Amos Oz - The Slopes of Lebanon

All this surfaced only in the weeks ahead. On Friday, June 4, there was quite a different sort of discussion around the lunch table in Kibbutz Hulda’s dining hall. M., one of the old-timers in the kibbutz, said, “Begin is just looking for some resounding military success to give his supporters new inspiration and make them forget about having had to quit our settlements in Sinai two months ago.”

Redhead said, “This time we’ve got to finish them once and for all, not like during the Litani operation. And if the Egyptians make a peep, that’ll be our opportunity to take back Sinai.”

Said A., “Forget about Sinai now. Reagan told Begin to take Lebanon and give it to the Christian Phalangists. Maybe we should keep everything up to the Litani, so we’ll have enough water for our country. And if, by chance, the result is that Mr. Assad *falls, the Egyptians will be sending us flowers. You can believe me. After that, maybe we’ll be able to give the Arabs a slice of the territories, or a little autonomy, and that’ll be that. We might just come out from this deal with a comprehensive, total peace, on our own terms.”

M. said, “Begin just wants to go down in history as more of a Ben Gurion than Ben Gurion. And that Raful [Raphael Eitan] and that Arik [Ariel Sharon] — well, they’ve had itchy trigger fingers for a long time.” *

L. added, “All those bickering factions in Lebanon will come to us for help in putting their houses in order. The Christians, the Druse, the Whatzits, and even the Palestinians themselves, after the way the Phalangists and the Syrians slaughtered them at Tel Azaatar.”

Redhead said, “It’s all an American plot. Maybe they worked the whole thing out at Camp David, sort of on the quiet, on the side. And do you know what? Hussein and the Saudis are going to lick their lips when Arafat’s end arrives. It’s going to be a great little war! The Three-Day War — that’s what they’ll call it.”

That afternoon, alone at home, I lay on the couch and read the weekend newspapers. I wondered whether I, too, was going to be called up for reserve duty. I hoped I wouldn’t be, and I was a little ashamed of that hope. The afternoon papers struck a tone of forced gaiety, as though the old marching tune this time had a counterfeit ring. If you believed the papers, Israel was like an aging gentleman, portly and well established, who locks himself in the bathroom to get spruced up for a prurient rendezvous that has come his way without any effort on his part. Humming to himself before the mirror, he tries to get into the proper spirit with memories of his wild youth, when his back ached from all the pats of admiration.

But now, the code words from the days of 1967 sounded tired and worn out. “A preemptive strike,” somebody wrote. “To take them off the playing field for the next ten years,” another analyst explained. And someone else even resurrected the one about “reviving the element of deterrence.” They wrote that our peace treaty with Egypt would prevent the opening of a second front on that side and allow us a lightning victory “in view of the balance of power,” particularly if the Syrians had the good sense to sit this one out. They also wrote about the need to “root out international terrorism at its source, once and for all.” Someone else, in fatherly, forgiving tones, appealed to the leaders of the opposition Labor party to remember — for their own good — that they had paid dearly in the elections of the year just past for their opposition to the bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor. This time, the journalist advised the Labor leaders, *they ought to go along with the people and not act against them.

That afternoon, Israeli Air Force planes launched a massive bombing attack on the suburbs of Beirut. They destroyed, as the newscasts reported, the municipal stadium, which had served as a huge arsenal for the terrorists. The flames, it was gleefully reported, “could be seen for dozens of kilometers.” The evening news informed us, as usual, that “Arafat himself had miraculously escaped from the bombing.”

Later that evening, at long last — as promised, as written in the program — the army radio station started to broadcast old-time Hebrew melodies: “There in the Hills of Galilee,” “In the Eucalyptus Grove,” and perhaps even “Mount Hermon’s Majesty” (“We climbed with the wind / to her shining peak…”).

All day long, that Saturday, the Israeli government waited for the PLO’s response to the bombings near Beirut the day before: flurries of Katyusha rockets on the villages of Galilee, which would provide justification for an invasion. For a full day and night, the PLO managed to restrain itself, perhaps because its leaders sensed what was about to happen and did not want to play into Israel’s hands.

On Saturday morning, M. and I drove in the kibbutz Subaru to a meeting of Peace Now supporters in the kibbutz movement, which took place at a kibbutz in the north. All the northbound roads were jammed with long military convoys: tanks piggybacked on huge carriers, mobile artillery pieces, jeeps, trucks open and closed, some of them towing enormous spotlights and others dragging elongated tools of war covered by khaki tarpaulins, buses filled with soldiers (none of whom were singing), and among the vehicles, as always in the wars of David against Goliath, there were civilian trucks that had been drafted: Berman’s Bakery, Tadiran Co., Amcor Enterprises, Marbek, Inc., and so forth.

At the kibbutz conference, they talked as usual about the “corrupting occupation” and about the “nationalist-religious fanaticism” that had shown up “in all its ugliness” two months earlier, during the evacuation of the Jewish settlements in the Sinai Peninsula. They condemned false messianism and warned about the “waning of the spirit of Camp David.” Opinions were aired for and against Yigal Allon’s plan for territorial compromise. A young woman with an American accent compared Israel to the United States in the Vietnam War and expressed her understanding of the “Palestinian resistance movement.” And there was a slightly built, emotional young man — from Latin America, I think — whose name I have forgotten, but whose words I remember well. He said that there was going to be a blitzkrieg in Lebanon and, as a result of the quick and easy victory, Lebanon would become West Bank Number 2. First they’d occupy half of Lebanon to prevent Katyusha attacks. Then they’d say there was no one to give it back to because there was no one to talk to. Later, they would say that perhaps there was someone to talk to, but that without a stable and durable peace we will return nothing. Whereupon they would say: What’s the noise all about? What occupiers are you talking about? What occupation? Why, all we did was liberate the biblical portion of the tribe of Asher. And then a squad of rabbis would be sent to renovate the ruins of an ancient synagogue in Nabatiyah or a Jewish cemetery in Sidon. After that, a settler’s group from Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) *will set up house there in order to pray at the grave of Queen Jezebel. And then lands will be expropriated for military maneuvers and installations. These lands will be held by paramilitary settlement groups with such names as Cedar Trees and Leaders, to prevent incursions by local fellaheen into restricted military areas. These settlements would support themselves by growing cherries for export, and when they were handed over to civilian authorities they would live on tourism and skiing in the snowy Lebanese mountains. The centrist United Kibbutz Movement would refuse, at first, to set up kibbutzim north of the generally accepted boundary, the “Katyusha range,” along the Litani River. The Ha Shomer Hatzair Kibbutz Movement would agree to settle only within a “cosmetic distance” of several hundred meters from the old border. In the early years, only Gush Emunim followers would settle north of the Litani. The rabbinate would decree that the Bible forbids us to turn our ancestral inheritance over to the Gentiles, and that decision will receive wide support because this ancestral inheritance also happens to be very important for defense and very strategic as well as rich in water and arable land, which will gradually be expropriated. Apart from that, they will say that no one except ourselves has a historic right to Lebanon, which was, after all, the artificial creation of French imperialism and, when you get down to it, there is no such thing as a Lebanese people anyway: Lebanon already exists in Syria. Besides, the Arabs already have enough territory, and if they don’t like it, they can lump it and go back to their own countries. The upshot of all this will be that, twenty years later, the right will refuse to relinquish a single inch, while the left, taking a balanced, realistic stand, will propose a territorial compromise: annex only the territory up to the Litani and return the rest in exchange for a true, stable, and lasting peace with appropriate security arrangements. That’s what will happen.