The Jerusalem Gambit

by Jack Leman

  They were fluent in Arabic and blended in the crowds without a problem. Tal was born in Tel Aviv in a Kurdish-Jewish family originating from a little village near Manbij, which is part of the Aleppo governorate. His grandfather had been a wool trader and dealt with his brother who lived in Aleppo. Once in Israel, his grandparents missed their lives in Manbij so much that they continued their Kurdish traditions and continued to dress, eat and talk like in their old times. He still remembered his grandmother cooking delicious dolmas, koftes and the traditional roasted lamb. Tal had inherited the traits of his grandfather, tall, dark-skinned and jet black hair. Now, with his bushy black mustache, he resembled his grandfather even more. He spoke Kurmanji, which was the most common Kurdish dialect spoken in Syria and Arabic with the accent of Aleppo.

  Doron’s family had immigrated to Israel from a Kurdish village near the Iraqi-Syrian border; Zadok’s family was originally from Deraa, just south of Damascus. The three of them were born to Jewish families who had immigrated to Israel from Arabic-speaking countries, and they had grown up in households where the predominant language and culture were Arabic.

  They had met at the paratrooper school, went through the hardships of qualification together, and formed a close-knit team. They had been together for two years now and their specialty was Syria; they had been deployed many times there. They returned from each mission with the satisfaction of having achieved something extraordinary for their country.

  A few days ago they were in the north of Damascus, tracking down a Hezbollah bomb maker. But half-way through their operation they had received new orders, aborting the ongoing mission and re-directing them to Al-Kisweh, to report on any suspicious activity. The bomb maker would live for a few days more.

  They tried to blend into the rubble and the destroyed buildings as much as possible. They stopped every two minutes and listened. When they were sure they had not been exposed, they nodded to each other, and Tal led the way.

  Suddenly Tal’s arm shot up, and they scrambled for cover. After a stressful moment of looking around and making sure that there was no imminent danger, the team made eye contact with their leader. Tal made a sign like smoking a cigarette. Someone close by was smoking. Tal signaled to Doron to move towards the target. Looking carefully from behind a half-destroyed wall, Doron saw, from behind, a man in fatigues relieving himself. He had a cigarette in his mouth; his AK-47 machine gun was propped on the wall next to him, within hands’ reach. The man finished his business, stepped on his cigarette, put the stub in a small box he took out of his uniform jacket, took his gun, and moved away, making sure to remain invisible behind heaps of rubble.

  Doron moved back and told his friends by sign language that there was an armed man moving east.

  The team advanced in the man’s direction until they saw him lay with two others on a mound. They were observing the area in front of them with binoculars. The man pointed something at his friend and passed the binoculars. He looked in that direction silently.

  Tal made a sign, and the team moved back and got together. In whispers, they discussed.

  “They are an observation team. I couldn’t recognize the uniforms, but they seem to be professionals. They could be Hezbollah.”

  “Whatever they are observing, they make efforts to remain unseen.”

  “Maybe they have other teams hidden around here.”

  “Let’s remain behind them and try to discover what they are looking at.” Said Tal, and they moved each in different directions.

  They were each carrying a cell phone of a common type sold in Syria, but it was more than a phone. Mossad had uploaded a software called NALAP, enabling them to communicate among themselves and with the command center by encoded voice calls, and could send encoded text messages to the chat group they formed. They could also alert each other by using a special vibration system.

  From where he had climbed, Doron could see the soldiers in the distance. They were observing a pylon from which dangled a cable. Doron alerted his teammates,

  “Confirmed as Hezbollah troops. They are looking at an electrical pylon on our 11 o’clock.”

  “I see movement on the opposite side of the pylon. Be careful.”

  Doron trained his binoculars to his right.

  “I see some other people observing the same place. They are at our 2 o’clock,” said Doron, pointing to their emplacement.

  “I count three teams of three people, each observing the entrance of a basement near the pylon.”

  “We need to find new positions from where we can see what they are looking at. There is a crumbling building at two o’clock, let’s see if we can get to its higher floors.”

  The building was not far, but it still took them more than an hour to arrive. They climbed to the second floor and flattened themselves on the floor and watched the scene below. Doron quietly went to the backside of the second level and checked for any activity behind their position.

  The first thing they did was assembling their weapons with the parts carried in their satchels. They felt more secure with a weapon in their hands.

  Tal trained his binoculars to the pylon about 300 meters away. Midway through the pylon was a transformer. From the transformer, a cable went down and through the rubbles, then disappeared in the basement of a destroyed building. Zadok thought he saw moving people by the entrance.

  There were three separate teams of fatigue clad armed soldiers observing the entrance of a basement. From the way they formed their observation posts, he could tell they were weathered soldiers.

  Zadok took out a camera from his backpack. It was a starlight camera that worked well both at daytime and at night; it used the light from the stars to have a good visibility in the dark. It also had a range-finder incorporated in it.

  He contacted the headquarters on his cell phone using NALAP and used a Bluetooth link to hookup the camera to his cell phone. He typed a text message:

  “We are in position. Ready to transmit from the camera.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Zadok pointed the camera towards the hiding soldiers. The 40x zoom of the camera allowed to see the details of the uniforms and the faces of the soldiers. The images of their faces would be fed to a central computer to identify them. If they were not already on the computer, they would be from now on.

  “They are definitely Hezbollah,” he whispered to Tal and Doron.

  He continued panning the camera and moved on to the pylon and zoomed on the transformer where the junction with the cable was visible. He panned left and aimed at the entrance of the basement.

  The cell phone vibrated, notifying a message from the command center.

  “Max zoom at the entrance.”

  He zoomed at the entrance and observed the screen. The auto-focus and automatic brightness adjusted gradually, and the image became clearer. In the entrance's shadow, two sentries were sitting with their guns on their laps. He couldn’t identify the uniforms. He saw a movement behind the sentries, and someone entered the area he was watching. He could see only the bottom half of the person. He noticed he was wearing a different camouflage uniform. The sentries turned their heads towards him as if they were being told something, and the man disappeared back in the warehouse's darkness.

  “… did you get that? … I cannot identify the uniforms.”

  “Working on it. Will advise,” came the answer.

  “Wait one…” came the text message from the headquarters. “We have information that Syrian Intelligence SIS is sending troops to your area. We will get data from UAV in about half an hour. Will get back to you.”

  “OK,” typed Tal. He ordered his men to hide from view and to use the anti-emission blankets to cover themselves, and to turn on their transponders. The anti-emission blanket was a lightweight fabric cover impregnated with a chemical product which prevented the body heat from getting through it. By not letting the heat of the body out, it avoided detection by infrared detectors or by night-vision goggles. Each of them carried a
transponder no bigger than a pack of cigarettes, which signaled to the UAV above, and showed in real time the position of each of them. By placing each of them on a map, it was easier for the ops center to visualize the whole battlefield. The friendlies were framed in light blue. The infrared sensors of the UAV identified the enemy and reported them on the battlefield map in various shapes and colors. Tal and his friends had an overview of them without even having them in sight. Whenever they saw an enemy fighter, they confirmed the little sign on their cell phone screen and the computer turned it to a triangle and attributed a number to it. It helped communications with the headquarters because they could refer to each enemy fighter by their number.

  31-Friday 11:00 am

  Ras al-Zayn

  30km West of Damascus

  Rashida went every week to the market, but this time she was reluctant. That Said idiot scared her. She had convinced her father-in-law to go with her to the market; he had not been very keen, but he was curious to see what the PIJ guys would do at the market. They walked in the empty streets towards the mosque, next to which the market was held. Every time they rounded a corner, her heart skipped a beat, but they safely arrived at the marketplace. She left her father-in-law to chat with the stallholders and did her shopping. She was busy counting her money when she felt a presence next to her. She turned and saw the grinning face of her tormentor, Said.

  “Here, let me carry your basket, it must be heavy.”

  “Said, I am a married woman. Just stay away from me, please. I don’t want any trouble.”

  “That’s all right, sister. I heard your husband has been away for many years, and I just want to help you.” He grabbed the basket, but she didn’t let go.

  The stall holder was looking at them with growing worry. You cannot do that; force a married woman to talk to you, even if you carried a gun and were from the PIJ. If a man from her family saw the unfolding drama, the honor of the family would have to be cleansed. From the corner, he saw an old man walk purposely towards the fighter.

  “What do you think you are doing, you little idiot,” shouted Sahad Hakimi, the Mukhtar of the village.

  There was silence in the market. Everybody stopped in their tracks and turned cautiously towards the altercation.

  Said let go of the basket and turned towards the voice. He recognized the Mukhtar; he knew he was related to Rashida. He dropped his gun from his shoulder and held it up.

  “What do you want, old man?”

  “I saw you touch that woman. I don’t know where you come from but in our village it’s an offense to touch a married woman.”

  Rashida trembled, yet she couldn’t say a thing, not when her father-in-law was having an issue with the troublemaker.

  The young fighter could have ended it there by just saying he was sorry and get away as quick as he could, but in his arrogance he chose to face the old man.

  “I don’t know in your village, old man, but in mine, you don’t talk like that to a man holding a gun on you.”

  All business stopped, and she saw people drift away from the range of the gun. Sahad looked into the eyes of the fighter,

  “Not if it is just a punk holding the gun.”

  The fighter disengaged the security of his gun with a loud click. Sahad stared at the young man. Time stopped.

  Suddenly, a bossy voice came from behind Rashida.

  “Said, put your gun down!”

  It was their commander, Abu Ahmad.

  “Now!” bellowed the voice, and Abu Ahmad walked past Rashida and put his hand on the gun, and slowly lowered it.

  “Go immediately to the post and wait for me!” He said to the young fighter who obeyed him and threw a look of hatred to Sahad Hakimi as he passed by him.

  “Get on with your business!” shouted the commander at the bystanders, and he approached Sahad.

  “Muhtar, some youngsters are hotheads; I am sorry for him; I will pull his ear. It will not happen again. Rest assured that we came here peacefully, and I will make sure we remain so. You better go home now.”

  Rashida walked past the commander and pulled her father-in-law from his arm, and they walked to their house. She could feel the fury in the old man, and it surprised her that he went to such lengths to protect her. She was lucky to be part of this family.

  32-Friday 1:00 pm

  Mossad HQ

  Tel Aviv

  When the PM arrived at the Mossad building in Tel Aviv, it was already close to 1 pm. He was almost two hours late for the meeting, but his delay had been fruitful. He had appointed two of his men to ministerial positions, despite the objections of his coalition partners. Not much time was left for the appointments before the swearing in, so he didn’t feel bad about being late. He had priorities.

  The Defense Minister, Gil Yosef, had told him the meeting would be about the unaccounted missile and when he asked if his presence was necessary, he understood from Yosef’s expression that the presence of the PM was crucial and that they were expecting him to take full responsibility for whatever operation they were planning.

  The meeting was held in the conference room on the second floor of the Mossad offices, in Netanya, a suburb of Tel Aviv. The room was more of a situation room, with wide screens hanging from the walls. The overhead screens replicated the computer screens of the agents working on the far side of the room. Despite the number of people in the same room and the number of computers and printers running, the noise level was very low. Some special material that covered the walls absorbed all the noises, making it possible to hear even your own respiration. The conference table, which could seat twenty people, was in a far corner of the room, separated by a glass partition. At one end of the conference table, an extra-wide screen hung down from the ceiling. The screen showed the participants by teleconference and could split into multiple screens to project any information required by the participants.

  PM Leron Segeli chaired the National Security Council (NSC). Instead of sitting at the head of the table, he liked to sit at the middle of the table. Mossad’s Director Tamir was at his right and the Defense Minister Gil Yosef on his left. The other side of the table was occupied by the Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Itzhak Klein, the Head of the Military Intelligence Directorate (AMAN), Reuven Biton and the two elected members of the Knesset, Yosi Shapira and Namir Mizrachi. The Director of the Air Intelligence Group (IAIG), Brigadier General Amit Ahav took part by teleconference.

  Junior participants and assistants sat in a second row of chairs behind the senior members.

  PM Segeli called the meeting to order, and the session started.

  “A critical situation developed with Syria today. I would like to hear your opinions about the issue. Let’s start with the IAIG. General Ahav. Please, go ahead, General.”

  Amit Ahav was on the screen in front of the meeting table.

  “Thank you, Prime Minister. Last night we received an intelligence report that Syrian and Hezbollah troops were actively searching for a missile unaccounted for. We immediately sent a Duvdevan team to check the address we received from the Syrian dispatch. We think this warehouse is where the hijacking happened.”

  “We think we have located the missile in a densely populated area near Damascus, in the basement of a demolished building. As we talk, a Sayeret Maglan team is on the ground and is observing the hiding place. There will be more details when we have a visual confirmation of the missile. I ordered the Duvdevan team to proceed to the south of Damascus, to the place where we suppose they are hiding the missile. They will back up the Sayeret Maglan team.”

  “Amit, do we know what type of missile it is?” asked Yosi Shapira, one of the civilian NSC members.

  “We tentatively identified the missile as a ballistic guided missile, probably a variant of the Fateh missiles’ family. Syria produces these missiles with the help of the Iranians. To establish the exact type and its performance, we need a visual description. From the size of the truck, we estimate the missile to be 8-9 meters long. T
hese missiles have a range between 250 to 450 kilometers and carry a warhead of about 300 kgs of high explosives. They are not very accurate. By our own standards, they are not accurate at all. We estimate their accuracy to be between 200 to 300 meters from the target.”

  “But that puts central Israel and even Jerusalem in the missile’s range!” gasped Yosi Shapira.

  “I don’t think they would send a missile anywhere near Jerusalem.” Interjected Mossad’s Director. “The risk of damaging a religious site is huge, and no Muslim army would take that risk.”

  The IAIG director continued,

  “Recently the Iranians provided Hezbollah with Fateh missiles, or Tishreen as the Syrians call them. We know Hezbollah has been keen on adding this category of missiles to their arsenal. But before being handed over to Hezbollah, our air-force successfully destroyed them when they were still in a warehouse near Damascus.”

  The PM moved uncomfortably in his chair and turned to Tamir: “What does the Mossad have to say about this business?”

  Tamir paused before answering the question. He had to stress the urgency of the matter without creating a panic among the civilian members of the NSC.

  “At the moment the information on the group who did this hijacking is still sketchy, but our information points to PIJ in Syria, a small group of terrorists associated with the PIJ in Gaza. They are old friends! The Shin Bet is on their neck in Gaza and we are cooperating with them to get more information about this business.” Interjected Mossad’s Director.