Leon Uris (48 page)

Zyyad withdrew an envelope of royal stationery, but the back was not sealed. ‘Read it, please, then I’ll seal it.’

Honorable David Ben-Gurion,

Prime Minister, State of Israel

Most distinguished friend and adversary:

We have fought an arduous and bloody war, not always in our mutual interests and not always with great conviction. Unfortunately, there will be many unresolved questions. Since there may he several truths about the same situation and meanings are not constant from one state to another, quiet future cooperation between us is imperative.

As you may suspect, we are not always totally free to act independently, so we must be patient.

Patience eventually will prevail. However, unspoken words and unwritten understandings can be as strong as a meaningless armistice paper. Such understandings could ensure us a long period of peace and growth.

I therefore implore you to complete your conquest of the Gaza Strip to eliminate a mutual enemy and think in terms of granting us future control. It would ensure my annexation of the West Bank and both of us the greatest chance for coexistence.

Give the Gaza Strip to the devil! But for God’s sake, do not let the Egyptians have it.

With greatest sincerity and admiration,

I remain,

Abdullah

Gideon climbed aboard the waiting Piper Cub at the small, jerry-built airstrip near the Monastery of the Cross in West Jerusalem.

‘Tel Aviv?’ the pilot asked.

‘No. Forward command post on the Southern Front.’

‘Where the hell is it?’

Gideon played with the map for several moments, then circled an unmarked grid in the Sinai a few miles from El Arish. ‘There’s a strip down there somewhere. Do you have a frequency?’

‘Yes, but the transmitter is pretty weak.’

‘Well, we’ll give them a call and get the exact location when we get close enough.’

The plane circled three times to gain altitude out of Jerusalem and flew down the corridor with its plunging ravines: on either side. As flat land showed below, they turned left toward the Negev. The first inklings of a sandstorm began to bounce the little craft around. Gideon, the boldest of men on a horse, turned white-knuckled. The pilot laughed. He had parachuted many rounds of ammunition and food to isolated kibbutzim in far worse weather. ‘Hang onto your seat, Gideon. We’re going to have a ride.’

The end of the war was bringing to a head a longstanding philosophical split between Ben-Gurion and his generals. Although B.G. was a turn-of-the-century pioneer of Palestine’s swamplands and the leader of its great political struggles, some of what he was had been carried out from the ghettos of Poland.

Ben-Gurion had a natural Jewish distrust of the military, for it had always spelled repression. On the one side, he did not totally trust Jewish fighting capability. On the other hand, he feared a large Jewish military establishment. The new lads of the Palmach, the Haganah, and now the Israel Defense Forces represented a generation gap.

Many in the new military felt that the Old Man had reached his apex when he proclaimed Israel’s Declaration of Independence. He had alienated himself early on with the Young Turks of the Palmach and Haganah by putting more credence in political settlement than in arms. He clung to an ancient theory that no small country should go to war without the backing of a major power. Since this was not possible, he opted to work things out politically. He was usually at loggerheads with his officers, who wanted larger battle formations and more money for arms. The warriors had concluded that the new state would have to have a tough Jewish army to secure its boundaries.

The rift was personified by Yigal Allon, who had been declared the greatest Jewish general since Joshua and Joab in the Bible. Like Gideon Asch, Allon had been born in the Galilee, was an early kibbutznik, and as a young Palmach officer was dearly loved by his men. Allon had it all. He was the combination of mediator, planner, tough commander, educator, and, most of all, a completely honest and dedicated person. Like other leaders of the IDF, he knew his men better than most generals in most armies—anywhere. He had become the first commander of the Palmach, the first commander of division-sized formations, a father and builder of the new Army. He was only thirty years of age, but it was universally felt he was destined to become a future chief of staff, if not prime minister.

It was also felt that Yigal Allon should have continued to command the most vital Central Front, which included Tel Aviv and also Jerusalem. Perhaps his star was too bright because Ben-Gurion ‘exiled’ him to command the Southern Front in the desert.

It was not that Allon represented a serious political rival but a new kind of Jew that B.G. was not totally familiar or comfortable with, despite his years in Palestine.

The airstrip was located by a weak radio signal that led them to ground panels. Gideon was whisked away as soon as the plane touched down at a tiny oasis within fieldglass sight of El Arish. Yigal Allon and Gideon greeted one another with bear hugs only slightly less forceful than clanging steel.

Allon was a portrait of frustration as he pointed out his army’s position to Gideon. El Arish sat at the foot of the Gaza Strip where it crossed into the Sinai Desert. Time had recorded a hundred battles around El Arish from those of Philistine chariots to British tanks. A railroad line, hugging the sea, ran to the Suez Canal and on to Cairo.

‘My Intelligence reports that a twenty-car train has arrived. The Egyptian officer corps is planning to flee tonight. I have broken up enough rail track so the train can’t pull out until at least tomorrow. But, Gideon, we probed El Arish. They have nothing left. I can take it with two battalions and seal off the entire Gaza Strip.’

Gideon was about to give his order to cease fire, but he did not.

‘I’ve been pleading for a meeting with the Old Man for two days to get permission to attack. All I’ve gotten is silence. Can I bag them now?’ Allon asked.

Gideon did not answer. Allon had the right to take his case to B.G., the Cabinet, the chief of staff and the chief of operations.

‘If you promise me you won’t attack, I’ll guarantee you a meeting with B.G. by morning,’ Gideon said.

‘Suppose cease-fire orders come?’

‘They didn’t come on my plane,’ Gideon lied. ‘Yigal, stay away from your headquarters for twelve hours. If you never personally received the order, you can’t carry it out. Right? Now, don’t be a shmuck. Do as I tell you. I’ll try to soften up the Old Man for you ...’

David Ben-Gurion was a small man in build. His outsized bald head was fringed with a horseshoe shock of snow-white hair, giving him the appearance of a cherub. He was at his petulant best when Gideon arrived several hours later. He had spent a feverish day trying to get the cease-fire implemented. It was all in place, except for the Egyptians, where there were still reports of fighting and a hot young commander, Yigal Allon, demanding his say. The sight of Gideon buoyed him for the moment.

‘You saw Allon?’ Gideon was greeted eagerly.

‘I saw him about two hours ago.’

‘Then he has the cease-fire order, thank God.’

‘I didn’t give it to him,’ Gideon said.

The Old Man’s face blanched, then disbelief settled in.

‘Yigal has been trying to reach you for two days. You have deliberately ignored him. He is your southern commander. He is entitled to speak to you and the Cabinet.’

‘Who the hell do you think you are, Gideon? Do you want to be the first Jew executed for insubordination? Do you have any idea how serious this has become?’

‘Yigal is entitled to speak to you,’ Gideon repeated.

‘For what! For permission to destroy the Egyptians? There are also a quarter of a million refugees packed in the Gaza Strip. We haven’t got bread to feed our soldiers. What are we supposed to do with theirs!’

Gideon lifted a pencil from the desk and snapped it in half. ‘We have the Egyptians right here—trapped, finished.’

‘I’ll see you shot! I’ll see Yigal shot!’

‘So shoot me. I resign!’ Gideon barked and started out of the office.

‘Come back, come back. Sit down,’ Ben-Gurion said, lowering his tone to a rare conciliatory but ominous rumble. ‘At what time did you leave Yigal?’

‘I flew out at three, just ahead of a sandstorm.’

‘So do you know who flew in with the sandstorm forty minutes later. No? Well, I’ll tell you. The British are demonstrating very clearly that we are not to destroy the Egyptians. In addition to several battleships that have left Cyprus, they flew five Spitfires over our lines as a warning.’

‘British Spitfires? Against us?’

‘British Spitfires. You better hear the rest. We shot them down in a dogfight. We’re trying to find their pilots now. A half hour after that, the American ambassador called to advise me that if we don’t go into an immediate cease-fire we will not get a single penny in aid. Do you have the faintest notion how bankrupt we are, Gideon?’

Gideon cracked his fist on the table. ‘Fuck them!’ he screamed. ‘Why is everyone breaking their asses to save the Egyptians! Where the hell were they when Jerusalem was being starved out! Where! Well, I for one am glad we shot their fucking planes down—glad!’

The Old Man waited until Gideon calmed himself. ‘Nu,’ he said, ‘what do you think I should do?’

‘Here is some petrol to put on the fire,’ Gideon said, sliding Abdullah’s letter over the desk. Ben-Gurion read it and threw his arms apart in a gesture of futility. ‘This Abdullah is a real dog. Several hundred of our boys were killed trying to capture Latrun and now he tells us to take the Gaza Strip and hold it for him! The chutzpa!’

‘Think of it, B.G. If we take Gaza, Abdullah will give us Latrun and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City in exchange. More than that ... when we go into negotiations in Rhodes, it will be a powerful bargaining chip. The Egyptians will give us anything to allow their army to escape.’

Ben-Gurion shook his great white-fringed head.

‘Eventually, ten years, twenty years we must have to talk peace. Our first peace treaty has to be with Egypt. Unless it is, no other Arab state will follow. If we humiliate them further now, it will be fifty years before they will be ready to talk peace.’

‘Humiliation, my ass! They will only talk peace when they have no other alternative. They will only keep a peace treaty as long as it suits their purposes. I’ll tell you how grateful the Egyptians will be if we hand the Strip to them. They will turn it into a massive guerrilla base and launch a thousand attacks on us. We will pay for giving them Gaza in blood ... in blood for the rest of our lives.’

Ben-Gurion arose and walked to the window, seeing nothing as he stared blankly out to the greenery. ‘I will see Yigal immediately.’

‘You mean for a cease-fire.’

‘That’s what I mean.’ He returned to his desk. ‘My comrade, we started this dream hoping beyond hope to create a tiny speck of a state. We now have much more than we believed possible. We have a viable state. Penniless, with terrible borders, but viable. If we play with a weak monarch like Abdullah, targeted for assassination, we will get sucked into one round after another of endless little wars.’

‘But you won’t stop those wars by giving up the Gaza Strip. You’ll only encourage the Egyptians. They are depending on our softness and they will take every advantage of it,’ Gideon argued.

‘So I have been told. We can fight these wars only as long as we are right. That must be our gamble. Our energies must pour into other things. We have Jews to bring out of those wretched detention camps in Cyprus. We have to find the remnants of our brothers and sisters in Europe and bring them home. We have to get the Jewish communities out of the Arab countries before they are all slaughtered. We have to have a merchant marine, a national airline, we must remake the desert. The world must proclaim our scientists and artists and academicians. The Jewish state has too many priorities to play the Arab game.’

‘Remember, B.G., every time they raid us from the Gaza Strip in the future, that you have paid a fool’s price to save the pride of a gang of decadent Egyptian butchers.’

‘Then find us new neighbors,’ Ben-Gurion said. ‘It may take a long, long time, but Israel has a special mission, unique in the world. We represent the interests of the western democracies ... yes, even the British, who threaten us with arms, and the Americans, who threaten us with economic blackmail. Eventually, they will become disgusted with the Arabs and come to realize that without Israel their own existence is in danger.’

‘How long, oh Lord, until your foolish dream comes true? How long before a Christian nation will place its fate in the hands of the Jews? I stand with Yigal,’ Gideon said and he left.

END OF PART THREE

M
Y FATHER SUMMONED ME
to his ledge one day after the third cease-fire. ‘We can stay here no longer. We must prepare to go into Jericho. It is Allah’s will.’

Allah had made the decision for us none too soon.

The cave had become a total disaster. Vermin and rain were rapidly diminishing our supplies. The main cavern leaked in a dozen places, so that dampness and chill were always in our bones and the smell of mildew in our nostrils. We had to keep a stronger fire burning to combat the mustiness, but at times water found its way down the chimney and would hit the fire and turn the cavern into a smokehouse. On several occasions, we were forced outside during the height of a storm to keep from choking to death.

Most of the small offshoot tunnels that led to our individual niches had low spots that had flooded, making passage impossible and forcing all of us to live and sleep in the single main room.

During one storm, Ramiza lost her footing, slipped, and plunged down through jagged rocks, battering herself up terribly and causing her to have a miscarriage. An infant would have been difficult to keep alive in our circumstances. Ramiza, next to Kamal, was the weakest of our lot and added to our burden. We made a required demonstrative show of anguish over the loss, but we did not mourn for long.