Efraim Halevy: 'They were digging graves in parks — but I was not so gloomy - The Jewish Chronicle

Efraim Halevy served as head of Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, between 1998 and 2002. Born in London in 1934, his family emigrated to Israel just before it gained independence in 1948.

He joined Mossad in 1961 and, three weeks before the Six-Day War, was promoted to deputy head of TEVEL, the department in charge of relations with foreign intelligence services. A day later, Egypt began massing troops near Israel’s border in Sinai and President Gamal Abdel Nasser ordered the UN peacekeeping forces to leave the peninsula. Even 50 years later, Mr Halevy is not at liberty to disclose many of the details of the Mossad’s activities during those fateful six days.

Were you as surprised in Mossad on May 16 by Egypt moving troops into Sinai as the rest of the Israeli security establishment?

At the time, Mossad didn’t do intelligence assessments [the service’s research department was founded only seven years later, as part of the lessons of the Yom Kippur War], but the entire intelligence community was surprised. There were no indications or expectation that it would happen. The annual national intelligence assessment [which is prepared in Israel by the IDF’s intelligence branch] was that war was unlikely to take place in 1967. The economic situation in Egypt had taken a downturn, they needed financial assistance and they were stuck in a failed military campaign in Yemen. All this led to the assumption that they wouldn’t want a war with Israel.

How did the intelligence community respond to the surprising developments?

The day after the Egyptian moved their forces, kicked out the UN observers and closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, Mossad chief Meir Amit sent me to represent him at a meeting held by Aharon Yariv, head of the IDF intelligence branch. All the officers of his research department were there, trying to explain what Nasser was aiming at. They raised various theories and after 15 minutes Yariv lost patience, banged his fist on the table and shouted in English — he had been an officer in the British Army during the Second World War — “not intentions, capabilities!”. In other words, there was no point in trying to understand Nasser. We had to assume we were going to war.

One of the key moments of secret diplomacy leading to the war was Mossad chief’s visit to Washington, where he received the understanding that the Johnson administration would not oppose Israel’s plans.

I helped prepare Amit’s visit to Washington. Foreign Minister Abba Eban had returned from Washington with the news that America was going lead an international armada to open the Straits of Tiran, but the intelligence community was very skeptical that was going to happen. The US was of course a key player, though they weren’t supplying us with arms at the time. Israelis were still traumatised by the way Eisenhower had joined [Russian leaders] Khrushchev and Bulganin in 1956 in forcing Israel to withdraw from Sinai after the Suez campaign. We needed to know how America would respond this time around. Amit returned with the understanding that for the Americans it was very important how the war would start, who fired the first shot. Which is why when Israel said at the start of the war that we acted because we knew the Egyptians were about to attack Israel. When Amit returned, he said to Prime Minister Eshkol, I’ve laid the foundations for the war.

There was a widespread feeling of doom, even panic, in the days leading up to the war. What were your personal feelings in those days?

On the eve of the war, I had a meeting at the Dan Hotel in Tel Aviv. All the windows were blacked out and there were very few guests as all tourists had left the country. In the lobby I saw Welfare Minister Yossef Burg. He lived in Jerusalem but all the ministers had been told to sleep in Tel Aviv so they could be summoned for cabinet meetings at the IDF headquarters. I knew him from my days as a student union leader in the 1950s, when I’d worked for a few months in his office and he knew I worked now in Mossad. He called me over and began talking about how they were digging temporary cemeteries in the parks and that he felt impending doom, that we were on the brink of another Holocaust. And this was a man who sat in cabinet and knew all the details. I didn’t feel that way at all. From what I knew, I believed we would prevail.

Besides the secret diplomacy with the US and other countries, what would you say were Mossad’s main contributions to the military success of the war?

There are two main successes. The first was the operation to bring a Mig-21. Ever Weizmann [the former commander of the air force] called Amit in and said “bring me a Mig-21”, just like that. And we did. [In August 1966, after over a year of secret preparations, an Iraqi pilot defected with his Mig-21 to Israel]. It was a massive intelligence coup and of course a gold mine of information for the air force, which we shared with the Americans and other allies. There was another operation about which to this day I can’t say much but which helped us greatly to understand the capabilities of the Egyptian armoured forces.

An intelligence organisation like Mossad usually works on long-term projects and operations. What role did it play during a war that was taking place at lightning speed?

During the war you have to make sure that key nations with friendly intelligence services are kept abreast of events and get a clear picture of what is happening. The other thing we were doing was standing by to work out how to take advantage of opportunities that suddenly opened up by the war. As war broke out with the Syrians on the Golan Heights, there were people asking about linking up Israeli territory with the Druze areas and even cooperation with the Kurds.

With the war over, there was a general euphoria in Israel over the fast victory on all fronts. Were you affected by it as well?

I was elated like everyone. I didn’t absorb at first the long-term implications. Amit sent me as an observer to a meeting of the IDF top brass, and [Defence Minister] Dayan spoke there. One of the officers asked him what our mission was in all the territories the army was holding that hadn’t been annexed by Israel and Dayan said the mission was first of all to preserve ordinary life of the civilians there. To watch out for threats and terror and to maintain matters for an unforeseeable period so the politicians can make a decision in the future.

As a result we are still maintaining things, without looking for a solution. Dayan was saying then that we want to be free to act, or to make no decision. Israel sent messages to the Arab nations that it wanted peace, but not to the Palestinians.

Very few Israelis then understood what that would mean. Yeshayahu Leibowitz was one of them. He warned then that the Palestinians would one day rise up and what the occupation would do to Israeli society.

Read all our coverage of the fiftieth anniversary of the Six Day War' here