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                                                                                WORLD, Page 42

ISRAEL

Fighter, First and Last

Menachem Begin: 1913-1992


By MARGUERITE JOHNSON -- Reported by Robert Slater/Jerusalem


    "The life of every man who fights in a just cause is a
paradox. He makes war so that there should be peace. He sheds
blood so that there should be no more bloodshed."

    -- Menachem Begin, The Revolt, 1949


    There was a touch of the mystical, the messianic, about
him. In starched white shirt and dark suit, tie tightly knotted
at his throat, spectacles ever in place, he looked like a stern
schoolmaster who had spent so many hours in lonely thought that
he moved with an evident lack of ease among other people. From
his earliest boyhood in a Polish ghetto, he was propelled by a
determination to help bring about the birth of a Jewish state.
It became the dream that motivated his life, first as leader of
a bloody campaign against the British and the Arabs, finally as
Prime Minister of Israel.

    No leader proved so paradoxical to his friends or so
confounding to his critics as did Menachem Begin in his
stewardship of that office. He came to power in 1977 after a
campaign in which he advocated continued Israeli rule of
captured Arab territories. Abrasive and seemingly
uncompromising, he talked incessantly of Israel's claim to Judea
and Samaria, that part of Israel along the West Bank of the
Jordan River that was taken from Jordan in 1967, a territory now
inhabited by 1 million Palestinians.

    Yet after Egyptian President Anwar Sadat made his
extraordinary decision to go to Jerusalem in 1977, Begin found
it a gesture so bold and imaginative that he signed a peace
treaty with Egypt. In exchange for normal relations, Israel
pledged to return the Sinai peninsula to Egypt and to
participate in negotiations to determine the final status of the
West Bank and Gaza Strip. It was a daring gamble that would
ensure both men a place in history and a share of the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1978. But by the time Begin died last week at the
age of 78, the magic of that moment had long since faded.

    Indomitable and often unpredictable, Begin put an
unprecedented strain on relations with the U.S. Ronald Reagan
was caught off guard by the 1981 bombing of an Iraqi nuclear
reactor, and a year later by Israel's bloody invasion of
Lebanon. Such actions served to underscore a fundamental duality
in Begin's nature: the peacemaker was not a pacifist, and never
abandoned his dream of a Greater Israel.

    Begin's government pursued a policy of aggressive
territorial expansion. More than three times as many Jewish
settlements were established in the West Bank territories during
his six years as Prime Minister as in the previous decade of
Labor governments. In 1980 he presided over the annexation of
the Arab sector of Jerusalem. In December 1981 he pushed through
a bill effectively annexing Syria's Golan Heights.

    Menachem Begin came early to his Zionist zeal. He was born
in a Polish town where his father was a leader in the Jewish
community. After earning a law degree at the University of
Warsaw, he became national commander of Betar, a right-wing
paramilitary group that advocated the violent ouster of the
British from Palestine. When the Germans invaded Poland in 1939,
he fled to Lithuania, leaving behind his parents, who died under
the Nazis. A year later, he joined the anti-German Free Polish
Army and served with a unit that was attached to British forces
in Palestine. There in 1943 he took command of the Jewish
underground terrorist organization Irgun. The British put a
$30,000 price tag on his head but never captured him.

    Not until 1967, when he joined the government of national
unity as a Minister Without Portfolio, did Begin acquire a
measure of political respectability. In May 1977, on his ninth
try to become Prime Minister, he scored a stunning upset as
leader of the right-wing Likud bloc at the age of 63, only seven
weeks after he had suffered a serious heart attack. Despite his
repeated hospitalizations, his energy and oratorical flair never
sagged.

    If Camp David was the zenith of his career, his ineptness
in economic policy nearly proved his undoing. By 1981 the Likud
trailed in the polls. Just three weeks before elections, Begin
ordered the attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor. The raid,
which helped the Likud eke out a narrow victory, signaled a
newly aggressive Israeli military policy. On June 6, 1982, army
tanks rolled into Lebanon. The country paid a high price: more
than 600 of its soldiers died, and 3,000 were wounded. There
were also psychological scars after Israel permitted Christian
Phalangist militiamen to enter the Palestinian refugee camps of
Sabra and Shatila, where they murdered at least 800 men, women
and children.

    In November 1982, Aliza, Begin's wife of 43 years, died.
In the months that followed, his aides noticed that he appeared
listless, almost indifferent to events. On Aug. 28, 1983, he
announced that he would resign. Then he went into almost
complete seclusion.

    More than three decades ago, Begin wrote that the struggle
to create the state of Israel could be summed up in a single
sentence: "We fight, therefore we are." If the fighter had
finally laid down his sword, Menachem Begin's role in the battle
would be remembered -- and hotly debated -- for years to come.