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regard as too precious. While Mossad provided the intelligence picture for this raid, it was conducted by Israeli special forces, Sayaret Matkal, under the command of lieutenant-colonel Ehud Barak, Israel’s future prime minister. His deputy was Yoni Netanyahu, the elder brother of another future Israeli politician. The planning for the attack, in the heart of a city with a population of a million and home to dozens of international terrorists, was meticulous. Agents landed from a submarine carried out reconnaissance, establishing that a private beach on a spring night was most likely to be clear of fishermen or young couples, while the night-time cold would keep hotel guests away from their balconies. The entire operation was rehearsed at the construction site of two apartment blocks in northern Tel Aviv, much to the consternation of neighbours who began to wonder about armed men moving in and out of buildings.

On the night of 9 April, sixteen commandos were ferried from Haifa to Beirut in torpedo boats and then transferred to inflatables, which they paddled on the final voyage inshore. The parting words of the IDF chief of staff were ‘Kill the bastards’ which left no room for any ambiguity about attempting to capture the PLO leaders. In Beirut they were met by Caesarea agents masquerading as tourists who used wide American sedans to drive these bulky and heavily armed figures to their target. There was one further act of deception. Barak and Amiram Levine were dressed as women, with Barak in a brunette wig and Levine done up as a blonde. They brazenly walked, arm in arm with their respective ‘boyfriends’, past two Lebanese policemen who did not give these couples a second glance. At the apartment blocks, things suddenly speeded up. Three commandos raced up to the sixth floor and inserted strips of explosive into the door frame of an apartment. After receiving a signal from Barak, they burst into the apartment and shot dead Abu Youssef, killing his wife too. Other commandos hit Kamal Nasser, as he worked on a speech at his desk, having rejected Abu Iyad’s request to sleep over, which saved the latter’s life. Kamal Adwan was shot in front of his wife and children before he had managed even to aim the AK-47 by his bedside. Ziad Helou, one of the assassins of Wasfi Tal, was badly wounded in the attack, having narrowly missed being killed by the Jordanians the previous week.10 An elderly Italian lady who was roused by the commotion was shot dead by the Israelis as she opened her door. By this time a gun battle was raging in the street below, as the brunette and blonde sprayed bullets from their Uzis at Palestinian security guards and Lebanese policemen. A police jeep was blown up with a grenade, killing all its occupants. Elsewhere in Beirut, Israeli paratroopers carried out further attacks, blowing up an apartment block housing militants from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. All these commandos and paratroopers left Beirut the way they had come before dawn broke. The Mossad logistics team left their rental cars neatly parked in line with the ignition keys on the dashboards. As angry Palestinians attended their three leaders’ funerals, Israelis basked in the expert ferocity of their armed forces as displayed in this operation ‘Spring of Youth’. There were also furious anti-government demonstrations in Beirut, for many Palestinians and Lebanese leftists suspected that the Lebanese authorities had turned a blind eye to this audacious Israeli strike. Increasingly open clashes between the Palestinians and government forces led president Franjieh to authorise the Lebanese air force to dive-bomb the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps, which were hotbeds of Palestinian militancy.

Flushed with this success, the Israelis continued their ‘Wrath of God’ campaign against Palestinian targets. Although he had no apparent links to Munich, in April 1973 the PLO’s replacement representative in Cyprus was killed by a bomb in his hotel room. A few months later, a key Black September associate of Ali Hassan Salameh momentarily