After his election to the Israeli premiership in 1977, one of Menachem Begin’s first orders to the Mossad was “Bring me the Jews of Ethiopia.” This directive bore fruits, some seven years later, in the form of Operation Moses, a massive effort that clandestinely brought thousands of Ethiopian Jews to the Jewish state. To pull it off, Israeli spies created a fake diving resort on the Sudanese coast as a cover for their activities. The story is the subject of a 2019 film, and also a book by Raffi Berg titled Red Sea Spies. Praising the book as both accurate and “vivid,” Stephen Daisley writes in his review:

By day, [the Mossad agents] ran their diving resort; by night, they snuck Jews out of the refugee camps in Sudan to which they had journeyed. Cut off from other Jews for millennia, the Beta Israel, [as Ethiopian Jews call themselves], believed themselves the last of the Israelites and were astonished to learn that Jews could be Europeans.

Initially, they were spirited through the desert to a coastal point near [the resort]. There, special forces lay waiting with dinghies to row them to a naval ship in the Red Sea, which in turn delivered them “home” to Israel. The risk of discovery and death hung over these danger-drenched night crawls; the dinghies had to be abandoned after Sudanese troops mistook them for smugglers one night and opened fire.

The Mossad switched to airlifts, flying out Beta Israel from a disused British airstrip, although this only drew more attention, and the operatives had a series of close calls. In the end, Jerusalem paid off Khartoum and was allowed to transfer a further 6,000 Jews to Israel, provided they did so in secrecy, for the Sudanese president Jaafar Nimeiri feared a backlash from Arab allies.

The scope of the operation was as breathtaking as it was daring. “What the Mossad’s mission amounted to,” Berg writes, “was having to engineer a mass exodus of an unknown number of nationals of a foreign, hostile state, people who spoke no Hebrew, were antiquated in their ways, barely traveled, and distrusted strangers.”

Considering the current state of Israel-Arab relations, Ghaith al-Omari writes

First and foremost, no ceasefire will be possible without the release of Israeli hostages and commitments to disarm Hamas and remove it from power. The final say on these matters rests with Hamas commanders on the ground in Gaza, who have been largely impervious to foreign pressure so far. At minimum, however, the United States should insist that Qatari and Egyptian mediators push Hamas’s external leadership to accept these conditions publicly, which could increase pressure on the group’s Gaza leadership.

Washington should also demand a clear, public position from key Arab states regarding disarmament. The Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas endorsed this position in a June letter to Saudi Arabia and France, giving Arab states Palestinian cover for endorsing it themselves.

Some Arab states have already indicated a willingness to play a significant role, but they will have little incentive to commit resources and personnel to Gaza unless Israel (1) provides guarantees that it will not occupy the Strip indefinitely, and (2) removes its veto on a PA role in Gaza’s future, even if only symbolic at first. Arab officials are also seeking assurances that any role they play in Gaza will be in the context of a wider effort to reach a two-state solution.

On the other hand, Washington must remain mindful that current conditions between Israel and the Palestinians are not remotely conducive to . . . implementing a two-state solution.