Begin came to power.
To everyone's surprise he made peace with Egypt
and was seen as a man of peace.
The trouble was that no one understood Begin except me.
I say this only half in jest.
I grew up in the Revisionist movement and had been a member of the Irgun
I knew their worldview.
The worldview of the Revisionists and of the Freedom Movement and the Likud
is centred entirely on the map which appears on the Irgun symbol
and appeared on the masthead of the newspaper 'Hamashkif'
which belonged to the Revisionist party
and to the Freedom Movement. This is the map of the British Mandate of Eretz Israel
on both sides of the Jordan.
That was the land which the movement called Israel,
and it did not include any other country -
not Lebanon nor Syria nor the Golan Heights
nor Egypt nor Sinai −
only Transjordan and the Land of Israel 'from the river to the sea'.
Therefore, for Begin to make peace with Egypt and also with Syria,
for if he had continued to be in power he would certainly have made peace with Syria, without any doubt.
He had no ideological problem with this.
The ideological problem was with the Land of Israel.
Thus he made peace with Egypt.
From his point of view, it was an act of war not an act of peace,
and he removed Egypt from the fateful struggle for the Land of Israel,
which was the only struggle in which he was interested.
Therefore he was not interested in what was happening in Lebanon or Syria.
It was the Labour movement that always kept its eye on Lebanon,
or on part of Lebanon.
After World War I, when the little Zionist movement
presented its demands at the peace conference which followed the war,
they presented a map of the country, or the Zionist homeland that they wanted,
and it stretched from Al Arish to the Litani River in Lebanon,
which is a good few dozen kilometers from Rosh Hanikra.
The Freedom Movement had a completely different map:
mandatory Eretz Israel on both sides of the Jordan.
For that reason they made peace easily,
removing it from the frontline of the war.
Had there been time, he would have done the same thing with Syria.
Therefore, it was relatively easy to make peace with Egypt,
with the evacuation of the entire area up to the last millimeter,
with the destruction of Yamit and all that entailed.