Red Sea Spies by Raffi Berg

Author:Raffi Berg
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd
Published: 2020-02-23T16:00:00+00:00

To carry out a secret maritime evacuation of the Ethiopian Jews required a period of preparation and complex planning by the Navy and the Mossad. While the Mossad team was in a state of readiness, the Navy’s timetable was more restrictive. It was also decided that, for maximum obscurity, operations would take place only in the phase of a new moon – technically, moonless nights. This meant a window of a few days once a month.

Dani held an initial discussion with Ayalon’s successor as commander of the Shayetet, Colonel Uzi Livnat, and they settled on a fresh date for the first seaborne operation: 12 November 1981.

With this and future operations, the calendar was the only certainty. Other factors of critical importance were unpredictable. The weather alone could disrupt the best-laid plans. Storms or torrential rain would mean having to postpone a mission at short notice, and consequently missing the crucial moonless nights.

Another consideration was the activity of the Sudanese secret police. Some nights they would have a heavier presence inside and outside the refugee camps than others. If the Committee Men felt it was too risky, an operation would be suspended on the basis of that alone.

For the Mossad too, the mission was about to become more onerous. Naval evacuations meant the Jews would have to be smuggled much further than from Gedaref to Khartoum. Overland from the camps to the coast was a distance of about 900 kilometres. The plan called for them to be picked up from outside the camps after dusk by Dani and the team who had come from the village at Arous, then driven through the night to a daytime hiding place until sunset, and then for a further four hours to the cove. There, the Jews would be transferred into the boats and whisked some 25 kilometres across the water to the Bat Galim. The ship would then sail with its passengers back to Sharm el-Sheikh, where the Jews would be taken off, put on planes and flown another 200 kilometres north to Eilat.

From the start, plans for every operation followed a mandatory procedure, known as Nohal Krav (Order of Battle), carried out in parallel by the Mossad and the Navy. Dani wrote the order for the Mossad. It covered every eventuality, from multiple retreat plans to what to do in the event of the loss of a second spare tyre on a vehicle. On the Mossad’s side, the plan had to pass through levels of hierarchy before being signed off by the agency’s chief. On the side of the Navy, it had to get the approval of the commander-in-chief. Once the operational orders were passed, the commander of the Navy, Admiral Almog, would chair a joint meeting at the Navy’s headquarters, underground at the Kirya (HQ of the Israel Defence Forces, or IDF) in Tel Aviv. There would be the chief of the Shayetet, the head of Naval intelligence, and other senior Navy officers. Representing the Mossad would be Dani and his deputy, Marcel.

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