by Rose Fox
“The truth is that a large section of our class is excited as hell, shouting that the price we’re going to have to pay is very heavy, like Mom says. Most of them yell that Sheikh Hamdallah should be eliminated, plain and simple. Nobody ever talks about releasing prisoners.”
“Well,” Giora said, “that’s just the ranting and babbling of youngsters.”
“And are you experienced adults making sense? I think you’re insane. How can you relate to that ransom demand? Are you prepared to release three thousand prisoners for two? Do you think you’re right?”
“Come on, really, Arieh, then how are we going to release them or solve the matter?” He paused for a moment and asked out of curiosity, “aside from objecting and disagreeing, do you have any constructive suggestions?”
“Sure, there are tons of suggestions. Do you want to hear? Please. There are suggestions that we sit down and negotiate and while that is going on, we send crack units led by a top commander to the area where they are presumed to be held and trick them into releasing the hostages. Wait, that’s not all.”
“Okay, what else?”
“After we free the hostages, the kids say we should demolish the place. Oh, and we mustn’t forget to spread salt all over; coarse cooking salt, I mean. And why? So that nothing can grow on their land. Like Joshua Ben-Nun did after he conquered the city of the bitter enemy of the wandering Hebrew tribes and threw salt in their soil. We’re studying that now for our senior certificate exam.”
Giora turned away as he mumbled:
“Nonsensical chatter of youngsters. Full of fantasies and daydreams. Oh, how I envy you.” and he heard Ora laughing out loud.
“I’m off to a meeting,” he said. "I’ve been invited to an urgent meeting; I wanted to say another urgent meeting on the subject.”
“Ah, really? Listen, I have a suggestion for you.” Ora said, still laughing, “take your son with you to the discussion. Believe me, these kids’ ideas are more realistic than we understand and, certainly, better than those that will come up in the deliberations at your meeting."
Giora shrugged. “Ora, who knows better than I do that there is simply nothing to talk about. Believe me, I know what I am going there for now. It’s just to show I’m doing something. All they can come up with are discussions, discussions and more discussions.”
“When will you be back? When will the discussion end?”
“Who knows,” he mumbled quietly and then said out loud,
“It’s impossible to know when a meeting fixed for four o’clock in the afternoon, will end. Don’t forget, it’s taking place in Jerusalem.”
Before he closed the door, he heard Ora shout,
“Don’t forget that tomorrow evening at eight, we’ve arranged to meet the Dichters at the Azrieli Towers!”
She heard Giora say, as if to himself:
“Okay, fine, I’ll tell them they have to finish before eight o’clock tomorrow evening.”
The Prime Minister had invited his Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Defense to the meeting, but this time he decided to invite the former Foreign Affairs and Defense Ministers, who now sat in the Opposition rows.
A folder lay before each chair and listed the rules and instructions regarding the behavior of the enemy. None of the participants bothered to browse through it.
When Giora entered the conference room the discussion was already well under way. The Foreign Minister, Nathan Dichter, was speaking.
“I say that we release a statement refuting Hamdallah’s claims.”
“Okay, say we deny their accusations. What would you say?” Giora interjected as he sat down. They all looked at him quizzically and he explained.
“What will you deny? Will you say we didn’t send them to collect information and spy on them? Or would you scold him for trying to use our error to his political advantage.”
“Can you stop with the cynicism, Giora?” Nathan objected and waited for a response.
The Minister of Defense, Uri Mofet, stared at the current and former Minister of Foreign Affairs. “Have your kids stopped squabbling?”
“Wait, if you object to that, let’s hear what you suggest,” Shaul, the former Minister of Defense, proposed.
“Good, I’m asking, what do we hope to get?”
“What do we hope to get? We hope to get our hostages back,” was Giora’s reply.
“Wait, why do you object so much to what is happening or being said here?” Shimon, the current Minister of Defense turned to him.
“Because we should be thinking of a way to liberate them instead of all this babbling and talking. Have you thought of that?”
The Prime Minister intervened. He joked and said, “right, we have to liberate them. Who will do that? Rambo, perhaps, or maybe Superman? Find them among us and I promise you that tomorrow they’ll be back here with our friends.”
“That’s quite right, good for you. How come we didn’t think of that earlier!” someone called out from another corner of the table.
“Hey, guys, who will volunteer to go in there and get our friends out?” the Minister for Infrastructure challenged.
“Any candidates for suicide? Sorry, I mean volunteers,” the Minister of Interior laughed.
Laughter and ridicule took over the conversation. Words and sentences were thrown into the air, as if they would never lead to a solution.
“Perhaps that’s enough! Really, that’s enough of your futile ideas!” someone shouted.
They all focused on the person. It was Giora, who stood up, angrily threw aside the booklet that lay in front of him on the table, his face livid with rage.
“Tell me, have you lost your minds?! Do you hear yourselves?!”
“My friend, what has happened to you?” Dichter inquired. Calm down get a grip on yourself.”
Giora rose from his seat, moved the chair back to the table and moved to leave. When he had almost reached the entrance, he turned around and spoke to them quietly, without anger.
“We’re a bunch of incompetent clowns. Even my son, of seventeen, who is due to enlist in the army with his friends this August, tells me that the only solution is to get rid of Hamdallah."
They all looked at him in silence. He was already grasping the doorknob and continued speaking calmly.
“When I asked my son if the youngsters had any suggestions to make, he threw out the idea that a small unit headed by a top commander should be mobilized to go and liberate the hostages in a scorched earth campaign, leaving a wasteland covered with coarse salt behind them, to teach them a lesson.”
After a few seconds of silence, the people around the table burst out laughing. The Minister of Defense banged his hand on the table, threw his head back, roaring with laughter till tears ran down his cheeks. Giora gazed at them, his face deadly serious as the level of his anger steadily rose.
Suddenly Dichter stopped laughing and asked, “How did you answer your young son?”
“I responded much like you, like an idiot. I told him he was fantasizing, that those were the dreams of young people who don’t understand anything. Between us, what do these kids, on the point of enlisting, know about running a country?” After a minute he added with affected importance, “after all, we’re the big experts. We know how to speak, to deny, to go out to the press and tell stories. That’s the way to run a country!!”
“Wait, tell us, do you really want us to send a vigilante unit to liberate the hostages and then burn the place down? Do you think we’re a gang of belligerent teenagers?” the Minister of Defense yelled.
“If only we were. All we know how to do is to sit on chairs and talk, babble and hold conversations.”
Giora did not yell now. “Do you know what? I’ve already been Minister of Foreign Affairs, I’ve reached the end of my candidacy and I’m done with the stories. I have had enough of the idea that just keeps repeating itself, doesn’t release anyone and doesn’t achieve anything. I’m fed up with it. I, Giora, am no longer with you.”
&nbs
p; He opened the door quietly and went out.
They could not look one another straight in the eye. Silence reigned in the conference room.
* * *
The head of the armed wing of the Abbas army, Hamdallah, appeared on television. He made his announcement and ended with the same statement.
“As usual, we won’t say whether the two hostages are dead or alive.”
Leila stared at his image on the screen and balled her hands into fists. A bitter smile was drawn on her lips until his image disappeared. She bit her fists hard because that was the only way she could stifle the scream that threatened to come out of her throat.
The American emissary, Tommy Messenger, was being interviewed.
“We are negotiating with an organization that is holding two of our citizens and the question being asked is how much are they worth?”
“I am thinking out loud,” Tommy intercepted the interviewer. “How do you expect to sit and talk with someone who seeks your annihilation?”
Leila got angry and spoke to the screen,
“Oh, really smart guy, so who should you talk to if not the enemy. They say you can only make peace with enemies.”
The day before, Yosef had suggested that she meet with the wife of the other hostage but he felt that his words were falling on deaf ears. Leila would not listen to any words of consolation. She was encased in her grief and didn’t allow those around her to pierce that shell.
Her granddaughter, Arlene, scampered around the tents and she rejoiced in her childish voice. The toddler gave meaning to her life and sweetened the air, she breathed a little.
That morning, Arlene nestled up to Leila, looked into her grandmother’s eyes and asked. “Wenou Mama? (Where is mother)? Wenou Raha’at? (Where did she go)?”
Leila pulled her tightly close, hugged her and rocked her from side to side.
Arlene made futile attempts to free herself from her grandmother’s grasp, but Leila rested her head on her and wept aloud. Arlene got a fright. She hadn’t expected such a reaction and stroked her grandmother’s face with her little hands as she said,
“Nana is crying.”
This was the first time that Arlene had dared to ask what had become of her mother, whom she hadn’t seen for a long time. It was the first and last time that Arlene asked. Now she grasped and understood from her grandmother’s reaction that she might never see her again.
In these hours of heat, Naim’s grandchildren played in the tent with little Arlene. A sudden breeze wafted in through the raised folds of the tent to the north and the south and cooled them. In spite of their young age, the children were aware that something had happened and that there was no chance of winning the attention of the adults around them so they went outside.
A notice announcing ‘breaking news’ appeared on the screen and Leila straightened up. Adel came through the opening and entered his mother’s tent. He sat down beside her.
“There has been a development in the matter of our hostages,” the newscaster announced.
The Minister of Defense, Uri Mofet appeared on the screen. He was addressing students at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and declared:
“Israel undertakes to examine the possibility of releasing prisoners who do not have blood on their hands, which means, those, who have not themselves murdered or maimed people.”
Leila responded. “Oh, great, so they will only be prepared to discuss ten people out of three thousand because they’re the only ones who aren’t killers! That’s crazy! It’s actually as if they were now saying that they aren’t prepared to negotiate with regard to any of them.”
Adel threw her a quick glance but remained silent. He wasn’t in the mood to confront his mother.
A car was heard outside and Adel went to look.
“Journalists and news photographers,” Adel reported.
They got out of the car, waving their arms excitedly, trying to explain that they wanted to meet the mother.
“I want to ask the mother to beg for the life of her daughter, Abigail. It’ll look much better than a meeting of the U.N. Security Council or all the other chat flying around.”
Yosef stood facing them and clicked his tongue. Indeed, he knew what the reaction of his wife, Leila, would be but something about the idea appealed to him and he decided to try. He poked his head into the entrance to the tent and looked at Leila. Yosef asked her with his eyes and she waved her hand in refusal.
“Did you hear their suggestions?” he asked her, but she shook her head in refusal and Yosef spread his arms out to the side and answered:
“I’m sorry,”
A quick-witted photographer, standing very close to Yosef, managed to move his camera lens forward and press the button. He caught a picture of Leila sitting upright, her face expressing infinite sorrow and bitter grief that were worse than death.
When the noise of the motor and the cloud of dust its departure raised, dispersed into the air, there was an announcement on the news that a large demonstration for the release of the hostages was to take place in the streets of Tel Aviv and would gather at Rabin Square. Leila turned the TV off, saw that there was no one beside her and sobbed into her scarf.
* * *
The demonstration was planned to be largest Israel had ever seen.
Already, in the early hours of the morning, preparations were in full throttle in Rabin Square. Streets within a one kilometer radius were closed to vehicles. Many youngsters participated in the preparations. They climbed trees and stretched giant fabric banners between them. They unrolled long banners that dropped down and covered the facades of the buildings with slogans from their top floors and roofs.
JUSTICE ADAM AYALON IS NOT NEGOTIABLE AND NOT FOR SALE
ADVOCATE ABIGAIL BEN-NUN IS NOT REPLACEABLE
YOU ARE BOTH GIANTS, NOT EXCHANGE FOR MURDERERS
Carton posters bearing slogans were nailed to wooden posts to be held up high and waved by children and toddlers on the shoulders of their parents as they marched:
THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL ARE NOT WORTHLESS
WE ARE NOT FOR SALE
WE LOVE YOU ADAM AND ABIGAIL
Huge piles of white T-shirts, decorated with the colors of the rainbow, read
Counting the days till your return
Adam and Abigail
The demonstration was supposed to take place in the afternoon, but the square began to fill up from early in the morning. People came in small groups and joined the large stream of people. TV coverage was well prepared to cover the mass event. A helicopter flew around at low altitude and the camera lens could be seen protruding through the open door. The footage was being transmitted live on the TV channels, which were reporting on the preparations for the gathering.
From above, the crowd looked like a large jumping cake composed of colored dots, which hopped around like children’s sherbet candies and, in the background, the anchorman enthusiastically announced that almost three hundred and fifty demonstrators had already arrived and that more people were still coming and filling every possible corner. Army entertainment corps and military marching bands added their melodies to the festive atmosphere. The flag, fluttered on a flagpole thirty meters high like a giant tablecloth.
The plan was that at exactly seven o’clock, the Minister of Defense would take his place on the podium, located on the enormous stage. The Mayor of Tel Aviv, Mr. Chen Roladi was also scheduled to address the gathering. He was well known for his ability to enthuse the crowds.
Photographs of the hostages, Adam Ayalon and Abigail Ben-Nun were projected onto a huge screen. Incandescent light shone from Abigail’s green eyes and the elongated dimples down her cheeks highlighted her beautiful face. The crowd cheered at these images. The pictures alternated with two other images, contrasting Sally, Adam’s wife, waving her fist with tears in her eyes and Abigail’s mother, sitting erect in her tent, frozen in an aura of dignity. People joined hands, danced in circles and their excited voices rose overhead. The voice of the
Minister of Defense echoed from the speakers that hung between the trees.
“My fellow Israelis, we are here to support two people, these two people!! Thousands wait for the day when they will surely return and stand before us to tell of their boundless heroism.”
It was not the voice of the Minister of Defense, but that of the Prime Minister, Dov Adoni. He had surprised everyone by coming himself, after having seen the hordes that were filling the Square. He had not imagined that so many people would come and it was a golden opportunity for him to participate in an enormous public gathering and demonstrate his outrage at the tragic capture of the hostages.
“No, we will not trade with you, and yes, we are doing everything possible to bring them home safe and sound to their waiting families.”
The Prime Minister was followed by the echoing tones of the Mayor of Tel Aviv, who quoted from the Prophets, promising that Israel would not be silent till it saw its sons back in their country beside their families. The messages delivered by the country’s leaders and the masses, which filled the streets, left a sweet taste of victory and hope.
At midnight, Hagit went to bed at her home in Tel Aviv. In the Bedouin tent encampment voices were also stilled.
The truth was that they were afraid to hope, but they had heard the voices and felt the force of the nation’s support behind them.
* * *
Chapter Twenty Four
Yigal was surprised by the figure that appeared at the entrance to his restaurant. It was Sharif, that same charming youngster who had left his employ at the age of sixteen to join Judge Adam Ayalon. He looked at him and thought how little he had changed in all the years that had passed.
Yigal shuddered when he recalled the judge’s name. He was well acquainted with Adam, but presumed that his only occupation involved the courts of law. He had difficulty absorbing that he had been taken hostage by the bitterest and most fearful enemy of the time, the Iranian terrorist group. There was no way he could connect his image of the man he knew to the figure the whole country was in a storm over.