In advance of the 46th anniversary of the signing of the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt on Thursday, the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem hosted a commemorative address by Ze’ev Binyamin (Benny) Begin, son of the first right-wing prime minister, Menachem Begin, who was also the country’s first prime minister to sign a peace agreement with an Arab country, without which Israel might never have reached the stage of the Abraham Accords.
If anyone expected the younger Begin to have the inside story on how it all came about, they quickly learned that the prime minister had discussed very little on the subject with his son and that, in preparation for the lecture, Begin had to do considerable research. There were some things that, until a year ago, were unknown to him, he said, and other things that he discovered as recently as three or four months ago.
Inasmuch as his compelling lecture in excellent English was a history lesson, it was more of a lesson about the character of his father, who was a man of principle whose values and behavior were quite different from those demonstrated by the current leader of the Likud Party.
In addition, the lecture illustrated the importance of a single word in any kind of legal document.
For instance, the expression “peace agreement” was changed to “peace treaty,” in that a treaty carries much more weight than an agreement. And in formulating the text for the document related to autonomy for the Palestinians, Menachem Begin did not refer to the areas of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza but to the inhabitants of those places, leaving the sovereignty issue out of the wording because sovereignty was a matter of contention, whereas inhabitants was a word on which agreement could be reached.
Begin inherited his father’s gift for oratory, and he used it effectively to introduce his audience to a modest man who believed in human rights – including those of the Palestinians – and who firmly adhered to solving disputes through negotiation.
Though always aware of these qualities in his father, Begin may have been spurred to research them further in light of events in Israel since October 7.
ONE OF the principles that Menachem Begin lived by and repeated in speeches and in writing in his dealings with Israelis and with Arabs was, “We have no right to impose our principles on you, and you have no right to impose your principles on us.”
He also believed in and maintained the principle of negotiating without preconditions.
How Herut merged to for Likud
Thus, when Herut, which had been founded by Menachem Begin as a successor to the Irgun in June 1948, merged with the Liberal Party in 1965 to found Gahal, which later evolved into Likud, the text of the agreement allowed for each party to maintain its own principles, with Herut continuing to publicly express the principle of the integrity of the Land of Israel, while the Liberal Party refused to include the integrity of the Land of Israel in the merger agreement.
The biblical map of the Land of Israel was the symbol of the Herut badge, and for many years, the Jewish National Fund featured the biblical map on the Blue Box in which Jews around the world put coins every Friday before Shabbat candle lighting.
While he believed with all his heart in the integrity of the Land of Israel, Menachem Begin never insisted on including it in agreements because he understood the importance of compromise in turning practical ideas into action.
Prime minister Levi Eshkol recognized this, and when Menachem Begin joined Eshkol’s national-unity government in 1967, Eshkol asked him to write the drafts for resolutions.
The Likud founder, who arrived in the Land of Israel in 1942 with the Polish Armed Forces led by Gen. Wladyslaw Anders, had a 40-year career as a leader – first of the Irgun, then Herut, and finally as prime minister.
One of the things that endeared him to the public was his modesty. An example of this was related by his son, who said that after the signing of the Camp David Accords, his father said to US president Jimmy Carter and Egypt’s president Anwar Sadat he had grandchildren to whom he would like to give a photograph of the three of them together and asked the two presidents to write an autographed inscription. Carter wrote one in English, and Sadat wrote one in Arabic.
The prime minister himself wrote a single word in Hebrew – saba (grandpa.) “He was a very good grandfather,” said Begin.
At the conclusion of his address, Begin answered some questions from the audience but declined to answer one, which queried what his father would have done in the present crisis.
Instead, he referred the audience to a post he had written earlier in the day on one of his social media accounts.
In it, he recalled that as far back as 2016, he had warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he then admired and with whom he was on good terms, that changes he wanted to implement would be to the detriment of Likud.
But Begin had never anticipated that the situation would deteriorate to such a low level as to be “without limits and without wisdom.”