Menachem Begin won a stunning upset over the ruling Labor Party in the 1977 elections to become the nation’s first non-Labor Premier after having been in the opposition for 29 years.
Finally, at the age of 64, Begin felt that his political and social views had been vindicated and that, despite the bitter attacks against him and his colleagues in the Knesset by the successive Labor Party governments, the majority of the people of Israel were on his side.
Begin felt exhilarated and exuberant, filled with dreams of putting his Revisionist Zionist philosophy into practice. Six years later, at the age of 70, Begin resigned from office, physically ill, psychologically depressed and proclaiming that “I cannot bear the responsibility any longer.”
In the interim period Begin led his country to a peace agreement with Egypt and to a controversial war in Lebanon. He handed back the entire Sinai to Egypt but strengthened Israel’s hold on the administered territories. Under his Premiership, Israel annexed the Golan Heights, but stopped short of annexing the West Bank.
BEGIN WAS A FIGHTER
Begin was a fighter, if not always a diplomatic one. He took on President Hafez Assad of Syria, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of West Germany, President Valery Giscard d’Estaing of France, Labor Party leader Shimon Peres, and derided and rejected President Reagan’s peace initiative.
But at the end of his reign, Begin seemed to have lost that combativeness and began to acquiesce to most American requests, including the latest one that Israel delay the redeployment of its troops in Lebanon.
The agreed-to delay came after the two U.S. marines had been killed and eight others wounded in the Beirut area by heavy shelling between Shiite Moslems and Christian Phalangists. Observers noted that it would have been difficult for Israel to reject the requested delay because if any further American casualties had occurred after an Israeli refusal, Israel might be blamed for further American deaths.
AFFECTED BY A NUMBER OF EVENTS
Begin leaves his office as a man who had grown weary of the petty infighting and bickering among the Cabinet ministers, especially in the past few weeks, sparked by the mounting toll of Israeli soldiers killed and wounded in Lebanon and by an austerity economic package proposed by Finance Minister Yoram Aridor.
Close associates of Begin said he was grieved by the death of 517 Israel soldiers and the wounding of more than 2,000. He termed the war in Lebanon a “tragedy” and admitted that he had never anticipated that the war would become a quagmire.
In the past year Begin suffered two tragedies: his beloved wife Aliza died last November while he was in the United States, and his close friend and political partner, Simcha Ehrlich, died in June.
DISTRESSED BY ECONOMIC CRISIS
Begin was also reportedly distressed by the nation’s economic crisis, the complexities of which were not within his grasp. He never claimed to understand economic problems and left all that work up to the ministers in charge, first and foremost, Aridor. At first Aridor’s economic policy enabled the Likud to win office for the second time in 1981. Those economic policies created an atmosphere of prosperity, with major consumer goods flooding the market at prices available even to low income families.
But those policies began to fail, Inflation ran as high as 140 percent annually and the deficit in the balance of payments mounted. Even Aridor realized this month that this situation could not go on, and he waged a desperate debate with his colleagues to cut 55 billion Shekels out of this year’s government budget. The budget crisis was one of the key reasons prompting Begin to resign, although not the main reason.
DOGGED BY FAILURES AND DISAPPOINTMENTS
Other political failures and disappointments dogged Begin. The peace agreement he signed with President Anwar Sadat began to break down and finally stalled altogether. The autonomy talks were dead ended because Israel and Egypt were at odds over the degree of autonomy to be granted to the Palestinians on the West Bank. While Begin believed in autonomy “for the people, not for the land,” Egypt viewed autonomy as a stepping stone toward a Palestinian state. Egypt, infuriated with the autonomy stalemate and the war in Lebanon, recalled its Ambassador.
Begin also leaves behind an Israeli society more divided than ever; religious against the secular, Sephardim against Ashkenazim, Jews against Arabs. These divisions have caused violence: Sephardic Jews attacking Ashkenazic property and daubing them with slogans reminiscent of Nazi Germany; ultra-Orthodox Jews attacking secular archaeologists; the murder of Peace Now activist Emil Grunzweig during a demonstration following the report of the Kahan Commission on the massacre of civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps; the killing and wounding of Arab students at the Islamic College in Hebron; and the attempted assassinations of three West Bank Arab mayors.
SEEKS TO DISPEL HARDLINE IMAGE
At the beginning of his Premiership, Begin seemed to go out of his way to dispel the image of him as a hardliner. From his sick bed (he suffered from a heart condition) Begin called up Laborite Moshe Dayan and invited him to become Foreign Minister. The move paid off — Dayan was instrumental in achieving the peace agreement with Egypt. Begin’s hardline image concerning his views of Israel’s Arab neighbors was also dispelled when he and Sadat forged the historic Camp David accords, along with President Carter.
But at the same time, Begin gave the green light for the rapid construction of settlements in the West Bank, creating a situation described by many as “irreversible,” from the point of view of leaving the door open for future negotiations with Jordan.
Begin’s hardline image also re-emerged when he ordered the bombing of the nuclear reactor in Iran and the invasion of Lebanon. The invasion, during which the massacre at the refugee camps by Phalangist forces took place while Israeli troops were nearby, left Begin with the political stigma that he headed a government which did not know how to prevent such an atrocity.
Neither Israel nor his Herut Party and the Likud coalition he headed will ever be the same again without Begin. For six years he was the cement that held together the building blocks of diverse elements. In the end, history was stronger than the individual, but the individual — Begin — contributed a great deal to that history. With his resignation, an era has come to an end.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
