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 Kissinger (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 History (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 Kissinger, 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, Maariv, 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 Biography (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.
80. Remarks at the Welcoming Ceremony for Prime Minister Menahem Begin of Israel, September 9, 1981, The Public Papers of President Ronald W. Reagan, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. www.reagan.utexas.edu.
81. Israel Government Press Office.
82. Author’s notes.
83. Reconstructed from Lewis, interview, ADST.
84. Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman, Friends in Deed (New York: Hyperion, 1994), 200.
85. Begin Center Archives.
86. Israel Government Press Office Bulletin, October 11, 1981.
87. Haaretz, December 4, 1981.
88. Based on cabinet minutes, December 12, 1981.
89. Extrapolated from Lewis, interview, ADST.
90. Reconstructed from the author’s notes; Israel Government Press Office Bulletin, December 20, 1981; interview with Ambassador Samuel Lewis; and Lewis, interview, ADST.
91. Reconstructed from the author’s notes, and Israel Government Press Office Bulletin, January 26, 1982.
92. Reconstructed from the Knesset minutes, May 3, 1982.
93. Based on the author’s conversations with Dr. Yosef Burg, and Begin’s remarks to the cabinet, June 5, 1982.
94. Remarks of the President and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel Following Their Meeting, June 21, 1982, The Public Papers of President Ronald W. Reagan, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Reconstructed from the official transcript. www.reagan.utexas.edu.
95. Ronald Reagan, An American Life: The Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990).
96. Reconstructed from the author’s notes based upon conversations with Menachem Begin; Lewis, interview, ADST.
97. “Cabinet Resolution on the Reagan Plan,” Jerusalem, 2 September 1982, document 68, in Meron Medzini, ed., Israel’s Foreign Relations: Selected Documents, vol. 8, 1982–1984 (Jerusalem: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs). www.mfa.gov.il.
98. Israel Government Press Office Bulletin, September 5, 1982.
99. “Senator Cranston Speaks Out,” The Link (Americans for Middle East Understanding) 15 (December 1982): 8–9.
100. Israel State Archives.
101. Based on an interview with Ambassador Moshe Sasson, September 5, 2001; and Jehan Sadat, A Woman of Egypt (London: Bloomsbury, 1987).
102. Copies of the letters are in the author’s possession; reconstructed from the author’s notes; interview with Yechiel Kadishai; referenced from Hart N. Hasten, I Shall Not Die! (Jerusalem: Gefen, 2003).
103. Reconstructed from the author’s notes; Lewis, interview, ADST.
Bibliography
As indicated in the acknowledgements to this work, much of the author’s material is sourced from his personal diary, recollections of events to which he was witness, the testimony of others present at happenings when he was not, official and unofficial transcripts, and minutes. Additional sources to which the author had recourse in one degree or another are:
Agress, Eliyahu. Golda. [In Hebrew, with photographs.] Tel Aviv: Levin-Epstein, 1969.
Begin, Menachem. The Revolt. Jerusalem: Steimatzky’s, 1951.
Bell, J. Bowyer. Terror Out of Zion. Dublin: Academy Press, 1977.
Bradford, Sarah. Elizabeth. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996.
Brzezinski, Zbigniew. Power and Principle. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983.
Caldwell, Dan, ed. Henry Kissinger: His Personality and Policies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1983.
Carter, Jimmy. Keeping Faith. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1995.
Clarke, Thurston. By Blood and By Fire. London: Hutchinson, 1981.
Dallek, Robert. Nixon and Kissinger. New York: HarperCollins, 2007.
Dayan, Moshe. Breakthrough. New York: Knopf, 1981.
Dellheim, Charles. The Disenchanted Isle: Mrs. Thatcher’s Capitalist Revolution. New York: Norton, 1995.
Eban, Abba. Personal Witness. New York: Putnam’s, 1992.
Eshkol. [In Hebrew, with photographs.] Tel Aviv.
Friedman, Thomas L. From Beirut to Jerusalem. New York: Anchor, 1990.
Gilbert, Martin. Exile and Return. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978.
———. Jerusalem in the Twentieth Century. London: Chatto and Windus, 1996.
———. Israel: A History. London: Doubleday, 1998.
Golan, Aviezer, and Shlomo Nakdimon. Begin. [In Hebrew.] Jerusalem, 1978.
Grosbard, Ofer. Menachem Begin: A Portrait of a Leader. [In Hebrew.] Tel Aviv: Resling, 2006.
Hasten, Hart N. I Shall Not Die! Jerusalem: Gefen, 2003.
Herzog, Chaim. The Arab-Israeli Wars. New York: Vintage, 1984.
Herzog, Yaakov. A People That Dwells Alone. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975.
Horovitz, David, ed. Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier of Peace, London: Halban, 1996.
Hurwitz, Harry. Begin: His Life, Works, and Deeds. Jerusalem: Gefen, 2004.
Isaacson, Meron. Begin. [In Hebrew, with photographs.] Tel Aviv, 2003.
Katz, Samuel. Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in
Palestine. Rev. ed. New York: Taylor, 2002.
The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership Page 76
