Golda (52 page)

Golda still wasn’t sure about Sadat, but her reply indicated that she glimpsed promise.

“I am deeply conscious of the significance of the message received by the prime minister of Israel from the president of Egypt,” she wrote. “It is indeed a source of great satisfaction to me and I sincerely hope that these contacts between us through Dr. Kissinger will continue and prove to be an important turning point in our relations. I, for my part, will do my best to establish trust and understanding between us.”

* * *

Kissinger was indulging in a not atypical bit of self-aggrandizing humor when he joked about being the cause of Golda’s painful bout of shingles. In truth, the stress of dealing with the secretary of state was mild compared to the torture of Israeli politics. Everyone in Israel was quarreling that winter. Reservists like Motti Ashkenazi attacked the government for throwing them into war ill prepared, the widows of the dead turned grief into blame, the families of the prisoners of war trapped in Syria marched in outraged certainty that their men were being abused, and workers walked out on strike over a new war tax. Juvenile crime had risen 37 percent and govern- ment economists were recommending a series of draconian measures—the devaluation of the Israeli pound, steep new taxes on luxury imports, and a reduction in subsidies of basic commodities like sugar, milk, eggs, and bread—that Golda knew would only add fuel to the political chaos.

“The state has gone through a devaluation,” wrote Joel Marcus, a col- umnist for the daily
Ha’aretz,
“a devaluation in leadership ability, devalu- ation in spirit, in values, in morale, in faith.”

It was Israel’s greatest crisis of confidence since independence, and a disgruntled public took to the streets in a spontaneous series of demon- strations, sit-ins, and teach-ins. The movement had no name, no single ideology. Ultranationalists on the right chastised Golda for her close co- operation with Kissinger. Clamoring for greater flexibility in dealing with the Arabs, the left took out ads in newspapers calling for the entire gov- ernment to resign. And the vast center simply exploded in angst.

Dayan remained the target. At a meeting of senior military officers, a colonel rose and called for his ouster. Then, during the parliamentary question period, a young Labor activist asked Dayan to account for his actions on the eve of the war.

Within five minutes, the young man was asked to withdraw his ques- tion. “Why are you protecting him?” questioner asked. The answer: Golda had threatened to resign if the question isn’t taken off the table.

The more vigorously Golda protected her minister of defense, the more the venom against him spilled over onto her. Lines of young demonstra- tors carried placards around the Knesset: golda, go home. One day she emerged from her office and a woman yelled, “Murderer.” Her approval rating fell to 21 percent.

“The streets will not tell me what to do,” Golda resolutely informed her aides. With political instincts developed in an era when politics meant parties and party discipline was absolute, Golda had no idea how to cope with popular ferment or party divisiveness that couldn’t be defused with backroom deals.

Throwing Dayan to the wolves might have quenched at least some of the popular desire for accountability. But Kissinger pressured Golda to keep him on the team, finding him more pliable than the rest of Golda’s crew. And when Golda counted her Knesset votes, she knew she couldn’t govern without Rafi, which would surely quit her government without Dayan. She might have made up for that loss by allying herself with a

new party on the left, the Citizens’ Rights Movement, which had bled off three of Labor’s seats. But Golda was angry at the movement’s leader, Shulamit Aloni, for defying party discipline. “Golda Meir had many great qualities, but these did not include tolerance of diversity,” Eban said of Golda’s refusal to embrace the CRM.

Trapped by outdated proclivities and the erosion of her authority, Golda stood by helplessly as Labor disintegrated, the doves threatening to bolt if Dayan remained in the cabinet, Rafi vowing to walk if Dayan didn’t, the National Religious Party holding out for a more Orthodox definition of Judaism, and the right gaining strength every day. The lon- ger the crisis endured, the more wary and angry the public became. Ral- lies of a hundred people became demonstrations of a thousand, and, tone-deaf, Golda couldn’t see the writing on the wall.

“I don’t think they use sensible methods,” she said of the demonstra- tors. “They picket Labor Party headquarters night and day. They want us to do this and not otherwise. Fine, but I told them, ‘Where do we con- front each other? Where can I confront you? You give your opinion, I’ll give mine and then there will be a democratic decision?’ . . . Why should anyone, no matter what fine things he had done, be entitled to bring pres- sure on me to change my mind. That I don’t accept.”

But the protesters didn’t want to join the party or dialogue with Golda. Their faith in the system of professional politicians making decisions be- hind closed doors eroded, they wanted change.

By early March, more than two months after the elections, Golda still hadn’t formed a coalition behind a majority government, and party stal- warts suggested alternately that she call new elections or form a national emergency government embracing all of the nation’s parties, as Dayan was advocating. Golda was dead set against either solution. The former held out the prospect of a victory by the right, and the latter—which she called a “national disaster government”—would paralyze all peace nego- tiations. Instead, she announced that she would form a minority govern- ment.

Even at that eleventh hour, however, she still hadn’t figured out who

would serve in her cabinet. Dayan abruptly decided that he would not serve “under existing conditions,” which most people took to mean that he would pout on the sidelines until everyone apologized to him. “I have asked him, I am asking him, and I will ask him to serve in the new cabinet,” Golda wearily told reporters. But she had already chosen his replacement, Yitzhak Rabin, the former chief of operations of the Pal- mach, chief of staff of the IDF, and current ambassador to the United States.

On the afternoon of March 3, she presented her new cabinet to a meeting of party leaders. With none of the fractures healed, speaker after speaker, from the left and the right, rose to gripe about Golda’s refusal to appoint a National Unity government or call new elections, that Dayan should be ousted, or that Rabin didn’t deserve to be defense minister.

When the speeches ended, Golda unleashed her exasperation. “Had I resigned last August or September, I would have been taking a wise step. I’ve sinned for the last forty-five years by allowing myself to paper things over. Under pressure from comrades and myself, I thought something needed to get done in this country and that the comrades thought that by putting Golda in charge, they’d overcome the internal conflicts. That’s all over. The trick of Golda the Paperhanger doesn’t help anymore.”

The audience was riveted. Golda’s venting had always been a fine show. But they were not prepared for the finale.

“Tonight, I shall hand my mandate back to the president because I have finished setting up the government,” she announced. “I hope you will inform the president of the next candidate to lead the government.” Then she picked up her purse and walked out, the party secretary-general running behind her yelling, “Golda, wait, Golda, come back.”

That night, the usual delegations rushed to her residence, where she was watching the news of her resignation on television. The party Cen- tral Committee convened and begged her to remain, and party leaders urged the president not to accept her resignation. Assuming that this time Golda was serious, the media erupted in an orgy of speculation about new elections, a caretaker government, and the future of Labor.

Golda desperately wanted to be rid of the burden, of the feuding and nitpicking, but she had never run away from a fight and desperately wanted to bring the Israeli prisoners of war home. So after the full drama of repentance played out, she agreed to give coalition building one more try.

Less than a week later, she again presented her new government. At the last minute, Dayan conjured up a military intelligence report intimat- ing that Syria was about to resume fighting. Ever the patriot, he humbly offered to remain in office so the country wouldn’t be left in the lurch. No one was surprised, of course, although Likud asked why, if Israel was facing such serious danger, they had not been informed.

Golda had resolved the political crisis the only way she knew how, by wheeling and dealing, totally ignoring “the street,” and it couldn’t last. The public was too angry, and Labor too fractured, to maintain the disci- pline necessary to pull itself through.

Golda tried, attempting to calm the stormy national political waters by publishing an interim report from the Agranat Commission, which cleared her of any responsibility. She acted, they wrote, “properly and wisely.” But they also exonerated Dayan, adhering legalistically to Israel’s principle of governmental collective responsibility. By that standard, any government minister was blameless for actions taken that conformed to the advice of his principal advisers. With no such quasi-legal principle to shield them, then, Israel’s military officers alone bore the full burden of blame.

To Israelis, the exoneration of Golda was understandable. What would an old lady know about defense matters? But while the commission con- cluded that the minister of defense was not the “super chief-of-staff,” and thus insulated by the collective responsibility principle, the public knew better. Dayan wasn’t just the minister of defense; he was Moshe Dayan, certified war hero. And if the men under his command—which is how Israelis thought of Dado and the others on whom the commission laid the full measure of responsibility—were going to be ousted, the least Dayan could do was to fall on his sword and follow them.

When he did not, the political squall gathered force into a gale. Rabin, who’d been shunted into the Ministry of Labor, recommended that the cabinet reject the commission report and send it back to be rewritten without blind consideration for ministerial responsibility. Polls showed that dissatisfaction with Golda was at 67 percent. Likud was demanding that the entire government resign. And Golda was caught in another tur- moil for which she was uniquely unprepared.

This time, her consternation was complicated by a new bit of pique, over the growing national accusation that reliance on her kitchen cabinet might have imperiled Israel by keeping a full range of opinions off the table. It was an absurdly naive complaint given how informal her cabinet was and how obediently the ministers bowed to her will. But its weight reflected a deeper disquiet over the inbred political culture symbolized by her coffee klatches.

In early April, less than a month after Golda finally formed her gov- ernment, Likud moved toward forcing another no-confidence vote and the Labor Party leadership met to consider whether the entire cabinet should resign to allow Golda to move Dayan out, or at least shift him to another position. “You realize that it won’t end with Dayan,” Yosef Al- mogi, the mayor of Haifa and a Rafi member, said to Golda, thinking that his caution would forestall Dayan’s ouster. “They’re really aiming at you.”

“You’re telling me?” Golda responded, her relief starting to surface.

All during the negotiations with Kissinger and the party, Golda had been rising at the crack of dawn to undergo 6 a.m. cobalt treatments at Hadassah Hospital, the most carefully guarded of her secrets. She was exhausted and her ambition, a strange blend of traditional careerism and idealism, had been sated. Remaining in office had become a debilitating duty rather than a need, and she was both frustrated and angry at being alternately pressured to remain at the helm and left without the support she needed to stay there.

On Thursday, April 10, dressed in a simple black coat, Golda rose before a meeting of the party leadership. “Five years is enough,” she

announced. “It is beyond my strength to continue carrying this bur- den. I don’t belong to any circle or faction within the party. I have only a circle of one to consult, myself. And this time my decision is final, irrevocable. I beg of you not to try to persuade me to change my mind. . . . It will not help.”

This time, as weary of the process as Golda was of office, the delega- tions arrived at her door more discreetly, although Sapir and Allon were so worried about finding a replacement that they stooped to asking Gol- da’s children to persuade her to change her mind.

“I am very tired,” she told her son, Menachem. “Please remember that I have really had enough.”

* * *

The ending was anything but glorious. Golda couldn’t simply pack up her office and slink off to Tel Aviv. Someone had to run Israel until the Labor Party could stop feuding long enough to choose a new leader and until that new leader could negotiate a coalition with the very parties that had stymied Golda for months.

Still a woman of fierce dislikes and long memory, she quietly threw herself into thwarting the candidacy of Shimon Peres, the one party fig- ure she’d longest despised. To stop him, she turned to Yitzhak Rabin, the only leading name in Labor untarnished by the Yom Kippur War. Rabin was too much the technocrat for Golda’s taste. But Eshkol had promoted him as a counterweight to Dayan, and he was a familiar figure in Wash- ington. Most important, he was not Peres.

By a narrow margin, Rabin squeaked into office as the head of Labor, thus as prime minister, and immediately immersed himself in the night- mare of coalition building while Golda went back to the bargaining table with Kissinger to end the continuing roar of cannons across the Syrian lines. Since the Israeli-Egyptian agreement had been largely worked out at Kilometer 101, Kissinger’s first shuttle had been brief, mostly a public- ity stunt. But negotiations with the Syrians were an endurance test. Un- like Sadat, whose army had captured territory from Israel, President

Hafiz al-Assad could recoup his honor only with a victory at the bargain- ing table.