They were not just academic issues. Even if we were never again called upon to free a hijacked airplane, I assumed we would face other operations which were equally urgent, without the weeks or even months of preparation we’d always insisted on in the past. * * * After the Sabena operation, I emphasized the need for us to be proactive. It wouldn’t be up to us to decide which operations to do. But it was up to us to take the initiative in identifying and understanding specific threats and framing ways in which we could provide a response. Even before Sabena, barely two weeks had gone by when I didn’t go to Eli Zeira, who was in charge of the operations department of military intelligence, with a mission which I felt confident we were ready to carry out. Several of the most complex centered on the new threat posed by Palestinian groups in Lebanon. Before the civil war in Jordan, King Hussein had accused Fatah, the PFLP and the equally militant Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine of trying to create “a state within a state” and deliberately weakening his government. Now, they were doing much the same in Lebanon. Their headquarters buildings in southern Beirut were spawning hijackings or terror attacks. From bases in southern Lebanon, the Palestinians were also firing Katyusha rockets into Israel. One of the operations I planned targeted Arafat. From our intelligence intercepts, we knew that a day or two after a particularly intense clash with Israeli artillery units on the Lebanese border, he would tour the area and meet with his commanders. If we were going to go after him, however, we needed to know exactly when he was coming. Fortunately, the Lebanese authorities tracked Arafat’s motorcade on these “review the troops” excursions, reporting how many cars were involved, which one he was in, and their progress. Thanks to previous sayeret missions, we could listen in. In order to ensure the operation would be on our terms, I proposed that a couple of day