‘No,’ said Wilkes. That was true, he didn’t, and his notes hadn’t mentioned it.
That Wilkes was ignorant of the fact fired the major on. ‘And even though we fought alongside the British, they closed the door to all Jewish immigration after the war, while encouraging the Arabs. The world talks about Israel displacing the Arabs in Palestine, but it was they who displaced us! And the Jews have been here a very long time. We were in Hebron even before it was King David’s capital. And then in 1929, their Arab neighbours set about slaughtering the city’s Jewish population. The British? They just stood aside and let it happen.’
‘The Brits sure have a lot to answer for,’ said Monroe, getting into the spirit of the major’s indignation.
Colonel Baruch leaned across and said, ‘I am sure our visitors would rather talk about the weather or something.’
‘Colonel, we are about to fight a battle on their behalf. I want them to know why good Israelis are prepared to die,’ said Samuels, his face flushed with a red heat.
Wilkes and Monroe exchanged a fleeting glance. There was clearly not a lot of love lost between the two Israelis.
‘No, it’s okay, Colonel. We’re interested, right, Tom?’ said Monroe.
‘Sure,’ agreed Wilkes. They were guests in a foreign country and neither wanted to appear impolite. And Wilkes agreed with Samuels’ point: the least he could do was hear why Israeli soldiers were prepared to put themselves in harm’s way to achieve his and Monroe’s objective.
Samuels glared at Baruch. Baruch turned away and looked out the window. Why don’t you tell them that we won’t allow the four million Palestinian refugees — people we pushed into the desert — to return to their rightful lands, that we are scared to live beside a Palestinian nation with a population that exceeds our own? Why don’t you tell them that we assassinate all their leaders, making it almost impossible for these people to organise themselves, to care for themselves? Why don’t you tell them our jails are stocked with thousands of Palestinians held without being charged?
Samuels continued: ‘In 1948, the Arabs were offered half of Palestine west of the Jordan River for the creation of a state, but the Arabs rejected it. Instead, the Arab world attacked the struggling state of Israel on all fronts. They didn’t begin the war in defence of the so-called Palestinians to create the nation of Palestine. They went to war to take away what little land we had left so that they could carve it up amongst themselves. And they nearly succeeded. They tried again in 1967, in the Six-Day War, only this time we were ready for them and Israel won back the Arab-held lands. And do you know, at no time before that, during the nineteen years between 1948 and 1967, when Jordan and Egypt held the captured land of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, did they offer to surrender those lands to create the independent nation of Palestine?’
‘So where did all the talk about creating a Palestinian homeland begin?’ asked Monroe.
‘When the Palestine Liberation Movement was founded,’ said Samuels. ‘Its charter said its sole reason for being was the destruction of Israel. They’ve just changed their rhetoric to that of liberating Palestine. Why? Because it sounds better.’
‘Can’t argue with that,’ said Monroe.
‘That position has changed,’ said Baruch, suddenly turning away from the window. ‘The Palestinians now agree that Israel has the right to exist.’
‘Yes, but not as the homeland for the Jews,’ Samuels countered.
Wilkes and Monroe sat in silence.
The Humvee in front turned hard right and the convoy followed, circling behind a large, squat hunk of dirt-brown metal — a main battle tank. ‘That’s a Merkava Mk Four. Your M1 Abrams wouldn’t stand a chance against it,’ said Baruch to Atticus, breaking the silence. Wilkes didn’t know a lot about Israeli military equipment, and the tank was a complete unknown. ‘It can also carry around ten light infantry at a squeeze,’ Baruch added.
‘Beats the hell out of walking,’ said Monroe.
A brown Israeli army Mac truck blasting a cone of black diesel smoke into the air inched down a street off to their left pulling two enormous bulldozers. ‘They’re D-9 Caterpillars,’ said Samuels. ‘Big steel rolling pins.’
Monroe caught Wilkes’s eye and raised his eyebrows silently acknowledging the Australian’s earlier point about the army’s use of bulldozers here. There was very little room to manoeuvre in the narrow street, and the Mac appeared stuck like a cork in a bottle. No doubt the truck would eventually deliver its cargo, but getting the behemoths off the trailer was going to be another problem entirely.
Brakes squealed in clouds of brown dust as the vehicles pulled up behind a three-storey, newly whitewashed building. There were several other army vehicles parked in the vicinity guarded by half a dozen lightly armed soldiers. ‘We’re here,’ said Baruch.
‘Excuse me, please,’ said Samuels, kicking open the door and jumping out, anxious to rejoin his men. ‘I’ll catch up with you later, gentlemen.’
Wilkes and Monroe both nodded and mumbled their thanks.
‘My deepest apologies for the lecture,’ said Colonel Baruch. ‘History is Israel’s curse.’
‘It’s okay, sir,’ said Monroe.
Baruch turned, and led them towards a small shop at the base of the apartment block selling newspapers and bottled drinks. In the dark interior, stairs ran up one side of the room and a barber’s chair faced an old mirror that had lost much of its backing. The shop’s proprietor, a large bald man with a big voice, was arguing with one of the soldiers. Another Israeli soldier sat in the barber’s chair flicking through an ancient magazine. He jumped up and saluted smartly as Baruch entered. The officer ignored him and took the stairs three at a time. Monroe and Wilkes followed in his wake.
There was quite a crowd assembled on the rooftop. Several soldiers scanned either the rooftops of other buildings nearby or the sky above, casually resting on flimsy brick walls that crumbled, dropping masonry to the street five floors below. Other soldiers were gathered round a brace of laptop computers set up on trestle tables on the flat, concrete rooftop. Wilkes looked around. The skyline was as faceless and featureless as the streetscape. They were surrounded by a sea of flat roofs, some a storey or two higher, but most a storey lower. On a couple of buildings across the street, small crowds of onlookers had gathered. As Wilkes watched, soldiers arrived to disperse these audiences. Fair enough, thought Wilkes, the spectators’ interest in the Israeli army’s activity could easily tip off the terrorists. The terrorists could even conceivably have their own lookouts amongst the crowds.
Four helos circled lazily several kilometres away — a couple of Blackhawks and two Cobra gunships, the thumps of their rotors sharpening occasionally with the aircraft’s change in direction or a shift in the breeze.
The snarl of a small but powerful petrol engine bursting into life caught Wilkes’s attention. He watched as a circular grey contraption around two metres in diameter suddenly lifted off the roof and climbed rapidly straight up, trailing grey exhaust smoke. Wilkes followed it until he lost it against the blue of the sky. ‘Come,’ said Baruch.
Wilkes and Monroe followed him over to one of the soldiers leaning over the computers. ‘Lieutenant?’ said Baruch. The officer turned and then snapped to attention. ‘Lieutenant Glukel. I’d like to introduce Tom Wilkes and Atticus Monroe.’
‘Lieutenant,’ said Wilkes.
‘Ma’am,’ said Monroe. No one shook hands or smiled. It wasn’t a social occasion.
‘Lieutenant Glukel is commanding the Sayeret unit. She’s Israel’s first female special forces combat soldier. Lieutenant, Tom and Atticus here are…observers.’ The look the lieutenant gave Wilkes and then Monroe was more like an examination, but Wilkes liked her instantly. She had the same tough, no-nonsense self-assurance that was universally shared by combat-weathered soldiers. Wilkes was mildly surprised, and impressed. Surprised because he’d never met a female combat soldier before, and impressed because the lieutenant wore the scars of combat as well as any soldier he’d met.