The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership (81 page)

If Baroness Thatcher had any opinion on the matter she chose to keep it to herself.

It was time to go. As she accompanied me into the hallway, she asked, “Did Mr. Begin write his memoirs? Has he left us anything of what you’ve been telling me about? I’d love to read it.”

“I’m afraid not,” I answered. “He’d intended to, but he never got round to it.”

“Not even in all his years of retirement from public life?”

I shook my head, not knowing how to explain the mystery of his silence to myself, let alone to her. “All I can tell you,” I said, “is that I remember him once giving an interview to
Time
magazine, in which he said he was planning a memoir in his head. It would consist of a number of volumes, and he was going to call it
From Destruction to Redemption
. It would tell the story of his generation of Jews, which he described as being almost unique in the whole of Jewish history for the depth of its suffering and the crowning heights of its deliverance. When the interview was over, and the
Time
man rose to go to the door, I recall him turning and asking, ‘Just one last question, Mr. Begin. How would you like to be remembered in history?’’’

“And what answer did he give to that?”

“As a decent human being, and a proud Jew.”

1. From a stenciled propaganda sheet distributed by local Begin supporters.

2. Menachem Begin,
The Revolt
(Jerusalem: Steimatzky’s, 1951), 43.

3. Ibid., 87.
NOTE
: Unless otherwise stated, the section on Begin’s life in the underground is largely based on the author’s recollections of conversations with Begin; his memoir,
The Revolt
; J. Bowyer Bell’s
Terror Out of Zion
(Dublin: Academy Press, 1977); and Harry Hurvitz’s
Begin: His Life, Words, and Deeds
(Jerusalem: Gefen, 2004).

4. Begin,
Revolt
, 221.

5. Bell,
Terror Out of Zion
, 184.

6. Menachem Begin Heritage Center Archives, Jerusalem.

7. Reconstructed from Begin’s
Revolt
, chapters
x
and
XI
, and the author’s notes.

8. Golda Meir,
My Life
(London: Futura, 1975), 266.

9. Israel State Archives.

10. Reconstructed from the author’s notes.

11. Reconstructed from Begin’s tribute to Eshkol on resigning from the national unity government, 4 August 1970.

12. Israel State Archives.

13. Based largely on interviews with Yechiel Kadishai.

14. Begin Center Archives.

15. In the possession of the author.

16. Reconstructed from Memorandum of Conversation,
RG
59, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration; and the author’s personal notes.

17. Based on Yitzhak Rabin’s
The Rabin Memoirs
(Jerusalem: Steimatzky’s, 1994), 95.

18. Ibid., 111.

19. Robert Dallek,
Nixon and Kissinge
r
(New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 222.

20. Rabin,
Memoirs
, 127.

21. Golda Meir,
My Life
, 316.

22. Abba Eban,
Personal Witness
(New York: Putnam’s, 1992), 336.

23. Oriana Fallaci,
Interview with Histor
y
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), 88.

24. Reconstructed from Golda Meir’s
My Life
, 351, and the author’s notes.

25. Rabin,
Memoirs
, 137.

26. Henry Kissinger,
Years of Upheaval
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1982), 483.

27. Based on Golda Meir’s
My Life
, 205.

28. Reconstructed from
My Life
, 361.

29. Henry Kissinger,
Crisis
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003), 483.

30. Golda Meir,
My Life
, 371.

31. Ibid., 375.

32. Rabin,
Memoirs
, 189.

33. Dallek,
Nixon and Kissinge
r
, 588.

34. Author’s notes; “Excerpts from Secretary of State Kissinger’s Press Conference,” Jerusalem, 17 June 1974, document 11, in Meron Medzini, ed.,
Israel’s Foreign Relations: Selected Documents
, vol. 3, 1974–1977 (Jerusalem: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs). www.mfa.gov.il.

35. “Press Conference with Prime Minister Rabin,” Jerusalem, 17 June 1974, document 12, in Meron Medzini, ed.,
Israel’s Foreign Relations: Selected Documents
, vol. 3, 1974–1977 (Jerusalem: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs). www.mfa.gov.il.

36.
Letter from President Nixon to President Sadat
, June 25, 1974, Anwar Sadat Archives. www.sadat.umd.edu/archives/correspondence.htm.

37. Dan Caldwell, ed.,
Henry Kissinger: His Personality and Policies
(Durham,
NC
: Duke University Press, 1983),
XI
.

38. Rabin,
Memoirs
, 200.

39. Ibid., 201; plus author’s notes.

40. Based on Begin’s Knesset speech, March 24, 1975.

41. Israel State Archives.

42.
Meeting between President Sadat, President Gerald Ford, Secretary Kissinger, and Egyptian Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmi
, June 2, 1975, Memorandum of Conversation, Anwar Sadat Archives, www.sadat.umd.edu/archives/negotiations.htm.

43. Gerald Ford,
Telephone Conversations with Secretary of State Kissinger, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel, and President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt on the Egyptian-Israeli Agreement
, September 1, 1975, document 516, Public Papers of the Presidents, American Presidency Project. www.presidency.ucsb.edu.

44. Reconstructed from Begin’s Knesset speech, March 24, 1975; article by Begin,
Maari
v
, August 29, 1975; Rabin,
Memoirs
, 215.

45. Rabin,
Memoirs
, 212.

46. Ibid., 215.

47. Based on the memoir of the former commander of the Israel Air Force: Benjamin Peled,
Days of Reckoning
[in Hebrew], ed. Moshe Shurin (Ben Shemen: Modan, 2004); and Rabin,
Memoirs
, 226.

48. Rabin,
Memoirs
, 221.

49. Ibid., 208.

50. Uri Dan, “My Scoop with Idi Amin,”
Jerusalem Post
, July 6, 2006, 13.

51. Knesset speech, July 4, 1976.

52. Jimmy Carter,
Keeping Faith
(Fayetteville,
AR
: University of Arkansas Press, 1995), 287.

53. Rabin,
Memoirs
, 234.

54. In 1992, Yitzhak Rabin was again elected prime minister. By now an experienced and mature politician, he reached a full reconciliation with Shimon Peres, who served as his foreign minister, and was applauded for his economic and educational initiatives. Most significantly, he was hailed worldwide for his statesmanship in negotiating the Oslo accords with the Palestinians, (for which he received the Nobel Prize), followed by his peace treaty with Jordan.

Nothing, however, proved more contentious at home than the Oslo accords, signed at the White House on 13 September 1993. At the ceremony, Rabin famously shook the hand of Yasser Arafat, acknowledging that henceforth he would be his partner for peace in negotiating a final settlement with the Palestinians. That was the essence of Oslo.

At that time I was the Israeli ambassador to Australia. In late 1995, on the eve of my return home and retirement, Rabin called to say he wanted me back on his team. I met him at his Jerusalem office on Wednesday, 1 November. My first question was, “Why did you shake Yasser Arafat’s hand?”

Typically, he rose and walked over to the window, and after a moment’s thought, articulated his considerations one by one:

“Number one: Israel is surrounded by two concentric circles. The inner circle is comprised of our immediate neighbors
–
Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon and, by extension, Saudi Arabia. The outer circle comprises their neighbors
–
Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and Libya. Virtually all of them are rogue states, and some are going nuclear.

“Number two, Iranian-inspired Islamic fundamentalism constitutes a threat to the inner circle no less than it does to Israel. Islamic fundamentalism is striving to destabilize the Gulf Emirates, has already created havoc in Syria, leaving twenty thousand dead, in Algeria, leaving one hundred thousand dead, in Egypt, leaving twenty-two thousand dead, in Jordan, leaving eight thousand dead, in the Horn of Africa
–
the Sudan and Somalia
–
leaving fourteen thousand dead, and in Yemen, leaving twelve thousand dead. And now it is gaining influence in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

“Iran is the banker, pouring millions into the West Bank and Gaza in the form of social welfare and health and education programs, so that it can win the hearts of the population and feed religious fanaticism.

“Thus, a confluence of interest has arisen between Israel and the inner circle, whose long-term strategic interest is the same as ours: to lessen the destabilizing consequences from the outer circle. At the end of the day, the inner circle recognizes they have less to fear from Israel than from their Muslim neighbors, not least from radicalized Islamic powers going nuclear.

“Number three: The Israel-Arab conflict was always considered to be a political one: a conflict between Arabs and Israelis. The fundamentalists are doing their level best to turn it into a religious conflict
–
Muslim against Jew, Islam against Judaism. And while a political conflict is possible to solve through negotiation and compromise, there are no solutions to a theological conflict. Then it is jihad
–
religious war: their God against our God. Were they to win, our conflict would go from war to war, and from stalemate to stalemate.

“And that, essentially, is why I agreed to Oslo and shook hands, albeit reluctantly, with Yasser Arafat. He and his
Plo
represent the last vestige of secular Palestinian nationalism. We have nobody else to deal with. It is either the
Plo
or nothing. It is a long shot for a possible settlement, or the certainty of no settlement at all at a time when the radicals are going nuclear.”

I made full notes of these words, and I had a lot to chew over. Rabin instructed his chief aide, Eitan Haber, to arrange for a second meeting the
following
Sunday 5 November – but it never took place. The evening before, as Yitzhak Rabin was leaving a Tel Aviv peace rally, he was murdered by a Jewish nationalist zealot.

55. Based on Eric Silver’s
Begin
:
A Biograph
y
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984), 156, and the author’s notes.

56. Carter,
Keeping Faith
, 295.

57. Had he lived to hear the
BBC
in more recent times, Begin would have been shocked to the point of righteous anger at the manner of its coverage of the Jewish State. He would have summoned me to dictate letters to its chairman, railing against the opinionated, slanted and emotional advocacy which has replaced the accurate, honest, and straightforward journalism of yesteryear. He would express indignation at interviewers who hold forth without a drop of sympathy or empathy for Israel’s predicaments; who utter words like ‘Zionism’ and ‘settler’ through curled lips, while in the same breath describing Arab terrorists as mere ‘radicals’ or ‘militants,’ or ‘gunmen,’ not the killers of innocents they know them truly to be.

58. Yaakov Herzog,
A People That Dwells Alone
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975), 52.

59.
Israel Government Press Office Bulletin
, July 15, 1977.

60.
Visit of Prime Minister Menahem Begin of Israel: Remarks of the President and the Prime Minister at the Welcoming Ceremony
, July 19, 1977, Jimmy Carter, Public Papers of the Presidents, American Presidency Project. www.presidency.ucsb.edu.

61. Mark Twain,
The Innocents Abroad
, part 5, chapter 47.

62. Reconstructed from the official transcript; the author’s personal notes; and Carter,
Keeping Faith
, 297.

63. Author’s notes; Moshe Dayan,
Breakthrough
(New York: Knopf, 1981), 19.

64. Ibid., p. 20.

65. Reconstructed from the author’s notes; Zbigniew Brzezinski,
Power and Principle
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983); Samuel Lewis (Ambassador), interview by Peter Jessup, 1998, Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (
ADST
). http://memory.loc.gov.

66. Menachem Begin Heritage Center, Jerusalem, Newsletter, August 2, 2006.

67. Based on
Israel Government Press Office Bulletin
, September 2, 1977.

68.
Israel Government Press Office Bulletin
, November 11, 1977.

69. Carter,
Keeping Faith
, 300.

70. Dayan,
Breakthrough
.

71.
Israel Government Press Office Bulletin
, November 28, 1977.

72.
Israel Government Press Office Bulletin
, March 24, 1978.

73. Reconstructed from Vance and Lewis interviews and the author’s notes.

74. Reconstructed from the author’s transcript of the meeting, and from Sir John Mason (former British ambassador to Israel),
Diplomatic Despatches
, (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 1998), 172.

75. Author’s notes; “Statement Made by Prime Minister Begin on Remarks Made by Chancellor Shmidt,” Jerusalem, 25 February 1982, document 108, in Meron Medzini, ed.
Israel’s Foreign Relations: Selected Documents
, vol. 7, 1981–1982 (Jerusalem: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs). www.mfa.gov.il.

76. Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

77. Lewis, interview,
ADST
.

78.
Israel Government Press Office Bulletin
, July 13, 1981.

79. Israel Government Press Office.