The second circle closed for me by the peace process began with an invitation from Prime Minister Rabin and King Hussein to attend the 1994 signing of the treaty between Israel and Jordan. That ceremony was an emotional moment for me, of course, but far more meaningful to me was the trip Rabin and Hussein’s offices arranged in March 1995, enabling twenty-eight veterans of the paratroops brigade’s sayeret, my original unit, to revisit the battlefield at Karameh.
This time, instead of helicoptering in before dawn, we rode an air-conditioned tourist bus across the tiny bridge over the Jordan River. Just like at Entebbe, at Karameh too, time stood still.
In the dry desert nothing had changed. The boulder where Arazi fell still marked the spot. No winter since 1968 had been wet enough to change the dry riverbed’s bend. The weather was the same as that morning twenty-seven years earlier: end of winter, still cold in the morning, but by midday an oven of heat, relieved by sudden breezes that last only a few minutes and then pass, carrying a rough dust in the air up and down the valley.
My seemingly endless walk of 1968 turned into a five-minute stride across the plateau. Climbing the crumbly sandstone wall to the ridge overlooking the gravel-and-sand riverbed, I stumbled, more amazed than ever at how I survived then.
Yisrael Arazi’s brother, Asher, led the twenty-eight veterans of the unit in a prayer of commemoration for all who died — Yisrael, Haim Prager, Yitzhak Shoham, and Zevik Alterman.
Engel was so excited that he forgot I had told him to keep firing when he was hit in the leg. And for a long hour we listened to Sergeant Alexander tell the story of Nissim, the tagalong from the air force who pulled rank and got the platoon into trouble. We finally field the debriefing after Karameh that must follow every operation, but especially the failures — to learn what went wrong and how to fix it.
Two Jordanian Army officers accompanied us as our hosts, and together with them we field a second moment of silence in the desert at the foot of their monument to the soldiers who fought and fell at Karameh trying to help the Palestinians. From Karameh we went to Amman and dined out, the next morning visiting the War Museum, to see relics from the battle of Karameh. An air force pilot’s uniform, helmet, and personal weapon hung in a glass case. I knew the family of the pilot shot down that day, killed by the villagers who captured him, so I brought home pictures for his sister.
But the most important moment for me on my first trip to Jordan as a civilian came on top of Mount Nevo, the presumed resting place of the biblical Moses. From that point, he was allowed only to see the Promised Land, not to enter it.
I could see across the Jordan Rift Valley all the way to Jerusalem, perched on the top of the tawny Judean Mountains in the south, and to the green Samarian mountain ridge heading north. Far below, in the heart of the Jordan Rift, the Jericho oasis west of the Jordan glimmered emerald-green.
It is indeed the heart of the Land of Israel — but it is not the State of Israel. For more than a generation — from 1967, when it was captured in the Six-Day War, to the mid-1990s — Israel field that territory. Many hoped that one day the territory would be annexed to the State of Israel. Some undertook an effort to settle the lands named in the Bible.
But every government since 1967, right-wing, left-wing, hawkish or dovish, has been unable to do so, because it would mean undermining the idea of Israel as a democratic state with a Jewish majority.
Thus, for all the rhetoric of those opposed to the peace process with the Palestinians, I am confident that the sobering reality of responsibility for the lives of Israel’s citizens will make any elected government in Israel in the future continue with the process. There is no alternative if we — and our Arab neighbors — wish to be a part of the new world of instant communication and free markets arriving in the twenty-first century.
In that new world, it is impossible for one people to rule another without their consent. So, just as we made peace with Egypt by returning the Sinai and just as the peace with Syria being made at the time of the writing of this book is based on trading the Golan Heights in exchange for peace, so will the territory I could see from the top of Mount Nevo go to the Palestinians.
Thus, as a realist, I understand that the West Bank is on its way to becoming a Palestinian state. I can only hope it will be a democracy and that it will be a sturdy neighbor for the State of Israel, whose borders will once and for all be set, recognized, and respected by our neighbors.
The end of the hundred-year war is in sight. To my grandparents and parents, it appeared it would go on forever. But already, despite all the difficulties, the reconciliation has begun.
I have traveled to Egypt and Jordan as a civilian, and soon, I believe, I will be able to travel to Syria and Lebanon as a tourist, carrying a camera instead of a gun, with my children, rather than my soldiers. For that I am grateful, knowing that it means all my efforts — and my entire generation’s — in the service of my country have truly borne fruit. My only regret is for all my friends who did not live to see the peace for which we fought.