Shoulders stooped, dark shadows under his eyes, Menachem Begin sat slumped in a wheelchair, steeped in morose musings. Pain, physical and mental, swayed through his mind and body as he contemplated the diabolical happenings swirling around him in the closing months of 1981.
For one, he had slipped and broken his hip - hence the wheelchair and the physical pain. Second, his peace partner, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, had been assassinated. Third, his incessant efforts to reach an agreement on an autonomy plan for the Palestinians had stalled. Fourth, Syria had all but taken over Lebanon, and Yasser Arafat's PLO its southern reaches. Fifth, the Israeli-US relationship was souring, president Ronald Reagan warning against an Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Sixth, the national economy was in the doldrums. And seventh, his beloved wife, Aliza, was sick.
So, there he sat in the simply furnished apartment of his official Jerusalem residence, and brooded. The room was as quiet as a crypt, but for the purr of the radio broadcasting the evening news, to which he was hardly listening. But, suddenly, his ears prickled at the sound of the announcer quoting Syrian president Hafez Assad as saying he "would not make peace with Israel even in a hundred years." The premier picked up the phone to his longtime and most trusted aide, Yehiel Kadishai, and asked him to find out the current population of the Golan Heights, and call him straight back. This he did - 10,000-12,000 Druse were living on the Golan, and a few thousand Israeli settlers.
Begin closed his eyes and forced himself to think through his pain: The Golan Heights rose 300 meters over the farm-rich Hula Valley. Were it governed by a friendly neighbor, the escarpment would be of little military value, but in enemy hands it was a strategic nightmare. Its capture in the Six Day War put an end to years of Syrian harassment and bombardment of the villages and towns below. Now, Assad, the most intractable and intransigent of all the Arab leaders, was saying for the umpteenth time that Syria would never recognize the Jewish state. So why wait? Why leave this sparsely populated critically strategic plateau in a state of legal limbo under military administration when, by a simple act of legislation, it could be incorporated into Israel's sovereign law?
This is precisely what Begin did the following day: He pushed through a unanimous cabinet decision in the morning, a two-thirds Knesset majority in the afternoon and ignited a firestorm in Washington in the evening. "You know, Al," said president Reagan to his secretary of state, Alexander Haig, "this Golan business makes me mad. It has complicated Middle East peace-making endlessly."
"I agree," concurred an angry Haig, "particularly after we've recently signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the Israelis, which Begin pressed for. I assumed that that agreement would put paid to the Israeli penchant for taking us by surprise, and that they would fully consult with us before taking such a drastic unilateral action."
"Does the agreement oblige them to consult with us?" asked the president.
Haig shrugged, and his sharp eyes, set in a high strong-boned face, narrowed when he answered, "Well, nowhere does it say so specifically. The Israelis never actually promised to consult us, but we had every reason to understand that as strategic allies we would be consulted on matters which clearly affect our interests as well as theirs."
"So what do you propose?" The president popped a few jelly beans into his mouth.
Haig took his time answering, and when he did, his voice was pensive and measured: "Well, Mr. President, we have to convey to Mr. Begin a message sharp enough so that he'll sit up and take note, and not surprise us again."
"Such as what?"
"Such as suspending the strategic cooperation agreement until we conduct a serious review about our interpretations of it."
The president mulled and chewed and said, "You're right, Al. That's the way to go. Let's do it."
"I'll instruct our ambassador, Mr. President," said the secretary of state.
NEXT DAY the prime minister received ambassador Samuel Lewis in his private apartment. He was sitting in a chair, with one foot propped on a stool and, by him, a table covered with papers.
The men liked each other. Begin respected the 51-year-old, ebullient Texan's urbane and well-honed diplomatic skills. In the eight years he was to spend at his Tel Aviv posting, which spanned the Carter and the Reagan administrations, Lewis became so well connected and was so well trusted that frustrated politicians would occasionally unburden their souls to him and dole out confidences that were properly the preserve of hush-hush forums.
"Come on in, Sam," called Begin when Lewis appeared at the door accompanied by a note taker.
"How are you feeling, Mr. Prime Minister?" asked the ambassador solicitously, shaking him by the hand. He noted that the premier's cheekbones and chin were more pronounced than ever, and there was pain in his eyes.
"Much better, thank you," answered the premier, vainly trying to pump a bit of cheer into his voice. "The trouble is, I can't bend my leg. But you know me by now, Sam - a Jew bends his knee to no one but to God."
Whether this was a bit of banter or a declaration of defiance was hard to tell.
The prime minister invited Lewis to take a seat, stiffened, sat up, reached for the stack of papers on the table by his side, put them on his lap and in a face like stone and a voice like steel, resorted to histrionics as a vehicle of diplomacy by speaking nonstop for almost an hour, never once pausing to look at his notes, and beginning with a thunderous recitation of the perfidies perpetrated by Syria over the decades, and ending with: "Therefore, Mr. Ambassador" - that's what he called him whenever he was blasting off - "I have a very personal and urgent message to president Reagan which I want you to transmit immediately."
"Of course," said Lewis, having been through this sort of ritual before where everybody knew their roles and recited their lines.
