It was just after 10 on a clear Tuesday morning when the eight sleek warplanes peeled off over the faintly ruffled waters of the Gulf of Tunis in the western Mediterranean. They were a long way from home, and they wasted little time. While the others hovered high over the sea like watchful birds of prey, the first two jets swooped down on the beach, so low that startled and incredulous bystanders on the shore could pick out the Star of David on the planes' flashing silver tails. A volley of bombs and missiles streaked into a cluster of sand-colored buildings squatting among palms and pine trees in the seaside village of Hammam al-Shatt, twelve miles south of the Tunisian capital.
Within six minutes, the headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization had been reduced to a pile of twisted steel and crumpled concrete. A two-story administration building and a house used by P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat were demolished. Arafat was out of the area at the time, having long ago demonstrated that he has nine lives. But at least 60 Palestinians and Tunisians were killed in the attack, and more than 100 were injured. Among the dead were several of Arafat's bodyguards.
Not since 1976, when its commandos raided Entebbe airport in Uganda to rescue a planeload of passengers being held hostage by Palestinian gunmen, had Israel launched an operation so far from home. This time, the Israelis flew some 1,500 miles across the Mediterranean, twice refueling in midair. The Israelis announced that the raid was in reprisal for the murder by terrorists a week earlier of three Israeli civilians on a yacht in the port of Larnaca, Cyprus. The Israelis were convinced that the attack, which took place on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, had been carried out by Force 17, a commando unit from the Fatah branch of the P.L.O., a claim the organization denied.
Like the Entebbe rescue and a 1981 bombing raid that destroyed a nuclear reactor in Iraq, last week's attack had been elaborately planned. At dawn on Tuesday, eight F-15s took off from an air base in northern Israel, followed about 40 minutes later by eight F-16s. The F-16s were refueled by Israeli tanker planes; then they dived and continued to fly as low as possible over the Mediterranean to avoid radar detection, approaching Tunis from the south. While the F-16s staged the bombing raid, the F-15s remained in reserve some 500 miles away. Near the island of Malta, an Israeli naval vessel stood ready to launch helicopters to rescue any downed Israeli pilots. After the mission was completed, the F-16s were again refueled in midair by the tankers, which were escorted home by the F-15s.