Where Begin appears
36 total
… that he could use fire and brimstone, or the modern military equivalent, to remake the Middle East as he and Begin wished to see it. If only because of the tacit assumption that the outside world, and especially the Americans, would sit by...
…ong Israel’s disadvantaged Sephardi majority, with their roots in the Arab world and especially north Africa. Begin not only sensed this. While he’d never lost the formal bearing — or the accent — from his childhood in Poland, his long year...
… 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 t...
…erstood 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...
…rs had to know what they were deciding. The more we geared up for an invasion, the less certain I became that Begin’s cabinet understood what we were planning to do. Arik’s original plan was codenamed Oranim: Hebrew for “pine trees”. It inv...
… war plan was not a response to the Katyushas. It was a way of using military force to achieve Prime Minister Begin’s political aim: stopping the Camp David peace process in its tracks, and ensuring it did not go beyond the peace treaty wit...
Begin himself would quit as Prime Minister
including their right to establish their own state.” Begin’s
nd hopeful Clinton. We did begin on a note of optimism. In my opening statement, I said: “Now is the time for us to make a peace of the brave, to find a way to live together side by side with mutual respect, and to create a better future fo...
Sadat and Begin had done there before, would deliver the breakthrough that I believed ought to be possible. For that to happen, I told the President, I believed it was essential that Arafat truly understood the importance of what was at sta...
…eer had begun at the grassroots, in the northern town of Beit She’an, but who went on to become a key part of Begin’s victory in 1977. The leading Sephardi figure in the Likud, he was at one point mentioned as a future leader. Many Israelis...
…al decisions were made. That was out of his control. I didn’t want it to be out mine. I raised the issue with Begin in our first meeting. “If you want to get the maximum value from your head of intelligence,” I said, “you should make sure h...
… unity. This war was different. It had been launched in pursuit of a specific political vision: a marriage of Begin’s political credo and Arik’s determination to use overwhelming force to bulldoze a new political reality in Lebanon. The fin...
… both perverse and excessive, and not just to me. Habib, and President Reagan himself, fumed. So did a lot of Begin’s own ministers, with the result, unprecedented in Israeli military annals, that they formally removed Arik’s authority to d...
…d rocket fire into Israel. Then, he said, we could strike more forcefully. In other words, the invasion would begin. It did. Dubbed “Operation Peace for Galilee” to convey the aim of protecting northern Israel from shell and rocket fire, it...
… war plan was not a response to the Katyushas. It was a way of using military force to achieve Prime Minister Begin’s political aim: stopping the Camp David peace process in its tracks, and ensuring it did not go beyond the peace treaty wit...
…dy, willing and able to fight, but wanted above all to live unmolested and accepted by our neighbors. Yet for Begin and the Likud, I knew the assassination would cast the whole peace process into doubt. Sadat’s successor, Vice-President Hos...
oughly one-third of the Egyptian desert we still held, knowing that we’d no longer have the room to do so after the final withdrawal. It was the largest exercise I’d ever commanded. The advances and tactical retreats, the flanking maneuvers...
…and that even having to repeat it made his blood curdle. “Is that what you are?” There was pandemonium. Maybe Begin would have won anyway. But it was close, just one Knesset seat between the two major parties. And win, he did. I became incr...
. Begin had recently lost both Ezer and Dayan, who accused him of deliberatedly torpedoing chances of building on the peace with Egypt. But Arik was still there, four-square behind a more forceful military posture on Israel’s other fronts....
