Bus on Jaffa Road Read online

  But such hopes had been unraveling little by little, much to the dismay of Ross and Indyk. While the Oslo accords were supposed to be the pathway to building a Palestinian state, the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin demonstrated that not all Israelis were happy with that goal.

  Besides those who believed that Israel had historical and theological ties to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and should not give up the land, a large number of Israelis also worried that a Palestinian nation in those territories would be an all-too-tempting launching pad for attacks by militants affiliated with Hamas and Islamic Jihad. For some time, Indyk had been monitoring intelligence reports that described how Iranian operatives were trying to convince Palestinians—especially Hamas loyalists—to launch more attacks. He wondered now whether these two bombings were somehow linked to Iran.

  At the heart of the Oslo process, and specifically Israeli’s pledge to rescind its claims to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, was a promise that each side would stop attacking the other. But those attacks and retaliations had not stopped. In April 1995, Alisa Flatow of New Jersey had been killed along with seven Israeli soldiers in a bus attack by a Palestinian suicide bomber. In August 1995, a suicide bomber killed five more people, including an American teacher from Connecticut, in another attack on a bus. Between those bombings, Palestinian operatives even tried to kill Israelis with bombs aboard donkey carts in the Gaza Strip. No Israelis died in the donkey cart bombings. But investigators from Shin Bet would later learn that Hassan Salameh had helped to build at least one of the bombs in those donkey carts. They also discovered that a compatriot of Salameh’s—a previously little-known figure named Adnan al-Ghoul—had been part of the team of Palestinian operatives who carried out the bombing that killed Alisa Flatow. And al-Ghoul was linked to an even more notorious Palestinian operative—Yahya Ayyash, the so-called “Engineer.”

  In the years to come, such links between Salameh, Ayyash, and their compatriots would seem far more ominous. For now, however, most Israel investigators viewed the array of Palestinian operatives and bomb-makers as operating independently of each other.

  Israel’s counterterrorist agencies, meanwhile, had not been idle. Agents from Shin Bet and Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, Mossad, had struck back with dramatic results. In September, outside a hotel on the island of Malta, a Mossad team, with its assassin aboard a motorcycle, gunned down the leader of the Palestinian cell responsible for the bombing that killed Alisa Flatow. Then came the assassination of Ayyash in January with an exploding cell phone.

  During this time, an articulate and passionate American voice emerged who spoke in uniquely personal terms about the continuing attacks by Palestinians. In the months after Alisa’s death, Stephen Flatow, a New Jersey lawyer, had begun to give a series of speeches to Jewish groups across America about what terrorism had done to his family—and what it meant for the future of Israel and the success of the Oslo peace process.

  Dennis Ross knew Flatow was not the only American to raise concerns about whether it was a good idea to pursue the Oslo negotiations amid so much violence in Israel. Indeed, Flatow was touching on a basic question that many US officials had been asking: If Palestinian leaders can’t control terrorist elements within their population, why should Israel entertain the idea of giving back large swaths of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip?

  It was Ross’s job to try to keep some notion of hope for peace alive. He feared that violence and discord could increase otherwise. In Israel, the successor to Yitzhak Rabin as Prime Minister, Shimon Peres, had gone to great lengths to assure his nation, and Ross, that he was personally committed to the Oslo process. But Peres’s most formidable opponent, Benjamin Netanyahu, a US-educated conservative, had emerged as a major critic of the Oslo process, raising a basic question that resonated with many Israelis: Why should Israel trust the Palestinians if Palestinians continued to launch suicide attacks?

  As Peres settled into his prime minister’s job after the death of Rabin, he had a twenty-point lead over Netanyahu in Israeli opinion polls. Unlike the United States, where elections at all levels of government are generally conducted on a firm schedule, Israel’s government is more flexible. National elections are scheduled every four years, but Israeli leaders can call for early elections. In December 1995, with such a large lead in the opinion surveys, Peres decided to roll the political dice. He announced that Israeli elections would take place the following May—far earlier than they were supposed to be held. Peres even flew to Washington to personally tell President Clinton of his plans.

  Dennis Ross admired Peres in many ways. Ross saw Peres as a skillful diplomat, an insightful observer and a brilliant strategist who had been one of the primary forces in helping to develop Israel’s top-secret nuclear weapons stockpile. But as a politician who depended on the backing of ordinary Israelis, Ross felt that Peres lacked fundamental skills needed to ensure his success with voters. He was also an uninspiring speaker. And while Peres had nurtured a keen instinct for long-term diplomatic strategy, Ross felt that he seemed remarkably deficient in being able to foresee the kinds of pitfalls that could hurt his own political career inside Israel. When Ross learned of Peres’s decision to schedule elections in May, he turned to an Israeli official he knew and asked a question that still haunted him: “That’s fine if Shimon wants to have an election, but what if two bombs go off?”

  On the phone with Martin Indyk and hearing of the bombing on Jaffa Road, Ross recalled how he had asked that question. Ross knew how delicate the Oslo agreement was, in particular how even the most unexpected remark or attack by either side could derail the progress he had worked so hard for. He had been up late on Saturday, studying reports about negotiations he was trying to broker between the Israelis and Syrians. But as Indyk described the Jaffa Road attack to him, Ross wondered if this incident might become the first step to unraveling Shimon Peres’s career as Israeli prime minister. And if Peres was thrown out of office, Ross feared what might become of the Oslo accords. An hour after Indyk’s call, Ross’s fears about Peres worsened. A second bomb blew up beside the soldiers’ bus stop near Ashkelon.

  In Israel, Martin Indyk shared similar fears about Oslo’s future. For months, Indyk had been reviewing intelligence reports indicating that Iran would try to derail the Oslo process. To the Iranians, the creation of a stable Palestinian nation—and an even more stable and strong Israel—was not good news. The reports that Indyk saw portrayed Iran as favoring as much discord as possible in the region. And when it came to the Palestinians and Israelis, discord meant only one thing: bloodshed.

  Ten months earlier, Indyk met with Stephen Flatow, who had come to Israel to escort his daughter’s body home to New Jersey. It was a powerful moment for Indyk. As the US ambassador to Israel, he had been obviously aware of the increase in Palestinian suicide bombings. But now those bombings were killing Americans, too. Now, ten months after Alisa Flatow’s killing, Indyk was about to learn that two more Americans had died. “As the American ambassador, I felt responsible for US citizens in the country,” Indyk said. “It was very personal for me. These were people under my care.”

  In Washington, Ross called Secretary of State Warren Christopher soon after finishing his conversaton with Indyk. The White House and State Department were already aware of the Jaffa Road bombing. But another crisis had emerged, a crisis that would later play a role in how US officials responded to the Jaffa Road attack.

  Just after 3 p.m. on Saturday, February 24, two fighter jets lifted off from an air force base in Fidel Castro’s Republic of Cuba. Armed with missiles, the two Russian-designed supersonic Migs roared over the Straits of Florida. Their target: Three privately owned planes from the United States, piloted by volunteers from the anti-Castro group that called itself “Brothers to the Rescue.”

  Based in Florida and staffed by Cubans who fled to the US to escape Castro’s dictatorial regime, the Brothers’ stated goal was to
patrol the Straits of Florida in search of other Cubans trying to sail the ninety-mile stretch of shark-infested waters in the hope of landing in Florida.

  The Brothers were formed five years earlier after a much-publicized story of a Cuban exile who sailed away from his homeland in a leaky boat and later died of dehydration. The group increased its patrols in 1993, after thousands of Cubans attempted to make the trip to Florida in rickety boats. Many were rescued by US Coast Guard patrol boats, then taken to the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they lived in tents and other temporary structures not far from the same plot of arid, beachfront land where US authorities would later hold hundreds of Muslims who had been captured in Afghanistan and other nations after the 9/11 attacks. But despite extensive patrols by the Coast Guard, some boats sank and their passengers drowned. The Brothers hoped to stop those sorts of tragedies. From their patrol planes, the Brothers pilots would search for escaping boats, then radio the US Coast Guard to rescue them.

  What seemed like a purely humanitarian mission, however, quickly became controversial, to Cuban officials, anyway. Since May 1994, Cuban air force officials said they logged numerous incidents in which the Brothers planes had flown into Cuban airspace without permission. In one incident, Cuban authorities said a Brothers plane flew low over Havana, releasing anti-Castro leaflets. Back in the US, federal aviation officials warned the Brothers that their planes might be attacked by the Cuban air force if they ventured too close to Cuba. The Brothers insisted they were unafraid. “You must understand,” said Jose Basulto, the group’s leader. “I have a mission in life to perform.”

  Basulto’s rescue flights over dangerous international waters were widely praised. But venturing into Cuban air space was asking for trouble, and placing the US government in a difficult position. What if the Cubans attacked Basulto’s planes?

  In early January 1996, tensions between Cuban authorities and the Brothers increased after the Cuban air force accused the Brothers of flying into Cuban airspace and releasing more anti-Castro leaflets on two different days, an assertion still in dispute years later. The Brothers don’t deny dropping the leaflets; they claim they released half a million of them over the Straits of Florida and well beyond the twelve-mile Cuban territorial limit, but that a strong wind blew the papers over the Cuban mainland. Cuban officials later offered what they claimed to be unassailable proof—from a spy they planted within the Brothers organization—that the leaflets were dropped ten miles from the Cuban coast, two miles within Cuban air space.

  On February 24, when Cuban radar operators detected another group of Brothers planes heading toward Cuba, the Cuban air force was ready. As one Mig circled overhead, another fired two missiles, striking two of the Brothers planes, sending them plummeting into the water and instantly killing four Brothers volunteers who were at the controls. The third Brothers Cessna, piloted by Basulto, escaped and returned to Florida with an eyewitness report of the Cuban attack that immediately set off widespread protests among the Miami-based community of anti-Castro Cuban exiles.

  Cuban authorities announced that they were defending their homeland from an illegal incursion. But while it seems likely at least one of the Brothers Cessnas briefly crossed into Cuban air space, US radar showed that all three of the Brothers planes were well outside Cuba’s territorial line when the missiles were fired—a fact later confirmed by an international investigation that used independent radar data from ships sailing in the area.

  As they sorted through the radar reports on that Saturday and weighed the diplomatic and political complexities of what the attack could mean, President Bill Clinton’s staff of national security advisors quickly reached a conclusion: The United States could not remain quiet. America had to respond. With Clinton running for reelection in November 1996, the White House was determined not to look weak or indecisive. At the same time, the White House response should be meaningful and effective.

  Richard Nuccio, the administration’s top security advisor on Cuban issues, was weighing all of these concerns as he arrived at the White House on Saturday afternoon. In some ways, he was not surprised by the news that the Cuban air force had attacked the Brothers to the Rescue planes. He had long feared such a confrontation.

  Nuccio was born in Teaneck, New Jersey, at a hospital only blocks from Sara Duker’s home, though he had long since moved away from northern New Jersey. From years of studying the Cuban government, he knew that Castro did not flinch from using brute force, even if it meant shooting missiles at unarmed civilian planes. Likewise, Nuccio also understood the deep anger of many Cuban Americans toward Castro.

  Next to Miami, northern New Jersey was home to America’s second largest Cuban community. And Nuccio’s reputation as one of Washington’s foremost Cuba experts grew when he worked for Rep. Robert Torricelli, a North Jersey democrat whose district included a large Cuban community. Torricelli, who later won a Senate seat, had long been a champion of Cuban exiles—and was even well known inside Cuba for his anti-Castro speeches to American audiences. When Torricelli visited Cuban refugees during the summer of 1993 at the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a group of Cubans lifted the congressman on their shoulders and carried him around their camp. As one of Torricelli’s aides and a staffer with a House foreign affairs subcommittee that specialized in Cuban issues, Nuccio met numerous exiles who had been imprisoned by Castro or had their property taken by his henchmen. And after listening to their stories, he had come to admire their passionate desire to rid their homeland of Castro’s communism and to plant new seeds of democracy. But at the same time, Nuccio feared that an incident between Cuba and a Brothers plane could push America into a wider confrontation with Castro.

  When Nuccio entered the Situation Room in the West Wing, information about the attacks was still coming in. The White House was awaiting absolute confirmation on the names of the dead and the positions of the Brothers planes when they were attacked. But, after listening to a briefing by two US military officers, Nuccio sensed in his gut that Castro had touched off a major international incident by ordering the Migs to attack unarmed American aircraft. “This was my first full-scale crisis,” Nuccio wrote in his journal.

  He left the Situation Room and went upstairs to speak with Sandy Berger, Clinton’s deputy national security advisor. “We’re going to need some options for the president,” Nuccio remembers Berger telling him.

  Berger declined to be interviewed for this book. But Nuccio kept detailed notes of their conversations. What follows is based on Nuccio’s account.

  Nuccio said Berger told him that staffers had already scheduled a meeting Sunday morning to discuss possible responses and that they would would meet with Clinton in the afternoon. “I think we have to move quickly on this, don’t you?” Berger said.

  “Of course, Sandy, but what kind of options are you talking about?”

  Nuccio remembers Berger looking at him in disbelief.

  “Sanctions against the regime,” Berger said. “Military responses. Americans may have been killed.”

  Nuccio had long been frustrated by some of the risks that the Brothers group and other Cuban Americans had been taking as a way to protest Castro’s brutal policies. “Sandy, these people have been playing with fire,” Nuccio said. “They got exactly what they were hoping to produce. If we respond militarily, they will have succeeded in producing the crisis they’ve been looking for.”

  Berger’s frustration brimmed too, Nuccio said. “Rick, are you telling me the United States should stand by and let Castro kill American citizens?” he said.

  Nuccio promised to sketch out a list of policy options overnight. But he did not feel confident that a clear and effective strategy would evolve. Nuccio felt that the Brothers had been trying to provoke Castro. Now that Castro had acted, should the US march headlong into a war?

  A day later, on Sunday, when Nuccio returned to the White House, he realized he was not the only
White House advisor who harbored intense reservations about how strongly the US should respond to Castro. The skeptics included Joint Chiefs Chairman General John Shalikashvili. As the others settled into chairs around a table, Nuccio took a seat along the wall—a “back bencher,” as he described his role.

  Overnight, the White House had received news of the bombings in Israel—and the deaths of Sara Duker and Matthew Eisenfeld. By midday on Sunday, several hours after the Duker and Eisenfeld families had been called by Kathleen Riley, President Clinton issued a statement that called the bombings “brutal acts of terror” by “enemies of peace” and pledging that the US “stands alongside Israel and with all the peacemakers, as together we continue our work for a comprehensive and lasting settlement for all the peoples of the Middle East.”

  Inside the West Wing on Sunday, Nuccio noticed that the attacks in Israel were barely mentioned by anyone on the president’s national security staff. Cuba seemed to be the top priority. “Because it was an election year,” Nuccio recalled, “everything was in context of the upcoming election.” And while Election Day was still eight months away, the Florida presidential primary was only two weeks away. Already Senator Bob Dole, a vocal Clinton critic and a Republican presidential candidate who was trying to court Miami’s anti-Castro Cuban exile community was calling for a tough response to Castro from the White House. But the central problem was obvious to everyone at the meeting: How tough could Clinton actually be?