That morning the Germans assembled a crisis team whose composition further underscored the shadow cast by Germany's past. The council included both city police chief Schreiber and West German interior minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher. To further distance itself from the Nazi era, the West German government strictly limited federal power, leaving responsibility for domestic security to the country's 11 states. So the triumvirate also included Genscher's Bavarian counterpart, Bruno Merk -- perhaps one too many cooks for a simmering broth.
Soon came word, through West German chancellor Willy Brandt, of Meir's summary response to the Black September demands: "Under no conditions will Israel make the slightest concession to terrorist blackmail." That position remained firm throughout the day. The Germans, however, desperate to buy time, would keep feeding the Palestinians excuses: that some members of the Israeli cabinet couldn't be reached; that not all the prisoners could be located; that phone lines to Jerusalem had broken down.
 With the Arab grenade damaged helicopter on the foreground -- one or more of the Israeli hostages died in the helicopter. AP |
The crisis team groped for a plan. First Schreiber offered the terrorists an unlimited amount of money. Genscher, who would later become West Germany's foreign minister, pleaded with Issa not to subject Jews once more to death on German soil, then offered himself as a substitute hostage. Vogel, Schreiber, Merk and Walther Tröger, the ceremonial mayor of the Olympic Village, joined Genscher in that offer, but Issa refused. Avery Brundage, the president of the IOC, said he recalled that in the 1920s, the Chicago police had piped knockout gas into buildings to overpower gangsters. But after placing fruitless calls to U.S. police departments asking for more information, the authorities abandoned Brundage's idea. They tried to have policemen disguised as cooks deliver food to the compound and overpower the terrorists, perhaps after igniting a "blitz bomb" to blind them. But the fedayeen weren't going to fall for that; they ordered that provisions be left at the building's threshold.
The terrorists pushed back their deadline twice more, to 3 p.m., then to 5, knowing that each postponement only redoubled the TV audience. "The demand to free our imprisoned brothers had only symbolic value," Al-Gashey would say later. "The only aim of the action was to scare the world public during their 'happy Olympic Games' and make them aware of the fate of the Palestinians."
In the late afternoon one more plan -- to have 13 policemen infiltrate the building through the heating ducts -- advanced far enough that the men, dressed ludicrously in track suits, began to loosen ventilation grates on the roof. But this operation, too, was called off, mercifully: Television cameras had long since been trained on the building and were broadcasting the police team's movements live to a worldwide audience, including the fedayeen.
Shortly before 5 p.m. the terrorists made a new demand. They wanted a jet to fly them and their captives to Cairo. "I did not believe [the Israelis] would negotiate with us in Germany, and that is why we made a plan to take a plane and the hostages to another Arab country," Abu Daoud told SI. "From there I believed they would negotiate the release of our prisoners." The freed Palestinians were to be waiting on the tarmac in Cairo by 8 the following morning, Issa told the Germans. If not, Black September would execute the hostages before leaving the plane.
"These are innocent people," Genscher told Issa.
"I am a soldier," Issa said. "We are at war."
Yet here, finally, the Germans saw a potential opening. If the crisis relocated, there would be buses and helicopters and planes, embarkations and disembarkations, the agora of an airport tarmac -- perhaps an opportunity to draw a bead on the fedayeen. But before going forward, the Germans wanted to make sure of two things: that the hostages were still alive and that they were willing to fly to Cairo.
Genscher and Tröger were escorted into the second-floor room of Apartment 1. The hostages told them that yes, if they had to be routed through an Arab capital to freedom, they would be willing to go. But the hostages' spokesman, Shorr, the senior member of the delegation and a resistance fighter during World War II, added that in such a case, they assumed that "our government would meet the demands of the terrorists. For otherwise we would all be shot."
"In other words," said Genscher, "if your government did not agree to the prisoner exchange, you would not be willing to leave German territory."
"There'd be no point to it," Shorr said.
Genscher tried a stab at bravado with his reply: "You will not be abandoned." But to be an Israeli is to know well your government's policy toward terrorists. Surely each hostage must have suspected that his fate rested in the hands of the German government -- that the episode would end in Munich, not Cairo, for better or worse.
Nonetheless, Brandt would try for hours to reach Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, to secure permission for an aircraft to land and a guarantee of safety for the hostages. Sadat didn't come to the phone. Finally, at 8:20 p.m., Brandt spoke to Prime Minister Aziz Sidky, who would not or could not pledge his government's help.
The Egyptian response plunged the Germans back into despair. Issa had set a final deadline, 9 p.m., and renewed his promise to kill one hostage an hour until the Germans provided the jet. The Israeli government would never countenance the kidnapping of its citizens to a hostile destination. Certainly Germany, given its history, couldn't acquiesce in such an endgame. Perhaps a jet could appear to be at the disposal of the terrorists, but under no circumstances could it be permitted to take off.
The Germans entertained one last plan to liberate the hostages before they were to be helicoptered out of the Village to this supposed jet to Cairo. Schreiber proposed to place police gunmen behind the concrete pillars of the underground garage, the same obstructions that had saved Gad Tsabari's life. The police would pick off the fedayeen while they walked the hostages from the apartment complex to the helicopters. But a suspicious Issa demanded that the transfer be by bus; the bus pulled up to the doorway, and the fedayeen with their captives piled directly into the vehicle, affording the police no clear shot. Moments later, in the plaza of the Village, 17 captors and captives boarded two Iroquois helicopters.
By now, the crisis team had essentially accepted the hostages' deaths as inevitable. "We were 99 percent sure that we wouldn't be able to achieve our objective," Schreiber would later say. "We felt like doctors trying to bring the dead back to life."
No Israelis survive to dispute him, but if you believe Al-Gashey, the mood on board the helicopter was lighter, if only from the change of scenery. "Everyone seemed to be relaxed, even the Israelis," he has said of the flight to Fürstenfeldbruck. "For our part, in the air we had the feeling that somehow we had achieved what we'd wanted. For the first time I really thought about the hostages sitting so close -- in physical contact. My cousin [Adnan Al-Gashey, another commando] was talking above the noise of the blades with an Israeli about personal things. I think they talked about his wife and kids. Even the Israelis realized our lives were inextricably linked.
"I remembered our orders to kill the hostages if it were to become a hopeless military situation. But I also thought how nobody had trained us how to kill bound, unarmed people."