The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership (52 page)

Politics aside, Prime Minister Begin's relationship with opposition leader Shimon Peres remained cordial, as seen here following a stormy Knesset debate

Begin’s speaking!” cried Dan Patir, poking his head through the door of the Knesset restaurant.

Parliamentarians hurried to their seats, gossipers dispersed in a flash, and like hounds to the call of a horn, the parliamentary correspondents jumped up as a pack and piled up the stairway into the press gallery, where they peered down at the podium, waiting expectantly to hear Begin’s flashes of wit and practiced prose.

It was September 1977, a couple of months after the prime minister’s talks with the American president, and a day-long foreign affairs debate was drawing to a close. The prime minister had opened it by revealing that he was engaged in drafting a prototype peace treaty in readiness for a Geneva parley. Shimon Peres, the leader of the opposition, ridiculed the notion of a draft peace treaty, calling it “pie in the sky.” Israel would never have peace with its neighbors, he contended, so long as the Begin government was unwilling to make painful and far-reaching territorial concessions on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, not to speak of Sinai and the Golan Heights. “So stop lulling the nation into pipe dreams,” he had mocked.

“Knesset Member Shimon Peres,” responded Begin in his closing remarks, “I should like to read you some quotations.” He held up a sheet of paper, brandishing it for all to see. “I’m quite sure they will sound familiar to you, Mr. Peres,” he said.

The prime minister looked immensely pleased with himself, relishing the parliamentary challenge he was about to present. He moved the page closer to his eyes, adjusted his spectacles and, glancing toward the press gallery to make sure the pack was in place, exclaimed in a faintly theatrical tone: “It is a fallacy to believe that the solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict depends on our willingness to grant territorial concessions.”

“Well?” snickered Begin in Peres’ direction, flourishing the page. “Who do you think wrote that?”

Letting the question hang, he scanned the Chamber from end to end, jaw jutting, his expression derisive, his gaze finally settling back on the object of his scorn, who sat bristling in the number one seat of the opposition front bench, looking daggers back at him.

“Knesset Member Shimon Peres, you wrote that did you not? And who wrote”
–
again he peered at the page: “ ‘I know that no territorial concession proposed by us will meet with a positive Arab response. To think otherwise is futile.’ Who wrote that, Mr. Peres?”

A buzz began to drone around the packed chamber. Members sat grinning, grimacing or glowering, according to their allegiances.

“I ask again, who wrote that?” goaded Begin.

The buzz in the chamber rose. “Quiet!” bellowed the Speaker. “Order!”

“I’ll tell you who wrote it,” snarled Begin. “Knesset Member Shimon Peres wrote it! And who wrote: ‘How can anybody believe that if we just settled East Shomron the Arabs would be more amenable to peace than were we to settle West Shomron?’ Who wrote that?”

The glowerers and gloaters now began to heckle one another. Not a one heeded the frantic gaveling of the Speaker.

“Knesset Member Shimon Peres wrote that,” teased Begin, above the tumult. “And who said, ‘Everybody agrees we must hold on to the Golan Heights because they are the strategic high ground. But there is also strategic high ground in Judea and Samaria, at the foot of which lies Israel’s most densely populated center, the coastal plain.’ Who said that?”

The gavel of the Speaker of the House rose and fell as if it were some ineffectual, noiseless thing. Slowly, he got to his feet, his face distorted with frustration. In vast contrast, the prime minister seemed amused. He was leaning nonchalantly against the podium, fingers steepled, a smug smile hovering over his lips. Once the uproar began to subside, he rearranged his expression into a frown, straightened himself up, and pointing a grim finger at the leader of the opposition, nettled him like a faultfinding referee to an outmatched contestant: “Now listen well to what I’m about to add, Mr. Peres. It is important that the nation hear the facts. It is important they know what kind of a leader advocates one policy one day and another the next.”

Caustic and contemptuous, Peres shot back: “I always listen well to your Knesset routines, Mr. Prime Minister. But don’t think you can mislead the nation today. Everybody here knows those statements you attribute to me were made at a different time under different circumstances.”

Upon extracting this admission of authorship, the prime minister stroked his chin with great satisfaction.
“
Really!
” he said, in feigned surprise. “I’ve heard you speak many times and you always stated your conviction that it was fallacious to think that territorial compromise would bring peace. Those quotations I just cited expressed your earnest and honest political beliefs
–
until recently, that is. So, what suddenly made you change your mind, Mr. Peres? What happened between the time you made those statements I’ve just quoted, and the dovish views you express these days? Tell us Mr. Peres.”

You could sense by the sudden razor bite in his voice that he was readying for the kill, but Peres forestalled him. “Conditions change, positions change. Only fools don’t change,” he retorted. “Only fools cling to fantasies and to obsolete dreams.”

Every syllable was annunciated sharply; clearly he had steeled himself for this duel. His devotees rallied around him with vigorous applause, while he leaned back with the confident ease of a swordsman who has just parried a tricky play.

Begin responded with a cheeky little grin. “Only fools, you say? Was it not Winston Churchill who said that the greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes? Well, Knesset Member Shimon Peres, tonight I am right!”

“And wasn’t it Churchill who said ‘I’d rather be right than consistent’?” shot back Peres, causing everyone present, government and opposition, to shout with laughter.

Begin cut in, “Well he might have, but I shall now tell the House exactly what turned you from a hawk to a dove, Mr. Peres
–
what brought about your change of mind. You decided you wanted to seize the leadership of your Labor Party from Yitzhak Rabin. You wanted to position yourself to become prime minister. But to remove Rabin, you first had to win the support of your party’s left-wingers. And the only way you could do that was to trade in your ideological colors, to reinvent yourself from hawk to dove. And that’s exactly what you did. Am I not right, Knesset Member Peres?”

Peres was on his feet, shaking his head violently, chopping the air with balled fists, shooting looks at his opponent that could freeze water. After all, Shimon Peres was no pushover. Whatever ill-will existed between himself and Rabin, he had an illustrious career to his credit. He had initiated Israel’s nuclear Dimona project. He had essentially built the nation’s aerospace industry. And now he had inherited a disillusioned party who lost the last elections, but was rebuilding it bit by bit with skill and patience. No wonder his usually rumbling, melancholy voice was strident with wrath as he shouted back at Begin that never in his life had he “sacrificed principle for expediency,” or “sold his soul for a mess of political pottage.” He had always been “a pragmatist and a realist, yet guided by moral imperatives.” Israel was engaged in “a struggle for its very existence,” and had to constantly “be alive to new circumstances.” He, therefore, refused “to remain a prisoner of outmoded doctrines.” Indeed, his “sheer integrity compelled him to reappraise and reassess the situation.” Never once had he misled the people as the prime minister was doing now.

“Never did I promise the nation that I would bring them instant and total peace wrapped up in a peace treaty, without concessions,” he raged. “That is not a policy; it is an irresponsible flight of the imagination!”

This hit home.

Motionless, arms folded, lips pressed, his face blanched and his eyes granite, Menachem Begin said quietly, stubbornly, grimly, “Never did I make such a promise in my life, Mr. Peres. You have plucked this spurious charge out of thin air. It is a fiction! I challenge you to prove otherwise.”

But his opponent was not to be cowed. Knowing how his words had the power to wound, he hurled more: “Repeatedly, you insinuate that we stand at the threshold of peace as defined in a peace treaty. You said as much again today.”

Anger hung in the air between them like an invisible knife, their eyes locked in open warfare.

“Knesset Member Shimon Peres,” seethed Begin, “I have just quoted to this House words you spoke and wrote yourself. I quoted them word for word. Now, I challenge you to bring to this podium quotes from me, in my own words, asserting that we stand at the threshold of peace. I have never said it. The members of this House know I have never said it. They are well informed. You can’t pull wool over their eyes.”

“Indeed you can’t,” countered Peres. “That is why most people here see right through your whimsical flights of fancy. You’re so enamored with your own words that you think they can move mountains. Well they can’t. You think a good speech is all that it takes to get things done. Well it can’t. You think that you can run a government by oratory. Well you can’t. You think that just because you’ve prepared a draft of a peace treaty it’s as good as done. Well it isn’t.”

Begin responded in a tone that evoked high purpose and responsibility. “Let me assure you, and the whole House,” he said solemnly, “I have no illusions about the obstacles awaiting us at a Geneva peace conference, if one will take place. I have left in the hands of the American president a proposal as to how we believe such a conference should be structured and who should participate, no more. Indeed, if anything, it is your party Mr. Peres, the Labor Party, that has been deceiving our nation for years, telling us tales about territorial compromises in exchange for peace. For years you have been proposing to our Arab neighbors enormous concessions, and their answer has always been universally the same: ‘Totally unacceptable!’”

He stopped for a moment and straightened up, and with an expression both teasing and taunting, said, “So at least have the grace to be a good loser, Mr. Peres. You lost the elections, remember. Take it like a man. Stop sulking. Criticize us if you will. This is a free, democratic parliament. But why resort to such excessive rancor? Why the uncontrolled fury? Why the baseless allegations? What’s gotten into you, Mr. Peres? Get a grip on yourself.” And with that he stepped down from the podium into the well of the Chamber, his mouth curved into the impish smile of one satisfied that he had had the last word.
67

What he did not know, could not possibly know, as he took his seat at the head of the horseshoe cabinet table amid a cacophony of boos and hurrahs, was that his model peace treaty would not gather dust for all that long. Seemingly out of the blue, an event occurred soon after of such mind-boggling proportions it would change the course of history and render Jimmy Carter’s Geneva exertions obsolete.

Anwar Sadat, President of Egypt, decided to travel to Jerusalem to speak to Menachem Begin about peace.

Photograph credit: Moshe Milner & Israel Government Press Office

Egyptian president Anwar Sadat arrives, 19 November 1977

What time does Shabbat end?” asked Begin, in an impatient voice.

Yechiel Kadishai flipped through his pocket calendar, and said, “This coming Shabbat, November nineteenth, it ends at five twelve.”

The prime minister’s face became sunny. “So, that’s fine, Sam. You can tell your Cairo Embassy to tell the Egyptians eight o’clock is perfectly in order. It will give us time enough to prepare everything for President Sadat’s arrival without our desecrating the Sabbath.”

This exchange took place on Wednesday afternoon, 16 November, 1977. The prime minister was addressing Ambassador Samuel Lewis, who had asked to see him urgently to deliver a message from the Egyptian president. He wanted to know what time on Saturday night he could land at Ben-Gurion Airport.

The drama behind this sudden and astonishing question had begun a week earlier when, in a rambling address to his parliament
–
the People’s Assembly
–
Anwar Sadat had tucked in the following sentence: “Israel will be stunned to hear me tell you that I am ready to go to the ends of the earth, and even to their home, to the Knesset itself, to argue with them, in order to prevent one Egyptian soldier from being wounded.”

“
Allahu Akbar!
” [God is great!] chanted the assembly in collective affirmation.

Upon hearing this on the
BBC
World Service at dawn the following morning, Begin mumbled to himself skeptically, “We’ll see how serious he is about this!” On arrival at the office, he said to Yechiel, “We have to put Sadat to the test,” and he summoned his adviser on Arab affairs to assist in drafting a welcoming response in Arabic, to be aired on television and radio. In it, the prime minister assured the Egyptian people of a reception worthy of their president’s stature, and uttered words that have since entered history books: “Let us give a silent oath to one another: no more war, no more bloodshed, no more threats. Let us make peace. Let us start on the path of friendship.”68

Sam Lewis
–
now dubbed the “happy postman” on account of his coming and going with messages between Jerusalem and Cairo
–
was soon back to say President Sadat had heard the prime minister’s statement, but wanted an actual written invitation.

“By all means,” said the prime minister, and on the spot he wrote: “On behalf of the Government of Israel I have the honor to extend to you our cordial invitation to come to Jerusalem and to visit our country. Your Excellency’s readiness to undertake such a visit, as expressed to the People’s Assembly of Egypt, has been noted here with deep and positive interest, as has been your statement that you would wish to address the members of our Parliament, the Knesset, and to meet with me.

“If, as I hope, you will accept our invitation, arrangements will be made for you to address the Knesset from its rostrum. You will also, should you so desire, be enabled to meet with our various parliamentary groups, those supporting the government as well as those in opposition…. May I assure you, Mr. President, that the parliament, the government and the people of Israel will receive you with respect and cordiality.”

From that moment, Israel quivered with anticipation, while President Jimmy Carter fretted over how this direct contact between the belligerents squared with his statement issued with the Soviet Union the month before, announcing the intention to convene a Geneva Peace Conference under their joint chairmanship. Carter would later explain:

Since the only forum the United States had to work on was the Geneva Conference under the aegis of the United Nations, we had to get the Soviet Union, as co-chairman, to agree to the format we were laboriously evolving. On September 23, during my meeting with [Soviet] Foreign Minister Gromyko, he told me, “If we can just establish a miniature state for the Palestinians as big as a pencil eraser, this will lead to a resolution of the
PLO
problem for the Geneva Conference.” He smiled as I pointed out the difficulty of such a tiny state being formed, and then agreed that peace would have to be more than the end of war in the Middle East. The ultimate goal, he acknowledged, was normal relationships between the Arab and Israeli governments and people.
69

It is clear that Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat had an instinctive sense of global geopolitics that told them that such a conference would place Soviet Russia squarely back into the heart of the Middle East equation. The Egyptian president had kicked the Russians out, and he was not about to slip under their thumb again. This led him to conclude that it was infinitely better to implement a bilateral peace move with Israel, rather than to again become a mere pawn in the superpower Middle East play. Begin wholeheartedly agreed. His own instincts had been greatly energized by reports from Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan, who had secretly met with a senior Sadat confidant in Morocco some months before, and from whom he had learned that “the Soviets would not play any positive or constructive role in future negotiations.” At the same time, Begin himself had visited Bucharest, to impress upon the Romanian dictator, Nicolae Ceau
ş
escu, his desire to come to terms with Egypt. When Ceau
ş
escu subsequently met the Egyptian president, he told him, “Begin is a hard man to negotiate with, but once he agrees to something he will implement it to the last dot and comma. You can trust Begin.” Similar advice was given by the Shah of Iran, whom Begin had discreetly met in Teheran, ahead of a Sadat visit there (in those days, Israel maintained a close relationship with the Shah of Iran, albeit discreetly and unofficially. There was even an Israeli Embassy in Teheran, but it was not labeled as such; it was merely called “The Diplomatic Representative.” It bore no plaque, flew no flag, and did not appear in any embassy listing).
70

Having put out these feelers, the Israeli premier was not taken entirely by surprise when the Egyptian president resolved in his almost theatrical fashion to circumvent Geneva by flying to Israel to talk peace. “The irony of it all,” confided Begin to us, his staff, “is that after all the years of my being slandered and vilified as a warmonger and a terrorist, I am the one Sadat has chosen to visit.”

Thus it was, that at 7:58 on Saturday night, 19 November, a
seventy-two-man
guard of honor drawn from officer cadets of every branch of the
IDF
dipped its flags and presented arms, while buglers sounded a fanfare, signaling the arrival of the president of Israel, Ephraim Katzir, and Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who had come to welcome the president of Egypt. The multitude of high-ranking dignitaries lining the unusually long red carpet was all-anticipation, watching the approaching white lights in the sky. The roar of the descending aircraft drowned out the scattered applause as the plane touched down, slowed, turned, and taxied toward the waiting throng.

The presidential Boeing arrived exactly as prescribed
–
eight o’clock. On its bright white fuselage, made all the brighter by the searchlights shining on it, were emblazoned the words ARAB REPUBLIC OF EGYPT. Even the dourest of cynics beamed with delight at the sight of it, like the Mona Lisa breaking into a grin.

A marshal’s voice barked, “ATTENTION! PRESENT ARMS!” and the officer cadets moved with choreographed precision, their weapons clasped rigidly upright as the aircraft drew to a halt at the red carpet’s floodlit edge.

Never had Ben-Gurion Airport been more festooned as on that Saturday night
–
it was awash with light and color, hung with hundreds of flapping flags, Israeli and Egyptian. Rows of parading troops, their regimental ensigns aloft, framed the tarmac, and at one end was arranged a military band, its brass instruments flashing in the floodlights (the conductor, Yitzhak Graziani, unable to find a copy of the Egyptian national anthem, had hastily transcribed its notes from an end-of-day Radio Cairo broadcast).

A ramp was quickly rolled into position, and an expectant hush settled on the assembly. Even the air seemed to be holding its breath. However, for reasons unknown, the aircraft’s door did not open, and the anticipatory adrenalin gradually faded as people put their heads together, their faces faintly unsettled, murmuring softly to each other about the inordinate amount of time passing by.

Might something untoward be afoot?

A few cast speculative glances at the chief of staff, General Mordechai (Motta) Gur, who had suggested publicly that the Egyptian president’s sudden impulse to visit Jerusalem might be a ruse, a subterfuge that would lend him an advantageous starting point for the next Israel-Arab war. Might Egyptian commandos be poised behind that door, readying themselves to mow down the entire Israeli cabinet?

Notwithstanding the tension, Prime Minister Begin stood stolidly at the foot of the ramp, looking up at the sealed door with no hint of restiveness in his demeanor, his face as impassive as a sphinx. He knew this was no ruse.

When the door finally swung ajar, an unruly horde of journalists burst through it, descended the ramp, and jostled each other for strategic positions at its base. This caused the mass of correspondents, television crews and photographers contained behind the barriers of the official press grandstand
–
an estimated four thousand
–
to shout their frustration, their line of vision of the impending first handshake between the leaders of Egypt and of Israel being entirely blocked by the just-landed Cairo crowd. So they surged forward through the police barrier, causing such a crush along the red carpet that numerous VIPs were pushed aside into the second and third rows of the receiving line.

Still, the plane’s doorway remained empty and dark. The hubbub continued to swell, until, like a burst of dazzling fireworks, a thousand camera shutters sliced the night, engulfing the lone figure who had just stepped into the doorway in blazing lights.

Tall and immaculately groomed, President Anwar Sadat stood there blinking in the glare, basking in the fanfare of trumpets and the fervent applause which greeted him. In extreme slow motion he descended the steps, accompanied by the Israeli chief of protocol, who formally introduced the president of Egypt to the president and the prime minister of Israel at the foot of the ramp.

Stampeded by the crush of the pressmen, I ended up by the side of Golda Meir, who was remarking sarcastically to Yitzhak Rabin, “
Now
he comes! Couldn’t he have come before the Yom Kippur War and saved all those dead, his and ours?”

Rabin’s reply, whatever it was, was drowned out by the applause as Prime Minister Begin introduced his guest to his ministers who were lining the carpet. Reaching Ariel Sharon, the commander who led the Israeli counterattack across the Suez Canal in the Yom Kippur War, the Egyptian president paused, and said good-naturedly, “Aha, here you are! I tried to chase you in the desert. If you try to cross my canal again, I’ll have to lock you up.”

“No need for that,” laughed Sharon. “I am glad to have you here. I’m minister of agriculture now,” and they shook hands warmly.

To Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan I heard him say, “Don’t worry Moshe, it will be alright.” But someone in earshot claimed he also quipped, “You must let me know in advance when you are coming to Cairo, so that I can lock up my museums”
–
a dig at Dayan’s penchant for helping himself to ancient relics when conducting private excavations in Israel.

To Chief of Staff General Motta Gur, he said, grinning, “See, General, it is no trick. I was not bluffing.”

The general’s response was a formal salute.

And now he stood face to face with Golda Meir. They looked at each other solemnly, he half bowing as he took her hand.

“I have wanted to talk to you for a long time,” he said.

“And I have been waiting for you for a long time,” she answered.

Photograph credit: Moshe Milner & Israel Government Press Office

Israeli and Egyptian flags festoon Ben Gurion Airport, 19 November 1977

Photograph credit: Moshe Milner & Israel Government Press Office