Rabin, too, puffing furiously on his cigarette. When the erect figure of Sadat

Rabin, too, puffing furiously on his cigarette. When the erect figure of Sadat emerged, there was spontaneous applause, and a serenade from Israeli army trumpeters. Even before Sadat’s Knesset address the next day, I understood that his visit, his willingness to make the first, bold move toward a possible peace, marked just the beginning of a difficult negotiating road. But there was one passage in his speech that touched me especially. He ran through the history of how Egypt and other Arab states had not just fought Israel, but denied our right to exist as a state. “We used to brand you as so-called Israel,” he said. Now, the leader of our most important Arab enemy declared: “You want to live with us in this part of the world. In all sincerity, I tell you that we welcome you among us, with full security and safety.” The formula he proposed was straightforward. Egypt would agree to a full peace, accepting and formally recognizing the state of Israel. But Israel would have to withdraw from all Arab land captured in 1967, including “Arab Jerusalem.” We would also have to accept the “rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including their right to establish their own state.” Begin’s reply was more sensitive than I’d expected from a leader who, through my Labor kibbutnzik eyes, I'd always seen as an extremist, unwaveringly committed to a “greater Israel”. Though he did make it clear his views on the shape of an eventual peace differed from Sadat’s, he proposed further talks with the aim of finding an agreement both sides could live with. Still, like all Israelis, I knew he would never accept at least two of the Egyptian president’s demands: a retreat from our control of a united Jerusalem or the creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank of the Jordan: for Begin, biblical Judaea and Samaria. On our territorial dispute with Egypt, I did believe a deal was possible. I didn’t expect us to return all of the Sinai, if only because I couldn’t see Begin agreeing to it. For security reasons, I also felt we should try to hold on to a pair of air force bases built after 1967, with American help, just a few miles over the Negev border. But as for the rest, I saw no reason not to give it back. As I’d told Motta after the 1973 war, I'd long believed Israel had lost sight of the original reason we’d held onto the Sinai after 1967. It was supposed to be a huge, sandy security buffer. If we did manage to make peace with Egypt, there was surely no reason to hold on to it. The moment of truth came almost exactly 10 months later, in September 1978. American President Jimmy Carter hosted a summit with Begin and Sadat at Camp David, in search of a “framework agreement” for final negotiations on 184 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011655