The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership

by Avner, Yehuda

  He shared this reverie with one man – the Minister of Labor, Yigal Allon. An old soldier, a veteran kibbutznik, a Labor leader, and an agnostic, Allon was, nevertheless, an ardent advocate of Jewish national rights in Eretz Yisrael. Begin suggested they go into the anteroom to talk things over. There they discussed their hopes, and Eshkol, sighting them through the open door of his office, pulled up his glasses and called out to them, “Nu, tell me what you two are hatching?”

  “Jerusalem,” said Allon. “Begin and I want the Old City of Jerusalem.”

  The prime minister rubbed his chin in the manner of a rabbi stroking his beard, and with twinkling eyes, replied, “Dos iss a’gadank – that is an interesting idea.”

  Amid the jeeps, half tracks, personnel carriers, fuel trucks, tank carriers, maintenance vehicles, ammunition trucks, and other assorted means of military transportation that congested the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway that afternoon was the car in which Menachem Begin was traveling. It was crawling along at a snail’s pace. With him were Yechiel Kadishai and a couple of other intimate loyalists who had stood by him unflinchingly throughout the perilous underground days and during the long backwater years of the Opposition. And now, here they were, escorting him to Jerusalem to witness his formal swearing-in as a minister of the cabinet, a Knesset ceremony which, for them – indeed for all veteran Irgun comrades-in-arms – was a momentous moment of vindication. For here, at last, was a signal, albeit a slight one, that after almost two decades of virtual ostracism by the Labor-dominated establishment, the tectonic plates of Israeli politics were finally beginning to shift.

  Begin’s volunteer driver was so fed up with the congested highway that he threw caution to the wind and stepped on the gas, spurting along the road’s narrow shoulder, overtaking a tank transporter groaning under a Centurion tank, and an open ammunition truck loaded with shells, avoiding collision by a hair’s breadth.

  “Meshugenner! ” scolded Kadishai, with a wince. “Are you crazy? Get off the road at the next junction and take the roundabout route. At least there’s a chance we’ll get to Jerusalem in one piece!”

  Yechiel Kadishai was a gregarious, quick-witted, irreverent, and self-assured man, in his mid-forties. He had just been released from the army, where he had spent the last few days and nights as a lackluster auxiliary guardsman, in order to attend upon the new ministerial needs of his boss, Begin. The side road, a rather dubious one in parts, led them along valley edges and through terraced hills, climbing and snaking along contours which steadily rose toward Jerusalem.

  “Stop!” commanded Begin as they turned a hairpin bend. “We’ve just overtaken Golda. I must speak to her.”

  Yechiel Kadishai jumped out, with Begin hard on his heels, and flagged down Golda Meir’s car.

  “What’s going on? What’s so urgent?” she asked, head out of the window, a cigarette stuck on one side of her mouth, its smoke drifting across her face.

  “Wonderful news! Wonderful news!” called Begin, his lips and eyes all smiles and his excitement inflated with the novelty of being a cabinet insider about to impart extraordinary information to a cabinet outsider. Breathlessly, he told her of the destruction of the enemy air forces. For the briefest moment Golda Meir hid her face in her hands, then glanced upward at the cloudless sky and gasped, “I don’t believe it! After all these weeks of the terrible fear of air raids – thank God that threat is over.”

  Cars slowed at the sight of these two old political foes leaning toward each other through the open window, exchanging smiles and handshakes, wondering, no doubt, what it was they had to smile and congratulate each other about. For the nation had not yet been told of this remarkable early triumph.

  Entering Jerusalem, Begin and his party sped through streets which had been emptied by almost nine hours of shelling. The thud of cannon could still be heard, and most of the city’s residents were battened down in shelters. After a brief ceremonial visit to the graveside of their mentor Ze’ev Jabotinsky they drove to the Knesset, a flat-topped colonnaded parliament building of a style much favored by modern legislative assemblies. It was presently jammed with journalists anxious for news of the war, and some tried to waylay Begin, but he waved them off, and made his way to the second floor to shmooze – and no doubt to gloat – with David Ben-Gurion.

  Volleys of cannon fire were still clearly audible and at one point everybody was shepherded into the basement shelter. Down there people applauded at the sight of Begin and Ben-Gurion elbowing their way to each other through the crush, like old friends. And there all sat on benches – ministers, Knesset members, officials, clerks, cleaning workers, religious, secular, left, right – all engaged in convivial conversation, and some gustily chorusing a robust sing-a-long. Never had Israel known such a sense of unity and common purpose as at that hour.

  At one point a shell flew overhead and then whoo – oo – ooo – oooOOO – boom – bang, crashed into the nearby Israel Museum. When the shelling tapered off, Begin went back upstairs to the Knesset restaurant. The thought of capturing the Old City would not leave him. It appeared to be an ever more tantalizing prospect with each passing hour, so he instructed Kadishai to wait at the Knesset’s driveway for the arrival of the prime minister from Tel Aviv.

  “When you see him coming, let me know. I must talk to him,” he said. “I’m going to ask him to convene an emergency session of the cabinet, even before the Knesset swearing-in ceremony. I’m going to try to persuade him to make a decision here and now about Jerusalem.”

  An hour later – it was 7:30 in the evening – Yechiel Kadishai came rushing back into the restaurant. “He’s coming,” he cried. “His car is drawing up.”

  Begin hastily made his way to the entrance where he accosted Eshkol as he was about to walk in. No man in Israel was better primed to perform the task in hand than was Menachem Begin at that moment. His ardor, his candor, his logic, all were brought to bear in convincing the prime minister to summon his ministers forthwith to the Knesset Cabinet Room.

  The Knesset Cabinet Room is an elegant, wood-paneled and spherical chamber, with a ring-shaped mahogany conference table so large it takes up virtually the entire wall-to-wall red carpet. A floodlit floor-to-ceiling painting of a Galilean landscape, the work of a favored Israeli artist, Reuven Rubin, dominates the room and, with this as his backdrop, Prime Minister Eshkol banged his gavel and gave Menachem Begin the floor.

  “Mr. Prime Minister,” he solemnly began, “The question before us is of unprecedented historic consequence – ”

  “Out, out. Shells are falling again. Out, out,” cried the sergeant-at arms with terrible suddenness as he flung open the door. To the sound of a mortar bomb falling on the Knesset lawn and shattering the restaurant windows, two ushers pushed the ministers down to a lower level floor where the only private shelter space available was a long, narrow storeroom cluttered with brooms, buckets and mops, and stacked with old furniture, including about a dozen dusty chairs on which the prime minister and his colleagues planted themselves.

  The sounds of the bombardment were filling this makeshift cabinet room as Prime Minister Eshkol again gave Begin the floor. Stuffy and tense though the room was, Eshkol showed no sign of stress. He was clearly in command. One could see it in his calm bulk, and in his candid, tranquil gaze as, cupping an ear, he listened to Begin solemnly saying, “Mr. Prime Minister, the question before us is of unprecedented historic consequence. This is the hour of our political test. We must occupy the Old City, in response both to the unheeded warnings we sent to King Hussein, and to the persistent Jordanian shelling since. The United Nations Security Council is currently in session debating a ceasefire. If we do not act promptly we are liable to again find ourselves outside the walls of Jerusalem, exactly as happened in nineteen forty-eight when we lost the Jewish Quarter and all our holy sites, and the city was left divided – all because of a UN ceasefire. I therefore propose we take immediate military action to liberate the Old City.”

  In an almost p
hlegmatic tone Eshkol explained that Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, who was not present at the meeting, had serious reservations. “His view,” he said, “is that entering into the Old City will entail house-to-house fighting, and that will be costly. Moreover, there is a chance it will cause damage to the holy places of the other faiths, and that will bring the whole world crashing down on our heads. Presently, we still command a great deal of worldwide sympathy.”

  “There is much sense in that,” said one of the ministers present.

  “Moreover,” continued Eshkol, “Dayan is of the view that it would be sufficient simply to surround the Old City. It would then fall to us like a ripe fruit.”

  Yigal Allon sharply disagreed. He insisted with martial authority that the Jordanian lines were fast crumbling and that given the order, the idf could quickly surround the Old City in a pincer movement. “However,” he went on, “unless and until Jewish feet are deep inside the Old City and on the Temple Mount, Jerusalem will remain forever divided. We have to occupy it physically.”

  Another minister mused that the Vatican would never countenance Jewish sovereignty over the Christian holy places, whereupon Eshkol revealed that the Vatican had already proposed declaring Jerusalem an open city, meaning it should be immune from attack by all sides. Washington was sympathetic to the idea, he said.

  “Gentlemen,” Begin said vehemently, “the Jordanian army is all but smashed, and our own army is at the city’s gates. Our soldiers are almost in sight of the Western Wall. How can we tell them not to reach it? We have in our hands a gift of history. Future generations will never forgive us if we do not seize it.”

  Even as these emotions flared, the enemy’s heavy guns opened up with renewed ferocity from the direction of the Old City, the thuds clearly heard by everyone in that cluttered, narrow shelter. Eshkol would not be distracted, however. Prudently, he continued to listen to the fiery debate, hearkening with sympathy to the pleas of Begin and Allon that it was now or never, and then pondering again the military and diplomatic merits of the Dayan argument, that a frontal attack was unnecessary. Those of this view exchanged pessimistic predictions, reinforcing each others’ belief that the Christian and Muslim worlds would not tolerate damage to, let alone occupation of, their holy places, and that if it did occupy the Old City, Israel would surely be forced to withdraw. Behind all that, there was always the looming threat of Soviet intervention to think about.

  In the end the prime minister called for order and proposed that in view of the situation created in Jerusalem by the Jordanian bombardment, and after the Israeli warnings to King Hussein had gone unheeded, “an opportunity has perhaps been created to capture the Old City.”

  “If it comes to it, I’ll overrule Dayan,” mumbled Eshkol to Begin as the meeting broke up.

  That night, the Speaker of the Knesset banged his gavel, and the newly appointed ministers of the national unity government formally took their oaths of office. Also that night, as the Israel Defense Forces were smashing the Egyptians in Sinai, routing the Jordanians on the West Bank, and occupying the key strategic positions surrounding the Old City, Menachem Begin’s brain was so crammed with thoughts that he could not sleep. Tossing and turning, he was gripped by Jewish memories as old as time. His all-encompassing grasp of Jewish history stirred his deepest convictions, causing him to ponder how much longer Israel could wait before restoring to the bosom of its people Jewry’s most sanctified treasures locked behind the Old City’s walls. Who among his cabinet colleagues, besides Allon, would be brave enough to fight for a motion calling for the immediate storming of the Old City’s walls?

  At four in the morning he switched on the radio and heard the BBC announcer say that a UN Security Council ceasefire resolution was about to be voted upon with a clear majority. This was the last straw! Instantly, he phoned Eshkol.

  “What is it?” the prime minister yawned.

  “Forgive me for disturbing your sleep,” said Begin, “but I’ve just heard the BBC. The Security Council is about to pass a ceasefire resolution. We have no time left. I propose the army be ordered to enter the Old City forthwith, before it is too late.”

  “Speak to Dayan,” said Eshkol, his voice suddenly wide awake. “See what he thinks and get back to me.”

  Begin got hold of Dayan and urged him to agree to a quick cabinet meeting to decide on the storming of the Old City. He did. Again Begin spoke to Eshkol and it was decided the cabinet would convene at seven that morning. It was a quick meeting. By unanimous decision the order was given to immediately penetrate the Old City’s walls, the troops to be spearheaded by a parachute brigade.

  Some three hours later, after intense combat, the brigade crashed through the Lion Gate, and shortly thereafter came the commander’s message over the wire: “The Temple Mount is in our hands! The Temple Mount is in our hands!”

  Soldiers in their hundreds rushed to the Kotel, the Western Wall, and there broke into choruses of “ Yerushalayim Shel Zahav” – Jerusalem of Gold – Israel’s new, if unofficial, anthem of the day.

  “Baruch Hashem! ” cried a jubilant Begin, and he proposed there and then that work begin on the reconstruction of the ancient Jewish Quarter which had been razed to the ground in the 1948 War of Independence, and whose inhabitants had either been killed, or taken prisoner, or expelled.13

  On the following day, a contingent of battle-weary and sweat-stained paratroopers peered over each other’s shoulders at Menachem Begin and two of his compatriots as they made their way through the Lion’s Gate toward the maze of shuttered, narrow passages that led to the Western Wall. A few cheered, and a few trailed along, guns slung on their shoulders, forming a sort of unofficial escort. A lingering smell of burning was everywhere, reminiscent of the battle they had just fought.

  In those days, the Western Wall was one side of a filthy, narrow alleyway flanked by a profusion of ramshackle Arab slum dwellings that extended all the way westward to the edge of the sharp rise where the ruined Jewish Quarter began. As they moved through this grimy slum, called the Mugrahbi, they could still hear sporadic gunfire in the distance, and the sound of walkie-talkies and orders being shouted in nearby shadowy alleyways.

  Step-by-step, Begin walked down the passageway leading to the Wall which he had not seen since 1948, his bespectacled, patrician features alive with a look of eagerness mixed with the reverence of one repossessing a long-lost, much cherished thing. It was that hour of the day when the sun’s rays hit the ancient Wall’s immense stone blocks, some of which were weathered while others appeared freshly hewn from the quarry. The sun’s rays enhanced the Wall’s cinnamon hue and brightened the bouquets of caper bushes that sprouted between the cracks of the higher crevices.

  More soldiers showed up and soon a group of them formed a chanting circle around Mr. Begin, dancing and singing at the tops of their voices the song of Psalms, “Zeh hayom asah Hashem” [This is the day the Lord has wrought, let us rejoice and be glad in it].

  As Begin touched the Wall, they ceased their song, and utter silence reigned when he laid his head upon one of its weathered stones. He spread out his arms in embrace, and then solemnly drew from his pocket a sheet of paper on which he had written a prayer. He had composed it himself for this very moment – a supplication suffused with scriptural and liturgical allusions to the Jewish people’s rendezvous with their most sanctified of places – places from which they had been exiled for centuries; places which were what they were because of what had happened in them once upon a time; places which made Jerusalem and Israel what they were; places that made the Jewish people Jewish.

  “O God of our fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,” he recited, “Lord of Hosts, be Thou our help. Our enemies encompassed us – they encompassed us and arose to destroy us as a people. Yet their counsel came to naught and their evil was not accomplished. For there has arisen in our Homeland a new generation, a generation of liberators, a generation of warriors and heroes. And when they went forth to engage the enemy there bur
st forth from their hearts the call which echoes down the generations, the call from the father of the Prophets, the redeemer of Israel from the bondage of Egypt: ‘Arise up O Lord and let Your enemies be scattered and let those that hate You be put to flight.’

  “And we scattered and defeated them, and flee they did.

  “The routed enemy has not yet laid down his arms. The Army of Israel continues to pursue and smite him. Lord, God of Israel, watch over our forces who, with their arms, are forging the Covenant You made with Your chosen people. May they return in peace – children to their parents, fathers to their children, and husbands to their wives. For we are but the surviving remnant of a people harried and persecuted, whose blood has been shed like water from generation to generation.

  “Today we stand before the Western Wall, relic of the House of our Glory, in Jerusalem the redeemed, the city that is now all united together, and from the depths of our hearts there arises the prayer that the Temple may be rebuilt speedily in our days.

  “And we shall yet come to Hebron – Kiryat Arba – and there we shall prostrate ourselves at the graves of the Patriarchs of our people. We shall yet reach Ephrat at the approaches to Bethlehem in Judea. There we shall pray at the tomb of Rachel and we shall recall the prayer of the prophet: ‘A voice is heard in Ramah, wailing and bitter lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children, for they are not. Refrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for there is a reward for your labor says the Lord, and they shall return from the land of the enemy. And there is hope for your latter end, and your children shall return to their borders.’”14