His most ardent supporter was Rabbi Orent of the religious parties. It was a strange but fitting union, the mystic believer and the indifferent atheist, the synagogue and the kibbutz, the man who loved the land because God had given it to his people and the man who cared for it because it could be made to bring forth good fruit. A lot of Israel’s strength, Begin thought, was reflected in that alliance.
To his surprise, the most articulate advocate of a compromise with the Americans had been his Minister of the Interior, Yusi Nero, a man the Israeli public usually labeled a hawk. Seize the occasion to force from the Americans and the Soviets guarantees so ironclad their state could never again be menaced, he argued. That would allow them to begin reducing the crushing armament burden which would destroy their nation in the long run more surely than Qaddafi and his bomb.
Begin leaned forward, clearing his throat to get his ministers’ attention.
Despite all the tensions of the day he remained as cool and as poised as he had been at dawn when the President’s first call came in, the clean white handkerchief folded in his suit coat pocket, the tie firmly knotted and precisely in place.
“I would like to remind all of you,” he said, “of what is our fundamental responsibility to the nation and to history. We must remain united.
Whenever we Jews have allowed our enemies-or our friends-to divide us, the result has been a disaster.”
“My dear Menachem.” It was Yadin, drawing quietly on his pipe as he spoke.
“It is all well and good to speak of unity now, but if we are confronted with this disaster it’s because of a policy you insisted on following in total disregard of its effect on our unity. Taking Arab lands for these settlements=’
“Arab lands!” The voice of Rabbi Orent exploded through the room. The leader of the religious parties was as far removed from the traditional image of the pale, stoop-shouldered rabbinical student as it was possible to be. He was six three, a two-hundred-pound former discus thrower and paratroop captain who was an outspoken supporter of the Gush Emonim, the Block of the Faithful, the movement whose followers had defied their countrymen, the Arabs and most of the world by flinging up their settlements on the land seized by Israel from Jordan during the 1967 war. “Once and for all, let it be clearly understood that there is no such thing as Arab territory or Arab land here. This is the Land of Israel, the eternal heritage of our fathers. The Arabs who have dwelt upon it have done so by usurping our right. They have no more claim to it than a squatter has to the dwelling he has taken over while the owner is away!”
The words that Orent articulated with such passionate intensity reflected the ideas of the founder of the Gush Emonim. Ironically, it was not to Begin or Arik Sharon or Moshe Dayan or any of the other legendary figures of modern Israel that the settlers owed their loyalty, but to a man who, like Orent, was a rabbi. He was a frail ninetyyear-old who might have been a survivor of the world that had disappeared forever into the gas chambers of Dachau and Auschwitz, a gentle Eastern European ghetto patriarch dispensing wisdom and cheer to his grandchildren at the end of the day. Rav Zvi Kook was anything but that. The wizened, bearded old man, barely five feet tall, was, however improbable, the heir to the mantle of militant Judaism, the successor to the vengeful warriors of the Old Testament in whose pages he had found the source and justification of the messianic vision that inflamed him and his followers.
Like most ideas capable of inspiring men to zealotry, his benefited from their great simplicity. God had chosen the Jewish people as His Elect to reveal His Nature and Works to mankind through prophecy. He had promised Abraham and the Children of Israel the land of Canaan as evidence of the bond between them. Just as a tree can bring forth fruit only when its roots are plunged into the soil that gives it life, so, Rav Kook taught, the Jewish people could realize their God-given destiny only when they were installed upon the land-all of it-that God had deeded them. Go forth and claim it, he had told his followers, as the instruments of God’s Holy Will, the vehicles of His prophecy.
“Be not deceived,” Orent intoned, waving a warning finger at Begin. “No Jew can renounce our claim to the land God deeded us. Our settlers went forth to nourish our land with their sweat and toil, but they will nourish it with their blood as well if anyone tries to take it from them.”
Begin shuddered, both from the prospect of civil strife and from the implacable fanaticism in the rabbi’s voice, a fanaticism he well knew he had done much to encourage. Sadly he turned to Yaacov Dorit, the commander of the Israeli Defense Forces. The Israeli leader had a genius for forcing his Cabinet to a decision by forcing it to confront, as starkly as he could, the issues before it. “General,” he asked, “can we count on the Army to evacuate the settlements forcibly if it is ordered to do so?”
“Are you going to tell the Army why?”
Begin blinked, perplexed by Dorit’s reply.
“Because if you do,” the General went on, “they’ll never do it. The Army reflects the majority of this country, and whatever the majority thinks about the settlements, it’s not going to be in favor of manhandlingand maybe killing-Israelis for Qaddafi. Or even to save New York.”
“And suppose we don’t give them the real reason?” Begin inquired.
“Then they won’t do it either.”
Begin turned an infinitely sad regard to the men at the table. “You see, my friends, I do not believe we have the option of capitulating in front of Qaddafi’s threat, even if we wanted to. We would destroy the nation in civil disor der and bloodshed if we did.” As he spoke, he employed a revealing nervous reflex, twisting the frame of his glasses between his thumb and forefinger. “I will be accused of falling prey to the Massada complex for what I am about to say, but it i9-my sincere belief we have no choice. We must resist Qaddafi, and the Americans if it comes to it.”
“The Americans are bluffing,” Ranan growled. “I don’t believe they’ve got the military capacity to come in here, and if they do we’ll tear them to pieces.”
Begin eyed him coolly. “I wish I shared your sentiments, Benny.” He sighed.
“Alas, I do not.”
From the reception this kid is getting you’d have thought we were bringing in Yassir Arafat himself, Angelo Rocchia mused. The car that had sped the Arab he had arrested from the Long Island Bar and Grill to the cellar of Federal Plaza had pulled up in front of the direct elevator reserved for FBI use; two other cars each filled with agents had stopped just behind it. Their occupants, hands ready on concealed weapons, swarmed around them as protectively as Secret Service men shielding a President in a hostile crowd.
Angelo got his first good look at his quarry in the fluorescent glare of the elevator. He was in his late twenties, a pale, almost fragile figure with uncombed black hair and a thick drooping moustache that seemed somehow a pathetic boast for a virility he did not possess. Above all, he was a worried, perplexed young man; Angelo could almost smell the fear oozing from his glands like some malodorous secretion.
Everyone, Dewing, the Police Commissioner, Salisbury of the CIA, Hudson, the Chief of Detectives, was waiting for them when the doors slid open on the twenty-sixth floor. For just a second, after the Arab had been led away for a hasty arraignment, Angelo and Rand were celebrities.
“Good work,” the Police Commissioner said in that mellow baritone he reserved for promotion ceremonies and Communion-breakfast speechmaking.
“First break we’ve had all day.”
As soon as he had been fingerprinted, photographed and arraigned, the Arab, who had given his name as Suleiman Kaddourri, was led into the FBI’s interrogation room. The room was as far removed from the public’s idea of what an interrogation center should look like as a Hamburger Heaven was from the Tour d’Argent. In fact, it resembled nothing quite so much as a middle-class suburban living room. Thick wall-to-wall carpeting blanketed the floor. The prisoner’s chair was a comfortable deepblue sofa covered with scatter cushions. In front of it was a coffee table with newspapers, cigarettes and a bubbling coffee maker. A pair of armchairs were ranged on the opposite side of the table for the FBI interrogators. The whole, carefully contrived atmosphere was, of course, a hoax designed to relax and disarm a prisoner. Every sound in the room, from the lighting of a match to the rustle of a piece of paper, was picked up and recorded by sensitive, noise-activated microphones in the walls. From behind two of the halfdozen watercolors on the walls, television cameras focused tightly on the prisoner’s face. On one wall was a huge photomural of the skyline of New York. It concealed a one-way viewing window. Behind that window was the interrogation room’s semi-darkened control booth from which a dozen senior officials could see and hear everything that went on inside. Angelo’s special status as the arresting officer won him entry to the booth. Fascinated, he studied the faces in the gloom around him.