My main responsibility as commander of the 252" was to implement the withdrawal from the Sinai. Israel had committed itself to bring all of our forces behind the 1967 border within next two years, and, along with Dan, I threw my energy into planning and implementing the terms of the treaty. But especially with Begin soon facing a reelection campaign against Labor, now led by Shimon Peres, he was keen to play to the opponents of any further negotiating concessions. He was positioning himself as the voice of military strength, and painting Peres as someone who would risk our security by going further than the separate peace with Sadat.
Begin had no more experience or knowledge of military details than Shimon. But from his days in the pre-state Irgun, he’d been an unapologetic admirer of men of military action. After his victory in the 1977 election, he’d formed a government stocked with some of Israel’s best-known former generals. Not just Ezer Weizman. He’d brought back Moshe Dayan, as foreign minister. And as agriculture minister, the country’s most swashbuckingly self-confident, and controversial, battlefield commander: Arik Sharon. Begin had recently lost both Ezer and Dayan, who accused him of deliberatedly torpedoing chances of building on the peace with Egypt. But Arik was still there, four-square behind a more forceful military posture on Israel’s other fronts. As agriculture minister, he had also been the driving force in a plan for settlement “blocs” designed to encircle the main Arab towns and cities on the West Bank and foreclose any realistic prospect of a Palestinian state.
After Begin’s second election victory, in June 1981, some commentators, and many in Labor, insisted that he’d won because of a dramatic surprise air strike, a few weeks before election day, against a French-built nuclear reactor outside Baghdad. I never believed that, in part because I knew from intelligence friends that the attack had been set for earlier, and was put back because of fears the plan might become public. But mostly because of what I witnessed in the heart of Tel Aviv the night before the election, when I joined one of my top officers, a Likudnik, at Begin’s final campaign rally.
Shimon still had a narrow lead in the polls. I hadn’t been at his closing rally, the previous evening. But like the rest of Israel, I'd heard and read about it, in particular the warm-up act: a popular, solidly pro-Labor comedian and actor named Dudu Topaz. Greeting the crowd, he’d said what a pleasure it was that it was not full of chachachim. The word was sneering Israeli slang: for uncouth,
uncultured Sephardim, not far from the equivalent of using the “n” word in America. In a single sentence, he’d managed to sum up everything the
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