Worthy of Dependence

Worthy of Dependence On September 15, 1983, the Prime Minister of Israel, Menachem Begin, finally announced his resignation. He had held the reins of power in Israel for six years. At the time of his resignation, Mr. Begin was so dispirited that he had gone into total hiding, refusing to meet reporters and remaining totally uninterested in the political issues of the day. He did not even personally visit the President of Israel, Mr. Herzog, to deliver his resignation. Menachem Begin, who won fame as leader of the underground terrorist organization, Irgur, was thought of as a man of iron. Many political observers in Jerusalem consider it inconceivable that a man of Begin’s drive and determination should leave office while Israeli troops are still in the Lebanon, the colonization of the West Bank is still uncompleted and the economy is falling apart. As one well-placed diplomatic source in Jerusalem put it: “Mr. Begin is just not the sort of man to walk away from Israel’s problems at this difficult stage in the country’s development. He has just turned 70, and it is an age when serving politicians fix their eyes on their place in history.” Why, at such a delicate time, has Mr. Begin decided to resign? The main reason appears to have been the personal tragedy which struck him last autumn—the death of his wife, whom he married in Poland in 1939 and who remained the object of his lifelong devotion. “The news of her death,” James Macmanus writes in The Guardian Weekly (September 4, 1983), “was broken to Mr. Begin on board a plane flying across the United States. Those on the flight recall the ghastly pallor that replaced the Prime Minister’s usually ruddy complexion and their fear that he was going to have another heart-attack.” So great was the Prime Minister’s sorrow that, when the American ambassador to Israel, Samuel Lewis visited him a few weeks before his resignation, he found the prime minister deeply depressed and almost totally uninterested in the political issues of the day. The diplomat exclaimed afterwards, to Mr. Begin’s aides: “Why is it impossible to get him out of this mood?” The only reply he received was that the prime minister appeared to be suffering from incurable sorrow.