“like a bunch of boy scouts”: Weizman, The Battle for Peace, p. 342.
“prima donnas”: Brzezinski, Power and Principle, p. 237.
reflective of the intimate and contentious style: Cohen, Culture and Conflict in Egyptian-Israeli Relations, p. 141.
no more than a couple of days: Iris Berlatzky interview with Elyakim Rubinstein, Menachem Begin Archives.
“I’m glad to see you”: Weizman, The Battle for Peace, p. 344.
“Mayflower generation”: Ibid., p. 140.
“We were seasoned”: Weizman, On Eagles’ Wings, p. 12.
“As for the Egyptians”: Weizman, The Battle for Peace, p. 11.
“Imagine that you’re Arabs”: Weizman, On Eagles’ Wings, p. 163.
“It was only after”: Ibid., p. 52.
He always thought: Tamir, A Soldier in Search of Peace, p. 37.
“Come and see me!”: Weizman, The Battle for Peace, p. 344.
Tohamy’s years in: Interview with Nabil el-Arabi. Arabi says that the “dirty work” included arresting General Mohamed Neguib, the figurehead leader of the 1952 Free Officers coup, driving him into the desert, and threatening to kill him.
a kind of guru: Interview with Dan Pattir.
He openly spoke: Interview with Abdel Raouf al-Reedy.
When he was the Egyptian: Heikal, Secret Channels, p. 255.
He was always spreading: Boutros-Ghali, Egypt’s Road to Jerusalem, p. 134.
just stopped a revolution: Kamel, The Camp David Accords, p. 323.
“Mr. Tohamy”: Interviews with Nabil el-Arabi, Ahmed Abul-Gheit, and William Quandt.
Hearing the story: Boutros-Ghali, Egypt’s Road to Jerusalem, pp. 135–36. Ghorbal, Su’ud wa inhiyar, p. 140.
To keep the meeting: Dayan, Breakthrough, p. 43.
“a figure with status”: Auda, Hasan al-tuhami yaftahu malaffatahu min ihtilal filistin ila kamb difid, pp. 120; Arabi, Taba, Camp David, al-jidar al-’azil, p. 94.
“This is Dayan!”: Auda, Hasan al-tuhami yaftahu malaffatahu min ihtilal filistin ila kamb difid, pp. 122–23.
“His request for secrecy”: Dayan, Breakthrough, p. 45.
“Moshe, you are the”: Heikal, Secret Channels, p. 257.
Sadat would only consent: Dayan, “Highlights from Meeting of September 16, 1977, 21.00,” Prime Minister’s Official Israel State Archives, http://www.archives.gov.il/archivegov_eng/publications/electronicpirsum/sadatvisit/sadatvisitdoclist.htm.
“Otherwise, how could such”: Dayan, Breakthrough, p. 52.
He went on to say: Haber, Schiff, and Yaari, The Year of the Dove, p. 11.
“But Tohamy said you were”: Heikal, Secret Channels, p. 262. Hermann Frederick Eilts adds that Tohamy apparently told Sadat, after the first Morocco meeting with Dayan, “I’ve gotten Jerusalem for you!” Eilts in Alterman, ed., Sadat and His Legacy, p. 40. Elyakim Rubinstein, who was Dayan’s aide at the time of the Tohamy talks, says that Dayan told Tohamy he would report the request for a full withdrawal to Begin but could not guarantee it. Elyakim Rubinstein interview, conducted by Dr. Nina Sagie, May 5, 1994, Menachem Begin Heritage Center; Rubinstein, Darkey Shalom, p. 14.
Egypt could foreseeably: Brzezinski, Power and Principle, p. 236. Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former Saudi intelligence chief, reflects the opinion of many Arabs when he writes that Sadat only went to Jerusalem after Tohamy was assured by Dayan that “Israel would withdraw from every last inch of Egyptian territory in return for peace.” Al-Faisal, “Land First, Then Peace,” New York Times, Sept. 12, 2009.
America had provided: Brzezinski, “Strategy for Camp David,” memorandum for the president, Aug. 31, 1978.
Brzezinski came up with the idea: Quandt, Camp David, p. 171.
American team continued: Ibid., p. 203.
If Begin refused to budge: “Camp David: The Consequences of Failure,” CIA briefing book for Camp David, Aug. 31, 1978.
He brought the actual text: The letter states, “Should the U.S. desire in the future to put forward proposals of its own, it will make every effort to coordinate with Israel its proposals with a view to refraining from putting forward proposals that Israel would consider unsatisfactory.” Letter from President Ford to Prime Minister Rabin, Sept. 1, 1975.
“Mr. Prime Minister”: Haber, Schiff, and Yaari, The Year of the Dove, p. 222.
“Some people ridicule”: Ibid., pp. 222–23.
“Sadat insists”: Ibid., p. 222.
“If such a principle”: Weizman, The Battle for Peace, p. 346.
“The United States expects”: Haber, Schiff, and Yaari, The Year of the Dove, p. 223.
“Sadat is impulsive”: Carter, First Lady from Plains, p. 244.
“What a paradise”: Haber, Schiff, and Yaari, The Year of the Dove, p. 224.
“We have a tough nut”: Weizman, The Battle for Peace, p. 346.
DAY TWO
Begin had seemed rigid: Brzezinski, Power and Principle, p. 255.
“My program is ready”: Haber, Schiff, and Yaari, The Year of the Dove, p. 225.
As Carter read: Carter, Keeping Faith, p. 341.
“Germany is the enemy”: Anwar Sadat, Pillar of Fire interview.
“I was not surprised”: Sadat, Safahat Majhula, p. 62.
Hekmat Fahmy: Pamela Andriotakis, “The Real Spy’s Story Reads Like Fiction and 40 Years Later Inspires a Best-Seller,” People, Dec. 15, 1980.
Sadat began spending nights: Sadat, Safahat Majhula, pp. 77–78. Jorgensen, Hitler’s Espionage Machine, p. 177; Pamela Andriotakis, “The Real Spy’s Story Reads Like Fiction and 40 Years Later Inspires a Best-Seller,” People, Dec. 15, 1980. The “best-seller” in question was Ken Follett’s The Key to Rebecca. The Nazi spies used an English-language version of Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca as the source book for their code.
his ten-month-old daughter: Sadat, My Father and I, p. 19.
It was during this period: Heikal, Autumn of Fury, p. 20.
“eccentric clothes”: Ibid.
“murder society”: Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers, p. 59.
“limbering up”: Sadat, In Search of Identity, p. 58.
“as unbreakable”: Sullivan, Sadat, p. 30.
“Apart from removing”: Sadat, In Search of Identity, p. 60.
“Condemn me to death”: Sadat, A Woman of Egypt, p. 74.
the Iron Guard: Heikal, Autumn of Fury, p. 21.
“My efforts at the”: Sadat, In Search of Identity, p. 92.
once you began to talk: Boutros-Ghali, Egypt’s Road to Jerusalem, p. 152.
“Do you remember when”: Kamel, The Camp David Accords, p. 265.
Kamel arrived at Camp: Interview with Abdul Raouf al-Reedy.
Vance had tried to pacify: Interview with Samuel W. Lewis, Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, http://www.loc.gov/item/mfdipbib000687.
“The Israeli attitude rests”: Kamel, The Camp David Accords, p. 303.
“How are you, Mr. President”: Haber, Schiff, and Yaari, The Year of the Dove, p. 226.
He usually slept: Hirst and Beeson, Sadat, pp. 213–14; Heikal, Autumn of Fury, pp. 171–72; Ibrahim, I’adat al-I’tibar lil-ra’is al-Sadat, pp. 45–47. Time magazine also noted Sadat’s occasional violation of the Islamic prohibition against alcohol, saying that he enjoyed “an occasional glass of wine, preferably an Egyptian red called Omar Khayyam.” “The Underrated Heir,” Time, May 17, 1971; Sadat, A Woman of Egypt, p. 179.
It was rumored among: Interview with Zev Chafets; Shilon, Menachem Begin, p. 164.
Throughout his life: Shilon, Menachem Begin, p. 215; Weizman, The Battle for Peace, p. 307.
“President Sadat brought”: Haber, Schiff, and Yaari, The Year of the Dove, p. 227.
“We must turn over”: Ibid.
“Habemus papam”: Carter, Keeping Faith, p. 344.
“Further to the historic”: Haber, Schiff, and Yaari, The Year of the Dove, p. 228.
“Begi
n will blow up”: Carter, First Lady from Plains, p. 245.
“like a rabbi”: Interview with Elyakim Rubinstein.
“What chutzpah!”: Weizman, The Battle for Peace, pp. 353–54.
the word he used was hadar: Avner, The Prime Ministers, p. 403.
“There is only one”: Haber, Schiff, and Yaari, The Year of the Dove, p. 257. Sam Lewis noted Begin’s lack of empathy; Lewis, “The Camp David Peace Process,” in Sha’al, ed., The Camp David Accords, p. 58. Yechiel Kadishai told me, “He loves everyone. Jews he loves more than others.”
“We can save them”: Kadishai, Yad Yemino, p. 54.
“Who is this boy?”: Interview with Yechiel Kadishai.
The organization that Begin: Shilon, Menachem Begin, p. 49. Other accounts have different measures of Irgun’s strength at the time; e.g., Gervasi says Irgun encompassed only six hundred men. Gervasi, The Life and Times of Menahem Begin, p. 153. The same figure is repeated in Bell, Terror Out of Zion, p. 107. Shilon relied on actual minutes of Irgun proceedings.
“We shall fight”: Gervasi, The Life and Times of Menahem Begin, p. 152.
“History and our observation”: Begin, The Revolt, p. 52.
Begin’s brilliant improvisations: Bruce Hoffman notes, “The Irgun’s campaign … established a revolutionary model that thereafter was emulated and embraced by both anticolonial- and postcolonial-era terrorist groups around the world.” Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, p. 46.
A shipment of diamonds: Joseph Kister, personal communication.
In July 1945, the British: Rami Shetivi, personal communication.
Begin went into hiding: Gervasi, The Life and Times of Menahem Begin, p. 166.
“He had lost his eye”: Shilon, Menachem Begin, p. 57.
“He has large and parted”: Ibid.
“Are you also in favor”: Ibid., p. 58.
Irgun members were kidnapped: Haber, Menachem Begin, p. 141.
In some cases, refugees: “Exodus, 1945–1947,” in Lossin, Pillar of Fire.
more than a hundred thousand troops: Gervasi, The Life and Times of Menahem Begin, p. 170.
about one British soldier: Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, p. 50.
“We must retain”: Hoffman, Anonymous Soldiers, p. 263.
“Evacuate the entire”: Gervasi, The Life and Times of Menahem Begin, p. 177.
“to give orders”: “Smear Campaign Charged by Begin,” New York Times, Nov. 30, 1948.
Shaw claimed there was: John Shaw, Pillar of Fire interview.
Haganah ordered Begin: Temko, To Win or to Die, p. 92.
Ben-Gurion then denounced: Louise Fischer, private communication.
“The Irgun is the enemy”: Gervasi, The Life and Times of Menahem Begin, p. 178.
“days of pain”: Gordis, Menachem Begin, p. 52.
“We mourn the Jewish”: Temko, To Win or to Die, p. 93.
“5ft. 9in.”: photo inset, Neff, Warriors at Suez.
“He may be a Soviet”: British Foreign Office telegram to Washington, Nov. 13, 1948, in the Menachem Begin files of British Intelligence.
“He was made ‘better-looking’ ”: Undated newspaper clipping in Begin files of British Intelligence, probably summer of 1946.
They were already spending: Turner, Suez 1956, p. 80.
“unworkable”: Gervasi, The Life and Times of Menahem Begin, p. 187.
Sensing victory, Begin: Temko, To Win or to Die, p. 102.
“For hundreds of years”: Jake Eyre, “The Story of Irgun: Terrorism, Propaganda, and the State of Israel,” thesis, Norwich University, Nov. 16, 2010, p. 18.
“anti-Hebrew activities”: Temko, To Win or to Die, p. 106.
The hanging of the British: Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, p. 53.
terror works: See, for instance, Bruce Hoffman, “The Rationality of Terrorism and Other Forms of Political Violence: Lessons from the Jewish Campaign in Palestine, 1939–1947,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 22, no. 2 (May 2011): 258–72.
Many years later, American: Wright, The Looming Tower, p. 303.
“Osama bin Laden read”: Bruce Hoffman, personal communication; Al-Bahri, Guarding Bin Laden, p. 77.
“precisely the reverse”: Gervasi, The Life and Times of Menahem Begin, p. 150.
DAY THREE
“very tough”: Haber, Schiff, and Yaari, The Year of the Dove, p. 236.
“Palestinians!”: Carter, Keeping Faith, pp. 347–48.
valued it as a foil: Interview with Jimmy Carter.
“What do you actually want”: Carter, Keeping Faith, p. 348.
“assing around”: Rosalynn Carter diary of Camp David.
“Throw away reticence”: Carter, Keeping Faith, p. 349.
“Sinai settlements!”: Ibid., p. 347.
“Moses”: Quran 28:30.
“I have come down”: Exodus 3:7–8.
“Let my people go”: Exodus 7:15.
“If you remove this plague”: Quran 7:133.
“that you may tell in”: Exodus 10:2.
“I will pass through the land”: Exodus 12:6–13.
“Go forth from among”: Exodus 12:31.
“Is it because there are no graves”: Exodus 14:11.
“My strength and my refuge”: Exodus 15:2–3.
“We saved the Children”: Quran 44:30-31.
There may have been Jews: Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel, p. 118.
Israel is not cited: Finkelstein and Silberman, The Bible Unearthed, p. 57.
According to the Bible: Numbers 1:46; Exodus 12:37–8.
Marching ten abreast: Cline, From Eden to Exile, p. 74.
“Do not spare him”: 1 Samuel 15:3.
In his parents’ generation”: Haber, Menachem Begin, p. 20.
“for you were once aliens”: Exodus 22:20; 23:9.
“Little by little”: Exodus 23:30–33.
The vast migration: Cline, From Eden to Exile, pp. 85–89.
“But they broke”: Quran, 5:13.
Begin, with his granitic: Rosalynn Carter diary of Camp David.
“knowing we would all be”: Haber, Schiff, and Yaari, The Year of the Dove, p. 237.
“We will not allow”: Ibid., p. 238.
“I thought that”: Carter, Keeping Faith, p. 351.
screaming at each other: Interview with Rosalynn Carter.
“Security, yes!”: Carter, Keeping Faith, p. 351.
“clean-shaved”: Interview with Ahmed Abul-Gheit.
“Minimum confidence does not”: Carter, Keeping Faith, p. 353.
Weirdly, there were moments: Ibid.
There were about 800,000: Fischbach, Jewish Property Claims Against Arab Countries, p. 3.
75,000 to 80,000: Beinin, The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry, p. 2.
Egypt was still occupied: Aly, Feldman, and Shikaki, Arabs and Israelis, p. 75.
“didn’t think about the possibility”: Sadat, Safahat Majhula, pp. 185–86.
The total number of Arab troops: Shlaim, The Iron Wall, p. 35. At the time of the second truce, on July 18, 1948, the CIA estimated total Arab forces, including irregulars, at 27,000, with another 19,800 “near Palestine.” By comparison, it listed the forces of Haganah at 85,000, Irgun at 12,000, and Stern Gang at 800. “Possible Developments from the Palestine Truce,” Enclosure B, Central Intelligence Agency, July 27, 1948.
“We swung out to sea”: Weizman, On Eagles’ Wings, p. 67.
That first run was scarcely: Morris, 1948, p. 240.
killing indiscriminately: About Dayan’s raid on July 11, 1948, Benny Morris writes, “The troops appear to have shot at everyone in their path.” Ibid., pp. 289–90.
He led his men into: Shavit, My Promised Land, p. 107.
His greatest worry: Temko, To Win or to Die, p. 109.
five million dollars: Gervasi, The Life and Times of Menahem Begin, p. 251.
Some of them wept: Temko, To Win or to Die, p. 120.
“It’s an attempt to run”: Haber, Menachem Begin, p. 222.
“Enough! You
’re surrounded”: Teveth, Moshe Dayan, p. 148.
“Jews do not shoot”: Temko, To Win or to Die, p. 120.
“Our men called on Irgun”: Dayan, Story of My Life, p. 96. Whether Dayan was actually present at the exchange of gunfire is unclear. His account suggests that he was; however, he had turned over the command to a subordinate, and other reports differ. Cf. Teveth, Moshe Dayan, p. 148; Haber, Menachem Begin, p. 220.
“Suddenly, we were attacked”: Begin, The Revolt, p. 173.
In its panicked flight: Gordis, Menachem Begin, p. 90.
“We must all perish”: Temko, To Win or to Die, p. 120.
Begin, who couldn’t swim: Gordis, Menachem Begin, p. 90.
Sixteen of his men: Temko, To Win or to Die, p. 122.
Three members of the: Gordis, Menachem Begin, p. 91.
“the most dreadful event”: Temko, To Win or to Die, p. 122.
“Never!”: Carter, Keeping Faith, p. 358.
“I still dream of”: Ibid.
“Anyone observing the two”: Weizman, The Battle for Peace, pp. 136–37.
“I’m sure you will get”: Haber, Schiff, and Yaari, The Year of the Dove, p. 241.
That evening the Carters: Carter, First Lady from Plains, p. 248.
Such a display belonged: Dayan, Breakthrough, p. 170.
“goldfish capital”: Haber, Schiff, and Yaari, The Year of the Dove, p. 243.
ABC News had secured: Kays, Frogs and Scorpions, p. 122.
Barbara Walters was missing: Interview with Gerald Rafshoon.
“I’ve given so much”: Rosalynn Carter diary of Camp David; Carter, First Lady from Plains, p. 248.
“I know you are all very”: Carter, Keeping Faith, p. 363.
“It was I who made the peace”: Kamel, The Camp David Accords, p. 307.
“I must have also”: Carter, Keeping Faith, p. 361.
As the Americans auditioned: Ibid., p. 363.
“Stalemate here would just provide”: Ibid.
“There must be a way”: Carter, First Lady from Plains, p. 247.
Rosalynn had known Jimmy: Ibid., p. 9.
“running away”: Ibid, p. 13.
“Just having these thoughts”: Ibid., p. 14.
“The time has come to tell”: Ibid., pp. 16–17.
“My childhood really ended”: Ibid., p. 17.
Rosalynn’s mother took in: Ibid., p. 19; B. Drummond Ayres, “The Importance of Being Rosalynn,” New York Times, June 3, 1979.