Ben Heine/ MWC NEWS

Some people are berating Bashar al-Assad and King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia for not following Sadat's example. Why don't they dare to come to Jerusalem?

This line of reasoning is based on a misreading of the facts. Sadat did not just decide to come. It did not happen the way he described it so many times (in a conversation with me, too): that he was coming back from a visit to Europe and, while flying over Mount Ararat, was suddenly inspired to do something unparalleled in history: to visit the enemy's capital while still in a state of war

The truth is that before the visit, emissaries of Sadat and Begin had held secret meetings in Morocco. Only after Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan had promised, on Begin's behalf, to give back all the occupied Egyptian territories, did Sadat make his decision.

Where is the Israeli leader today who is ready to promise Assad the return of all the Golan, to promise Mahmoud Abbas a withdrawal to the Green Line?

How did Begin decide to give Egypt "parts of our fatherland"?

Very simple: for him, they were not "parts of our fatherland".

Begin had before his eyes a clear map of the Land of Israel. He had inherited it from his master and teacher, Zeev Jabotinsky: the map of the country at the beginning of the British Mandate, on both banks of the Jordan.

In the course of history, the borders of this country have changed hundreds of times. There were the borders of the Divine Promise, from the Nile to the Euphrates. There were the borders of the "Kingdom of David" (which never existed), reaching to Hamat in northern Syria. There were the borders of the tiny enclave around Jerusalem at the time of Ezra and Nehemia. There were the borders of Roman Palaestina, which changed from time to time. There were the borders of "Jund (military zone) Filastin" of the Muslim conquerors. And many more.

Like all the preceding borders, those of the British Mandate were fixed by accident. In the South, they were agreed upon before World War I between the British (who ruled Egypt) and the Turks (who ruled Palestine). In the North, they were agreed upon - after that war - between the French colonial government in Syria and the British colonial government in Palestine. In Transjordan, a long sleeve was stretched to Iraq, in order to allow for the free flow of oil from Mosul (then also under British control) to Haifa on the Mediterranean.

It was this accidental map that was sanctified by Jabotinsky, who wrote the famous song: "The Jordan has two banks / this one belongs to us, and the other one too." It was part of the emblem of the Irgun underground and appeared on the masthead of the newspaper of Jabotinsky's Revisionist Party, the forerunner of today's Likud. Begin's conclusion: the Sinai Peninsula does not belong to the Land of Israel and so can be given up without moral scruples. The purpose was to get Egypt out of the war, which for Begin had only one aim: possession of the whole of the Land of Israel, which others call Palestine.

Begin would have had no problem with giving up the Golan, which, according to this map, also does not belong to the country. But he was captivated by Ariel Sharon, who seduced him to invade Lebanon in order to annihilate the PLO, hiding from him his second objective: to knock out Syria. (As is well known, both objectives failed.)

In the meantime, a new generation has grown up, one that does not know Jabotinsky and his map. In the consciousness of the Israeli Right, a new map has taken shape: the East Bank of the Jordan has been taken out, the Golan has been put in. But in its center there lies, as always, the West Bank.

Before the Six-Day War, the British historian of the Crusades, Steven Runciman, told me that we live in a paradox: "Israel was founded in the land that once belonged to the Philistines, while the Palestinians, who got their name from the Philistines, live in the land that belonged to the ancient Kingdom of Israel." The borders between the State of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were laid down by the war of 1948.

Since then, The State of Israel has been working hard to eliminate this paradox.

Everything significant that is happening nowadays is a part of the Israeli effort to take over the West Bank and to turn it into a part of the State of Israel. All else is but foam on the water.

The pathetic Condoleezza Rice keeps coming and going. Ehud Olmert is formulating a document without content in order to create the illusion of progress towards the creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel. Israeli airplanes bombard a Syrian area in order to eliminate a threat of "weapons of mass destruction". Israel prepares to bomb or not to bomb nuclear installations in Iran. President Bush is calling for an "international meeting" at an unknown date, with unknown participants for an unknown purpose.

All this is imagined reality. The real reality is unfolding on the ground, every day, every hour: nightly incursions in West Bank towns, frantic building in the settlements, enlargement of the "Israelis only" road network, further additions to the 600 or so existing roadblocks, worsening of the living conditions in the Palestinian ghettos in the West Bank and turning life in the Gaza Strip into hell.

This is the real war: the war for "the whole of the Land of Israel" - a war that has disappeared from public discourse, but that is being waged energetically, far from the eyes of Israelis living only 20 minutes drive from there. The Palestinians are fighting with their meager means but with dogged obduracy.

If a historic compromise between the peoples is not achieved, this war will go on for generations. A boy born today will join the war on his 18th birthday, like the boys born 18 years ago, and his father, like those before him, will bury him.

The Yom Kippur War was only a small episode in this campaign. It was fought in the North and the South, against the Syrians and the Egyptians. The Palestinians were not involved. But no one doubted for a moment that it was a part of the Israel

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