was that Israeli leaders seemed to feel an urgent need to reach a decision on military action. In Obama's view, such a move would be both premature and potentially harmful to the coalition he'd helped assemble to exert diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran. Maybe you had to be an Israeli truly to understand our urgency about Iran. In the early years of the state, the explanation we gave for our preoccupation with security - our near-obsession, as some non-Israelis saw it - was that we were surrounded by Arab countries pledged not just to defeat us, but erase us from the map. Egypt or Syria, Jordan or Iraq, could afford to lose an Arab-Israeli war. Israel's first defeat, however, would be its last. That picture had changed dramatically over the decades. We no longer had to worry about the prospect of losing a war. The "qualitative edge" we possessed over all enemy armies in the region ensured that. As Israel's chief of staff, Prime Minister, and now Defense Minister, I had made it a major priority to safeguard that advantage, not just through our alliance with the US but with the remarkable domestic resources we possessed in military engineering, manufacturing, design, invention and high-tech. But the new-order challenge represented by Iran was not just theoretical or academic. Though we had a policy of not commenting on on our own nuclear status, it was widely assumed in the Arab world and internationally that Israel had, at the very least, the capacity to manufacture nuclear weapons. But whatever nuclear capability we might possess was for deterrence. Even when threatened with conventional defeat, however briefly, in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, it is 424 HOUSE _OVERSIGHT_028272

/ BARAK / 139 worth noting that the conflict remained conventional. Iran was different. Only the most naïve observer would exclude the possibility that if the Iranians did get a nuclear weapon, they might use it. And even if they didn't, the entire strategic picture would change, with the need to find a response not just to a nuclear Iran, but potentially a nuclear Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. I was not about to lecture President Obama on this. While Bibi liked to portray him variously as weak, naïve or tone-deaf to interests and security of Israel, I knew from our previous meetings that he was none of these things. Yet I did, in a deliberately non-didactic way, raise the issue of our different perspectives on the Iranians' getting nuclear arms. "You see it in the context of the whole world," I told the President. "If Iran, in spite of all our efforts, gets a nuclear weapon, yes, it will be bad. But for you, it's just one more nuclear state. It won't dramatically change the situation for America. For us, it can turn into a real, existential threat." He agreed that we inevitably looked at the situation differently. But after pausing a few seconds, he said: "Ehud, think of it this way. You get to school in the morning and there's this big, nasty bully. You can take him on, maybe give him a black eye. But you have this bigger, stronger friend, who can knock him out cold. The only problem is that your friend won't be there until the afternoon." I would have liked nothing more than to wait for our "bigger, stronger" friend, especially since I knew through my contacts in the American military and intelligence establishment how much bigger and stronger an American attack would be. During the first couple of years that Israel was working on acquiring the capability for a military strike, the Americans had been no more ready than we were. They did have the tanker aircraft and the heavy bombs. But their plan - a kind of Iraq-style shock and awe - was so obviously prone to lead to a wider conflict that it would never have received the go-ahead from President Obama, or probably any president. I used to joke with colleagues in the Pentagon that while Israel's idea of a "surgical operation" was the equivalent of a scalpel, they seemed to favor a chisel and a ten-pound hammer. By the time I met the President in 2012, that had changed. Under Gates and then Panetta, an intensive research-and- development effort and enormously improved planning and training had yielded results. The Americans now had high-precision heavy munitions we couldn't dream of, and stealth air-attack capabilities we also lacked. They had an operational plan which, within a period of hours, could push the Iranian nuclear 425 HOUSE _OVERSIGHT_028273

/ BARAK / 140 program back by years. And even if the Iranians knew it was coming, they'd be able to do nothing to stop it. "Our problem, Mr, President," I said, "is that we can't be sure our friend will show up. Since Iran is already very nearly in a zone of immunity against an Israeli attack, we can't afford to wait until the afternoon. By then, with our capabilities, we won't even be able to give the bully a black eye." I said I trusted what he'd just told me. "I'm sure it genuinely reflects your intentions now. But there are no futures contracts in statesmanship. There's no way that you, or any leader, can commit yourself to what will happen in a year or two. When the moment of decision arrives, nothing will be able to free you from the responsibility to look at the situation as it is then, with American interests in mind." He accepted the point. But he reiterated his view that "kinetic action" - US security-speak for a military strike - would not only remove his ability to exhaust the non-military alternatives. He said it wouldn't be in Israel's interests, either. "We hear that even people high up in your military, in military intelligence and the Mossad, are against it." That, I couldn't deny. "We highly respect our top people in the military, and in intelligence. We make a point of listening to them before taking action," I said "But here's the difference. When they look up, they see Netanyahu, or me. When Bibi and I look up, we see heaven. Whoever is up there, we clearly can't go to them for advice. We are responsible for Israel's security." The president smiled, but brought the discussion back down to earth. When he again urged us to consider the American position in any decision, I replied: "Mr President, I feel compelled to tell you frankly how I see the situation. We highly appreciate, and are grateful, that America supports Israel in so many ways. I believe we're doing our best to support American interests in the Middle East as well. But when it comes to issues critical for the security and future of Israel, and in a way for the future of the Jewish people, we can't afford to delegate responsibility even to our best friend and ally. When we face such situations, we have to decide on our own, and act on our decisions. I would expect the United States, and you as its president, to respect that position." He did not seem especially happy with what I'd said. But he showed no anger. Though we differed, it was clear that he understood and respected our position. In any case, I believed it 426 HOUSE _OVERSIGHT_028274

/ BARAK / 141 was important to convey to him honestly, face-to-face, where Israel stood on Iran. Or at least where I stood *** With our joint exercises pushed back until the fall, the logical time for us to attack was the summer of 2012, when the atmospheric and weather conditions were optimal. Operationally, everything was ready. Politically, those ministers who were against military action had not changed their minds. If anything, they seemed more strongly opposed. Ironically, they now argued that because we'd waited so long, the Iranians were too close to their "window of immunity." Even some senior members of the military and security establishment, though in agreement over the technical aspects of the attack plan, retained political reservations. But as I'd told President Obama, now that we had the operational support of the military and intelligence professionals, the decision in effect rested with Bibi and me. The fact we were ready to go ahead in those circumstances was not unprecedented. When Menachem Begin ordered the bombing of Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor in 1981, he had acted against the advice of the then-heads of both the Mossad and military intelligence, the chairman of our nuclear energy commission, and of Shimon Peres, who was head of the Labor opposition. But as we neared our final, formal decision, we were forced into another delay. In the summer of 2012, an unrelated flare-up of tensions in the Gulf caused Iran and several of its neighbors to place their forces on heightened alert. Though the peak-alert phase passed quickly, Iran's military was still not back on a fully normal footing by the start of September, and when small American advance teams began arriving for the joint exercises, Iran's alert level went up again. Technically, we could still have gone ahead with the attack. In all probability, it would still have succeeded, setting back the Iranians' program by at least a year and, depending on how quickly they could rebuild and resupply clandestinely abroad, perhaps for significantly longer. But as more and more American soldiers and sailors arrived, I finally decided against an Israeli strike - not because I doubted the damage it would do to Iran's nuclear efforts, but because of the damage it would surely do to our ties with the 427 HOUSE _OVERSIGHT_028275

/ BARAK / 142 US. No matter how we might explain our attack, with the joint exercises soon to begin, it would come over as a deliberate attempt to implicate our most important ally in a potential conflict with Iran, against the explicit wishes of President Obama. I felt this even more strongly when, a few weeks later, I was contacted by one of Bibi's close political allies. He sounded me out on the possibility of launching our strike against Iran after the joint exercise: barely two weeks before the 2012 US election. Politically, he argued, Obama would then feel compelled to support Israel's action, or at the very least to refrain from criticizing it. In other words, we would be setting a political trap for the President of the United States. I couldn't quite believe he was suggesting it. But my reply to this last-gasp suggestion of a way for us to attack the Iranian sites required no hesitation, and only two words: "No way." Bibi would have known I would oppose such a ploy. But as with so much else in the years I spent in his government, I think it was the politics of the scheme, more than the substance, that enticed him. Almost everything he did seemed increasingly about creating a kind of grand narrative to secure his position on the right, solidifying a base which he figured would sustain him in office. At its core, the narrative presented a picture of vulnerability and victimhood: a kind of "fortress Israel" threatened by terror, missiles on its northern and southern borders, and now potential nuclear annihilation from Iran, while our main ally, the United States, was under the sway of a President who neither understood nor fundamentally supported us. In day-to-day policy terms, this allowed Bibi to insist we couldn't risk serious engagement with the Palestinians. On domestic issues as well, like the widening gap between those at the top of our high-tech economy and a painfully squeezed middle class, the sense of crisis he encouraged gave him license to hunker down, warn of impending doom, and do virtually nothing Effective though the narrative was for him politically, it bore no resemblance to reality. Yes, President Obama disagreed with us on issues of policy, both the peace process and on how to deal with Iran. But he was unquestionably committed to America's alliance with Israel. I had dealt face-to-face with four US presidents: both of the Bushes, President Clinton and now President Obama. In terms of Israeli security, none had proved as consistently supportive and helpful as Obama. And yes, Israel did face an array of security challenges. A nuclear-armed Iran would undeniably make things worse. But far from being under existential threat, we 428 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028276

/ BARAK / 143 were a regional superpower, with a military as effective as any in the world, and a high-tech economic sector justifiably compared to Silicon Valley. Every few weeks, Bibi, Lieberman and I would meet for a wide-ranging discussion on the patio of the Prime Minister's residence. Shortly after we'd abandoned the idea of a military strike, I raised head-on my objections to the skewed image Bibi was promoting of our country. It wasn't just inaccurate, I said Especially when his rhetoric was in full flight, and he compared the prospect of a nuclear Iran to a new "Holocaust," it struck me as a betrayal of the core tenet of Zionism: an state in which Jews were in control of their own destiny. "We are in that position now," I said. It was nonsensical to argue we were so threatened by everything around us, for instance, that we couldn't "risk" taking the initiative required to disentangle ourselves from the Palestinians on the West Bank. "I don't get you," I said, turning to Lieberman as well. "Your rhetoric suggests you have spines of steel. But your behavior is living proof of the old saying that it's easier to take Jews out of the galut, than take the galut out of the Jews." Galut is Hebrew for the diaspora. "The whole Zionist project was based on the idea of taking our fate into our own hands, and actively trying to change the reality around us. But you behave as if we never left the galut. You're mired in a mindset of pessimism, passivity and anxiety, which in terms of policy or action, leads to paralysis. Of course, there are risks in any action, or any policy initiative. But in the situation where Israel finds itself, the biggest risk of all is being unable or unwilling to take risks, as if we somehow on the brink of destruction." I was especially upset by Bibi's increasingly use of Holocaust imagery. "Just think of what you're saying," I told him. "You're Prime Minister of the State of Israel, not a rabbi in a shtetl, or a speaker trying to raise funds for Israel abroad. Think of the implications. We're not in Europe in 1937. Or 1947. If it is a 'Holocaust,' what's our response: to fold up and go back to the diaspora? If Iran gets a bomb, it'll be bad. Very bad. But we'll still be here. And we'll find a way of dealing with the new reality." Yet "fortress Israel" was irresistibly comfortable for Bibi politically. I now had to accept that, while he and I had known each other for more than half-a-century, nothing I could do or say was going to change that. With the next Israeli election months away, in January 2013, I confided to Nili, and then to my closest aides, that I was not going to run for a seat in the Knesset. Israeli military action against Iran 429 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028277

/ BARAK / 144 was off the agenda. The diplomatic process with the Palestinians was stalemated. I could see no point in remaining in the government. Like my last period in Olmert's government, my final few months were dominated by finding a way to end Hamas attacks from Gaza. During one 24-hour period in November, Hamas launched more than 100 rockets at towns in the south, while also attacking two military units across the border. Especially since our military response would be the last during my time as Defense Minister, I was determined that, this time, it would have a strictly defined objective and a finite time frame. The overall objective hadn't changed since Olmert's premiership: to hit Hamas hard, bring down the number of rocket attacks to as near zero as possible, and reach an agreement, through the Egyptians, which established a period of calm on our border for as long as we could. Bibi's "victimhood" narrative notwithstanding, one aspect of the military balance in the south was now dramatically different. With my backing as Defense Minister, we now had Iron Dome, which I was confident would help deal with the inevitable shower of Hamas rockets that would follow our initial attack. Again, I felt it was essential to start with a quick, unexpected, damaging first strike. Then, through sustained air bombardment, to keep up enough pressure to secure the political arrangement we wanted. And, unlike under Olmert, to end the operation as soon as we'd achieved its aim. On the afternoon of November 14, we launched a targeted air strike on Hamas's de facto chief of staff, Ahmed Jabari. We'd gone after Jabari in the past but, for one reason or another, had failed. We also hit nearly two dozen other Hamas targets, including all of the main missile sites we had identified. The whole operation lasted a week. Hamas fired nearly 1,500 rockets into Israel, not just locally manufactured Qassems but longer-range Iranian Fajr-5s and Russian Grads. For the first time since the 1991 Gulf war, several were targeted at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Fortunately, they were not significantly more accurate than in the past. More than half landed in fields or orchards. And with Iron Dome deployed around our major towns and cities, more than 80 per cent were intercepted. We hit nearly 1,500 targets over the seven-day period, mostly launch-pads, Hamas government installations and weapons stores, but also a number of apartment complexes being used by Hamas as bases or firing points. Bibi rightly pointed out that we were forced to fight a fundamentally asymmetric battle. While Israel began with the principle of directing our fire away from civilian areas, 430 HOUSE _OVERSIGHT_028278

/ BARAK / 145 Hamas based its launchers in precisely those places. So it was not easy. At one point, we announced a call-up of reserves. We hinted at a possible ground incursion. But both Bibi and I knew we were going to avoid that if at all possible, and we did. Though there were inevitable civilian casualties, most of the Palestinians killed were Hamas fighters and leaders, including not just Jabari but the head of Hamas's rocket program. By limiting ourselves to air strikes and naval fire, the Palestinian death toll was around 150, about one-tenth of what it had been in 2008. Six Israelis, including four civilians, lost their lives. On the 21 of November, the cease-fire was announced. Yet with the election approaching, and my time in public life drawing to a close, I had no illusion that this latest military operation, or future ones, would bring us closer to the negotiating peace with the Palestinians that had eluded us since Oslo. Nor was I confident that, having been unable to mount a military strike of our own on Iran, Obama's "bigger, stronger kid" in the schoolyard would take military action. I did trust him to do all he could to use diplomacy to constrain Iran's efforts to get a bomb. I feared he might fail. Even if he succeeded, I figured the best case would be an agreement that, at least on paper, delayed the Iranians' development of a weapon. My hope remained that Israel's relationship with the Americans would be sufficiently strong for us to reach a formal understanding of what form of surgical military strike each of our countries might take if Iran didn't honor the terms of a negotiated deal. When I first left political life after my election defeat in 2001, I'd described my status as the equivalent of a reserve officer. I said, and believed, it was unlikely I'd return for the foreseeable future. But I knew it wasn't impossible. This time was different. When I announced publicly that I was leaving politics, five days after the Gaza cease-fire, I pointed that I had spent the greater part of my life as a soldier. I'd never had a burning desire to be a politician. Though I believed that what I'd attempted, and achieved, in government would prove to have safeguarded and strengthened Israel, I knew that important challenges and decisions still lay ahead So did our unfulfilled dream of being a country that was not just strong, secure and prosperous, but socially just and at peace. Yet I believed it was right to draw my time on the front line of politics to an end. Though I didn't say so, I thought to myself: this time doesn't feel like a step back into the reserves, but genuinely like the end of something. Though my dedication to a secure, strong, just, democratic and ultimately peaceful Israel would not change, whatever contribution I might 431 HOUSE _OVERSIGHT_028279

/ BARAK / 146 make to our getting there would no longer be on the battlefield, in the kirya or around the cabinet table. As a number of reporters pointed out, when I made the announcement I was relaxed. I looked content, and I was smiling. 432 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028280