Exile: a novel (42 page)

“You would think his murder might lead to a reaction against the Israeli right, a political uprising for peace. But Hamas, which did not want
peace, chose this precise moment to launch a wave of suicide bombers against Israel. The result of
that
was the election of Arafat’s most adamant enemy, Benjamin Netanyahu—the candidate of the Israeli right and, some would argue, Hamas. A synergy of extremists on both sides killed the chance of peace.”

Behind them, the sunlight of late afternoon cast its failing light across the Old City, causing the tint of the golden dome to deepen. “Whatever our own failings,” Ernheit continued with quiet bitterness, “this current mess is, in great measure, Arafat’s legacy to us all. Netanyahu was succeeded as prime minister by Ehud Barak, who was prepared to negotiate a lasting peace, with President Clinton as the intermediary. But Arafat lacked the courage, and certainly the desire, to give up the right of return so cherished by radicals like your client’s husband. To snarl matters still further, Barak’s leading opponent, Ariel Sharon, chose this crucial juncture to visit the Al Aqsa Mosque—supposedly to assert Israeli sovereignty over Muslim holy cities.” Ernheit smiled grimly. “If so, the messenger could hardly have been worse: Palestinians view Sharon as the architect of the massacre at Sabra and Shatila. His visit became the supposed flashpoint for more suicide bombings by Hamas, Al Aqsa, and others in what became the Second Intifada.”

David noted the qualifier. “Is that what you think?” he asked.

“Not quite. My own belief is that Arafat used Sharon’s visit as his pretext—he thought that countenancing terror might give him more leverage with Barak in peace negotiations. In this, as in so many other things, Arafat was a fool. What he got instead was nine hundred dead Jews, three thousand dead Palestinians, and the defeat of Barak by Sharon, Arafat’s archenemy, who became prime minister of Israel.

“The upshot is essential to understanding who might have planned the murder of Ben-Aron. After sixty suicide bombings in seventeen months, Sharon surrounded Arafat’s compound in Ramallah and pretty much obliterated everything around him, leaving Arafat to rail against ‘the Zionists’ on his cell phone as the battery died, the media yawned, and his entourage ran out of food.” Ernheit shrugged, as if to say that this was only justice. “For the last three years of his life, Arafat was a pariah, humiliated by his virtual incarceration, scorned by America and Israel, forced to look on helplessly as Sharon built a security barrier and unleashed a twelve-day attack on the refugee camp at Jenin, a nexus for terrorists and the home of Ibrahim Jefar, killing fifty-six Palestinians, whom Arafat could only add to his list of ‘martyrs.’ The man was dead before he died. And he left his people nothing but occupation, violence, an economy in ruins, a string of Israeli settlements on the West Bank—some of them illegal—with a road
system reserved for Israelis that connects them like a spiderweb, and, of course, this barrier. As fertile ground for extremism as you’d like. Hence, the rise of Hamas.”

“And the death of peace?” David asked.

“I think so. To me, the last hope of peace was a collaboration between Faras and Ben-Aron. Now Ben-Aron has been assassinated, like Rabin; like Arafat, Faras has lost all credibility; much like Netanyahu, our new prime minister has launched fresh attacks on terrorists. And Ben-Aron’s dream of peace is as dead as the man himself. So what remains on the West Bank,” Ernheit concluded in a tone of quiet fatalism, “aside from Israeli soldiers, presently engaged in wiping out Al Aqsa, is the vacuum that Arafat left behind: a struggle for power between Faras and Fatah—perhaps fatally weakened by the assassination and Israel’s response to it—and the extremists of Hamas. The question is who gains from such a vacuum, and from the death of Amos Ben-Aron.”

“Easy. Anyone who doesn’t want peace between Israelis and Palestinians.”

“A very long and contradictory list,” Ernheit concurred. “Unfortunately, when it comes to who plotted to murder Ben-Aron, that’s your list of suspects.”

“No doubt your government is working overtime to sort them out.”

“The Shin Bet in particular. It collects intelligence on Palestinian and other terrorist groups, as well as Iranian espionage activities in Israel and the West Bank. Also right-wing extremists such as the Masada movement.”

“I saw their leader on television,” David said. “Barak Lev. He’s insane.”

“Perhaps. But one man’s psychopath is another man’s savior, committed to religious truth. Perhaps that’s why the Shin Bet has had the devil’s own time cracking the Masada movement. Those men don’t talk—except to one another, and to God.”

“And God talks only to Samuel,” David answered. “And Moses and Aaron.”

Ernheit laughed briefly. “You’ll make a Jew yet. But if you give God orders, as Lev did, perhaps God answers in His own way. Lev’s last request, you may recall, was that God strike Ben-Aron as dead as Adolf Hitler.”

“Is there any chance,” David asked without much hope, “that the Shin Bet would tell me at least some of what they know?”

“No chance. But there are others, as I said, who may wish—very quietly, and indirectly—to put you on the proverbial long and winding road.” Ernheit glanced at his watch. “In fact, we’re meeting one of them at the King David, for drinks and a little conversation.

“His name’s Moshe Howard. Nominally, he’s your legal adviser in
Israel, retained to assist you regarding your request for information. Inasmuch as it’s hopeless, that would be a foolish waste of money—assuming he ever sent you a bill. Which, given his profound distaste for your client, he would never do.”

“So why are we meeting?”

“In four months we elect a prime minister—unless something dramatic happens, it will be the one who just took power, Isaac Benjamin, who is supported by the settlers and the religious, deplored by the followers of Ben-Aron.” Ernheit paused to consider his words. “Moshe has an interest in changing the electoral dynamic, and you may serve that interest. For now, let’s leave it at that, and hope he decides to trust you.”

Howard was David’s age, slender and fine featured, with short brown hair and inquisitive blue eyes. “The occasion for your visit is uncomfortable,” he told David after a few moments’ conversation. “But it is necessary that you see the geography we share. This is not Middle America.”

David nodded. “One look at the Green Line, and it’s easy enough to see why people might feel threatened.”

Howard smiled faintly. “My father,” he said, “was a Jewish officer in the British army when they helped liberate Bergen-Belsen. It changed him. After he came here, he would often speak of the ‘Holocaust syndrome’— a deep trauma in the psyche of Israelis, so that any danger, internal or external, echoes with the threat of extermination.

“Of course, the slaughter of Jews did not begin with the Holocaust—it took place in Europe long before, and in places like Hebron on the West Bank, where Palestinians murdered Jews. So it is inevitable that we fear the Palestinians, who now send their young to kill themselves
and
us—who would not fear people with such disdain for the value of human life? But often we fear each other: Israeli Jews versus the Israeli Arabs, who, many believe, are potential agents of outside enemies like Iran; the secular— including advocates of peace like Ben-Aron—versus the settlers and religious, who fear ‘betrayal’ at the hands of their fellow Jews.”

Listening, Ernheit inclined his head toward David. “We spoke a little of the right of return,” he told Howard, “the abiding passion his client’s husband, and others like him, rail about incessantly.”

“Show me the Palestinian leader who will say to his people there will be no return,” Howard responded, “and I will show you a leader with no future. And if the four hundred thousand descendants of refugees in Lebanon, and the half million more on the West Bank, did return to Israel,
we
would have no future.”

David looked from Howard to Ernheit. “Isn’t the reverse also true?” he asked. “There are three million or so Palestinians in the West Bank. You can’t make them part of Israel, nor can you occupy their land forever. Ben-Aron was looking for a way out.”

“In 1967,” Howard answered in an arid tone, “when our army chased the Jordanians out of the West Bank, it was like Eve biting the apple. Even at the time, most of our leaders understood this. But many religious Jews were enraptured—at last we had reclaimed the land given us by God. And the Jordanians, it transpired, were happy to be rid of real estate filled with Palestinians who, under Arafat, had disrupted the regime of King Hussein. In short, we couldn’t
give
these people away.

“And so, over time, we built settlements on the land we had acquired as a bulwark against invasion, much as the kibbutzim near Jerusalem had slowed the Arab invasion in 1948. It would have been better to put soldiers there; soldiers can be removed to make a peace. But kick out a quarter million Jews who have made their lives there? Not so easy.”

“I’ll take you to the settlements,” Ernheit said to David. “You’ll see homes, synagogues, cemeteries, the work of three generations. And you’ll understand what has bred a handful of dangerous extremists like Barak Lev.”

For a few moments, the three men sipped wine in silence, the patio dimly illuminated, the Old City spectral in the moonlight, the white-jacketed waiters gliding among the tables filled with patrons. “Peaceful,” David said at length.

Howard nodded. “And beautiful, too. But Jerusalem is surrounded by cemeteries, and the dead sometimes seem more powerful than the living—King David and Emperor Saladin, still pursuing their own vision of this land. And yet this is still the only place in the Middle East where Christians, Jews, and Muslims have a chance to live together in peace, to create a vision of the future. For one people to own it would be tragic—”

Abruptly, the sound of an explosion shattered the quiet. A woman on the patio cried out; at once, Ernheit was on his feet, hand on his gun,
listening intently to the muffled echo, the thin sound of distant shrieks. “The Old City,” he murmured.

Remembering the moment of Ben-Aron’s assassination, David felt a tremor in his hands. Some of those around them, he saw, had sought shelter beneath their tables. Howard did not move. With a calm deliberation that seemed both studied and precarious, he took out his cell phone and began to dial. All around them, cell phones rang in a nerve-racking cacophony.

Howard listened intently. After a moment, he asked, “The children are with you?”

As David watched, Howard’s face relaxed. Ernheit sat down again.

“They’re all right, then,” David said to Howard.

Nodding, Howard sat back in his chair, arms at his side. It was a long time before he spoke. “A third of us have lost relatives,” he told David, “or at least someone we know, to a suicide bomber. My wife used to take a bus home from work. One afternoon, a block before it was to pick her up, it exploded. The bus driver’s arm ended up at her feet.

“She never takes the bus now. She tries to keep our children away from crowded places. And when she hears any explosion, anywhere, she calls them.” Howard paused, then said tiredly, “Religion may be the death of us all.”

David contemplated his wine. “Religious fanaticism, you mean.”

“Yes, and it’s most dangerous in the Middle East. Start with the Islamic clerical rulers in Iran, who plan to develop nuclear warheads while financing terrorism throughout the region. Move to their natural allies among the Palestinians, including Hamas. Now groups like Hamas and Hezbollah have missiles that can kill us in our towns and cities. And if we have a nuclear Iran, and the West Bank becomes an Islamic fundamentalist state instead of a prosperous trading partner, a security barrier will do
us
no good at all.

“But how do we untangle ourselves from the settlements on the West Bank, so despised by Palestinians? To remove perhaps a quarter million settlers by force, including people like Barak Lev and the Masada movement, could well fragment our own army.” Howard looked at David intently. “You claim to believe that the conspiracy to murder Ben-Aron reached inside his security detail. If you are right, the Jews who helped plan his death understood that by placing Isaac Benjamin in power, they were killing the chances of peace.”

David nodded. “The night I met Ben-Aron, one of his aides told me there were perhaps two hundred people actively looking for ways to kill him.”

“A handful of fanatics,” Howard answered. “Those Ben-Aron’s plan threatened most live in the settlements that are most exposed or—like Lev’s—outside the boundaries authorized by our government. Many are American Jews from places like Brooklyn whose only authority is the God of the Old Testament. For them, the only way to keep their dream of greater Israel alive is for there to be no peace.”

The waiter arrived, bringing their dinner and lighting a second candle. The three men watched the flame flicker, then catch hold, casting a circle of light on the white tablecloth. Glancing at the waiter’s retreating back, Howard inquired, “Are you familiar with the rodef principle?”

“No.”

“Stated broadly, Jewish biblical law holds that a Jew is entitled to kill any man who is trying to kill him. Unexceptional in itself. But run that principle through the mind of a fanatic Jew committed to making a stand outside the boundaries of the State of Israel—a man willing to die before abandoning the home God meant for him—and assassinating Ben-Aron becomes an act of self-defense.”

David glanced at Ernheit. “What do you know about Barak Lev?”

“Very little.” Ernheit put down his wineglass. “What
is
known is that he has deliberately chosen to create his own Jewish frontier, an illegal settlement outside of any boundary. Four years ago, two of his followers drove a trailer at night to a Muslim village and parked it outside a school attended by Palestinian children. The trailer was filled with plastique timed to blow up as the children were coming to school.