Summary
Israeli leader in Said’s account: former head of the Irgun, author of The Revolt, elected premier in May 1977, whose admitted terrorism Said presents as transmuted by the liberal-Western consensus into statesmanship.
Details
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Begin has made no effort to hide his terrorism; The Revolt describes it in profusion and he admits responsibility for the April 1948 massacre at Deir Yassin (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.65 / printed p.44).
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A few weeks after his May 1977 election he emerged in the press as a statesman, was given an honorary LLD by Northwestern University in 1978 and part of a Nobel Peace Prize; in May 1978 he was again honoured at Northwestern, a scant month after his army created 300,000 new refugees in South Lebanon, while speaking constantly of Judea and Samaria as rightful parts of the Jewish state (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.65, p.78-79 / printed p.44, p.57-58).
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In the Introduction and Chapter One, Begin claims to have liberated the territories occupied in 1967, in which 1.7 million Arabs are held (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.35 / printed p.14).
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In Said, Chapter Four: Begin was never asked by the press how he squared his moral zeal about Zionism with the destruction of Palestinian society, or his election on a platform promising to annex the West Bank as well as the East Bank (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.216 / printed p.195).
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Begin was rehabilitated quickly from his extremism and terrorism and accommodated to the Sadat/U.S. process, making no substantive concessions: he believed in keeping the Occupied Territories, saw the Palestinian Arabs as Israel’s coolie class, and effectively changed Israel’s position on Resolution 242 (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.225 / printed p.204).
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Begin brought particular legal skills to assuring the permanence of new created realities: the Occupied Territories became the liberated territories, he made the distinction between self-rule for inhabitants and sovereignty over the land, and he took the step of securing the legality of Israel’s ever-expanding borders (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.227 / printed p.206).
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Chapter Four II concludes on Begin: while the U.S. press spun out disquisitions on Khomeini’s Islamic republic, there was not the slightest effort to understand Begin’s theocratic view of things, or what he meant by autonomy for people but not for the land on which they lived; right after Camp David Begin pressed for more settlements, leaving the project in the hands of Arik Sharon (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.228 / printed p.207).
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In Chapter Four IV Said expects Begin to take harder and harder positions in the short run, while no Palestinian of any consequence participates in the autonomy process (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.256 / printed p.235).
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In Pappe: Begin, prime minister between 1977 and 1982 (as Pappe dates his time in power), received Sadat’s 1977 autonomy initiative (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.277). In the Endnotes, Begin’s The Revolt is quoted on Deir Yassin’s panic effect: of the almost 800,000 who lived on the present territory of the State of Israel, only some 165,000 are still there (Chapter 5, note 8, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.312).