100 Places You Will Never Visit (19 page)

There are stories from the early days of the tunnels that cars were imported in sections and reassembled, but legend has it that in more recent years certain tunnels have been expanded so that cars can be driven straight through. More common, though, are motorbikes, which by their nature are easier to smuggle. Another story suggests that racehorses have found their way through on occasion, as have small herds of cattle. Doves, widely kept as pets, are another popular import.

SMUGGLER AT WORK A Palestinian smuggler uses a pulley system to lift a sack of unknown contents from one of the underground tunnels. For some Gazans the secret passages have been a lifeline but others have suffered at the hands of crime rings that control many of the routes.

Dug to a depth of between 3 and 20 meters (10–66 ft), with most lying at about 15 meters (50 ft), the tunnels can stretch as far as 800 meters (half a mile). Their size varies enormously, but most are little more than shoulder-width. On the Gazan side they are often accessed from basements beneath private properties (and on occasion from secluded olive groves), using ladders down brick shafts. They tend to be private enterprises, offering significant profits to the individuals or groups who fund them. With everyone from the owners and smugglers to Hamas inspectors getting a cut, it can be big business

Construction costs for a typical tunnel approach US$100,000, and management costs are also significant. Some projects incorporate electric power, communications systems and advanced ventilation. However, in 2009 there were reports that many natives of Gaza had lost their life-savings to dishonest entrepreneurs in tunnel investment schemes. Anywhere between US$100 million and US$500 million of capital was believed to have disappeared in this manner. Estimates made in 2010 suggest that there are more than 1,000 tunnels in existence, employing a workforce of some 7,000. Life in the tunnels can be dangerous and collapses are not unknown, with fatalities often the result.

Attempts have been made over the years to stifle the illicit trading. The international community, including leading NATO members, has vowed to work to bring an end to this unregulated and dangerous subterranean world. Israel has destroyed several hundred tunnels in airstrikes, and developed electro-optic technology for the specific purpose of identifying the location of tunnels through soil displacements that are invisible to the human eye. In 2009, Egypt began construction of an underground barrier to block existing tunnels and hinder the creation of new ones. Yet perhaps the death knell for the tunnels will only come when official imports into the territory are regularized.

64 Mossad Headquarters

LOCATION Herzliya, Tel Aviv, Israel

NEAREST POPULATION HUB Tel Aviv

SECRECY OVERVIEW Location uncertain: headquarters of the Israeli secret intelligence agency.

Israel’s Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations—better known as Mossad—is one of the world’s most feared security services. Its stated role is to “collect information, analyze intelligence and perform special covert operations beyond its borders.” The organization’s headquarters are in Tel Aviv, though their exact location is not in the public domain.

The modern state of Israel was founded in 1948, situated amid Arab nations that were at best apathetic to its creation, and with the Holocaust a recent memory. The nation’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, made it a priority to establish an intelligence service to ensure national security, commenting: “For our state which since its creation has been under siege by its enemies, intelligence constitutes the first line of defence.”

In late 1949, the Central Institute for Coordination was set up under the directorship of Reuven Shiloah. Shortly afterward, it was redesignated as the Central Institute for Intelligence and Security, before a further restructure resulted in the creation of Mossad in 1951. Directly answerable to the Prime Minister, its subsequent operational focus has been on intelligence-gathering, counter-terrorism and covert action. Today it is estimated to have somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 personnel.

Mossad’s name became famous through high-profile operations such as the 1960 capture in Argentina of Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief architects of Hitler’s Holocaust. However, other operations—especially the activities of its Special Operations Division—have sometimes led to run-ins with other nations. For instance, the 1986 kidnap of nuclear program whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu from Italy (see page 166) was particularly controversial. As recently as 2010, the UK expelled Mossad’s London station chief after Israeli operatives used cloned British passports in a mission to assassinate a leading Hamas member in Dubai.

Despite recent attempts to bring a little transparency to the service (it even has a website these days), the precise location of its Tel Aviv headquarters is kept out of the public sphere. Some have speculated that it is in Herzliya, the diplomatic quarter in the west of the city. German magazine Der Spiegel, meanwhile, has alluded to an “inconspicuous block of houses located among eucalyptus trees.” It is not, one suspects, an office notably keen on surprise visits.

1 SECRET SERVICE While the location of the Mossad headquarters is a closely guarded secret, many believe it is situated somewhere in Herzliya, a coastal town on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. Its Herzliya Pituah neighborhood is among the most affluent in the country, and home to many foreign diplomats.

2 DEFENDING ISRAEL Mossad operatives are thought to be posted at many Israeli embassies around the world, but evidence suggests that some of its most controversial activities have been carried out by agents masquerading as foreign nationals using faked passports.

65 Negev Nuclear Research Center

LOCATION Negev Desert, southern Israel

NEAREST POPULATION HUB Dimona

SECRECY OVERVIEW Operations classified: center of Israel’s nuclear weapons development program.

While the government in Tel Aviv acknowledges the existence of an installation in the Negev Desert, it maintains silence on its exact purpose. Nonetheless, there is widespread speculation that this is the heart of Israel’s nuclear project—an initiative that has prompted the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to express concerns about nuclear proliferation in the Middle East.

Israel itself operates a policy of “nuclear ambiguity,” whereby the question of whether the country has nuclear weapons is never officially confirmed or denied. Instead, since 1965 the country has stated that it will “not be the first” country to introduce weapons to the Middle East—a line that is open to disparate interpretations. It is one of four nations (along with India, North Korea and Pakistan) believed or known to have nuclear capabilities but who are not signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

According to the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, the work undertaken at Negev is to “broaden basic knowledge in nuclear sciences and adjacent fields and to provide the foundation of the practical and economic utilization of nuclear energy.” Construction of the research center began in secret in 1958, with French assistance. As many as 1,500 Israelis were employed in building it at any one time, and it is alleged that an Office of Science Liaisons was established in Israel specifically to provide the enterprise with security and intelligence. The facility became operational at the end of 1963.

However, the West became aware of Negev as early as 1960 in a series of opaque and then gradually more explicit newspaper revelations. The news prompted Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to claim that Negev was a facility dedicated to “peaceful purposes.” However, the chairman of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission was later quoted as saying: “There is no distinction between nuclear energy for peaceful purposes or warlike ones.”

US inspectors made several visits to Negev over the course of the 1960s, although the Israeli authorities demanded prior warning of their arrival. While these inspections failed to uncover evidence of weapons-related activity (which some have alleged was as a result of Israeli obstruction), other intelligence had led the US to conclude by the end of the decade that Israel might well be in possession of the bomb.

Confirmation of these rumors apparently came in 1986, when a former Negev nuclear engineer named Mordechai Vanunu defected from Israel and traveled to the UK. Vanunu had worked at Negev since 1977 but harbored severe doubts about several aspects of Israeli foreign policy. He lost his job at Negev in 1985, whereupon he undertook a period of travel, during which he met a journalist who acted as his agent in a deal with the Sunday Times newspaper. Vanunu revealed what he knew about Negev, backed up with photographs he had secretly taken. His evidence, considered credible by numerous experts, led to an estimate that the Israeli arsenal consisted of over 100 weapons.

INCENDIARY IMAGES This photograph was taken in 1985 by Mordechai Vanunu, allegedly showing components to be used in Israel’s nuclear weapons program. Vanunu came to the West to blow the whistle on what he had seen at Negev, turning his own life upside-down in the process.

What followed was a storyline worthy of any movie. Mossad, Israel’s secret service, employed a female agent to pose as an American and befriend Vanunu, who was rumored to be lonely away from his homeland. The agent persuaded Vanunu to accompany her on a holiday to Rome. Once settled in the Eternal City, three more Mossad agents arrived on the scene, drugged their quarry and smuggled him back to Israel. There, he was tried for treason and espionage and sentenced to 18 years in prison. In 2004 Vanunu would make entirely unproven claims that Israel had been complicit in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as a result of Washington’s demands for information on Negev.

Most of Negev’s facilities are built underground, purportedly to a depth of six floors. The airspace above the base is closed to aircraft, with Israeli Air Force jets on standby to scramble in the event of a breach. It is also rumored that a battery of anti-aircraft missile launchers are in operation around the site. Existing security measures on the ground (including fences and a heavy presence of guards) were supplemented with additional cutting-edge cameras and surveillance equipment following a security review in late 2011.

Mystery continues to surround Negev, with varying estimates as to the quantity of plutonium that it is capable of producing. This has led to wildly differing guesses as to how many nuclear weapons now comprise Israel’s arsenal. In early 2012, it was reported in the Western media that Negev may close as Israel seeks to safeguard its assets in the event of an Iranian air strike. The story, however, was denied by an Israeli official.

1 NUCLEAR AMBIGUITY A ground-level view of the complex near Dimona, taken around 2000. While Tel Aviv continues its policy of neither confirming nor denying possessing the bomb, fears grow that Iran may join Israel as a regional nuclear power.

2 DESERT STORM An overhead view of the controversial complex at Negev, taken by an American strategic reconnaissance satellite—Corona KH-4—in November 1968. Such images left Washington to conclude that Tel Aviv was indeed in possession of the bomb.

66 Camp 1391

LOCATION Northern Israel

NEAREST POPULATION HUB Tel Aviv

SECRECY OVERVIEW Existence unacknowledged: controversial prison camp for “high-risk” prisoners, previously unacknowledged by Israel.

Unknown to the wider world until 2003, Camp 1391 is located about an hour’s drive from Tel Aviv, though its exact position has never been confirmed. Described by some commentators as “Israel’s Guantánamo,” it has been accused of breaches of the United Nations Convention Against Torture. Petitions to inspect the camp by the UN Committee Against Torture have repeatedly been rejected.

Camp 1391 came to light by chance, as a result of a small footnote in an academic journal. The article’s author was a historian called Gad Krozier. While inspecting maps of police compounds dating back to the British rule of the 1930s and 1940s, he noticed discrepancies with modern maps over one site in particular. After the article and its footnote were published, the military censor demanded to know why the piece had not been sent for prior inspection. The site, apparently erased from Israeli history books, turned out to be Camp 1391, run by Israel’s security service since the early 1980s.

Official information about the prison is virtually nonexistent, and most details in the public sphere come from sources who claim to have been held there. Israel’s courts have consistently rejected appeals to reveal its precise location. However, it has been suggested that it is based in a single-story building, designed by Sir Charles Tegart in the 1930s and now part of a larger military compound. “Tegart forts” were built in their dozens by the British in Palestine, being robust if basic reinforced-concrete structures designed to be all but impregnable. It has been reported that the site of Camp 1391 also lies within a double fence, complete with watchtowers and regular guard-dog patrols.

Cells are described as about 2 meters (6.6 ft) square and lacking any natural light. It is alleged that prisoners are kept in solitary confinement for long spells, sometimes naked and hooded. Former inmates claim they were forced to endure a constant buzzing drone and insanitary conditions, as well as inhumane and degrading treatment.

Some prisoners allege they were given no indication of their true whereabouts, or were told that they were being held abroad. Many say they were not allowed contact with family or lawyers, or even visits from the Red Cross. The Israeli authorities argue that meetings with lawyers and the Red Cross are, in fact, permitted at an off-site location, though this has been questioned by the UN.

67 Al Kibar

LOCATION Northeastern Syria

NEAREST POPULATION HUB Dayr az Zawr

SECRECY OVERVIEW Operations classified: site of a suspected nuclear facility bombed by Israel in 2007.

On September 6, 2007, it is widely accepted that a squadron of Israeli jet fighters flew across Syria and razed a major complex at Al Kibar to rubble in a mission known as Operation Orchard. Later, Israel would deny that such an incident took place, while Syria protested the violation of their airspace but denied that there had been significant damage. So what exactly was going on in the Syrian desert?