Bregman Ahron - The fifty years war: Israel and the Arabs

Ahron Bregman
Jihan El-Tahri

PENGUIN BOOKS
BBC BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS
BBC BOOK

This book is published to accompany the television series The Fifty Years War:
Israel and the Arabs , which was first broadcast in spring 1998. The series was
produced for BBC Television by Brian Lapping Associates Ltd
Executive Producer: Brian Lapping
Series Producer: Norma Percy
Producers and Directors: David Ash, Dai Richards,
Michael Simkin and Charlie Smith
Published by the Penguin Group and BBC Worldwide Ltd
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL , England

First published by Penguin Books and BBC Books,
an imprint of BBC Worldwide Ltd, 1998
14

Text copyright Ahron Bregman, Jihan El-Tahri, 1998
Preface and research material Brian Lapping Associates Ltd, 1998
All rights reserved

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Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition
that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or
otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding
or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition
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978-0-14-193715-1

To our children Daniel, Maya and InGs
with much love
May you share a lasting peace

O ur biggest thanks go to Brian Lapping, Executive Producer of The Fifty Years War: Israel and the Arabs , and Norma Percy, Series Producer, for inviting us to work on this extraordinary project and write this accompanying book. Brians generous support and patience throughout was invaluable, and Normas obsession with collecting every scrap of information provided us with huge amounts of material to sieve through. We are grateful to the documentary team and directors whose rapidly expanding knowledge of the details of the Arab-Israeli conflict encouraged us to keep on researching in order to stay in the lead! They are: David Ash, Dai Richards, Michael Simkin and Charlie Smith. Thanks to the production managers Caspar Norman and Jacqui Loton and especially to production researcher, David Alter, whose charm and unlimited willingness to help made life much easier for us. Thanks, too, to Lawrence Freedman for his generous help.

At BBC Books we would like to thank Editorial Director Sheila Ableman who commissioned this book, Project Editor Lara Speicher, and Picture Researchers David Cottingham and Sarah Houghton for the photographs.

We were fortunate to have Barbara Nash as our editor. Barbaras vast experience, efficiency, advice and unfailing encouragement proved of great value in the writing of this book.

Thanks must go to our guardian angels in the Middle East: Nava Mizrahi in Jerusalem, Mariana al-Farr in Amman and Bouthaina Shaban in Damascus. Their wisdom, charm of persuasion and persistence opened doors for us to interview Presidents, Prime Ministers, Generals and many others, thus turning the television series and this book into a first-hand account.

Last, but certainly not least, our love and thanks go to our companions, Dana and Benoit, who bore with us so patiently throughout the long and difficult period of writing and to Nermine El-Tahri. Without their patience, understanding and willingness to take over all day-to-day family responsibilities, this book would not have been completed.

It is to our children two of whom were born during the writing period that this book is dedicated.

Ahron Bregman and Jihan El-Tahri

London and Paris

November 1997

T his book results from a suggestion made by Michael Jackson, then Controller of BBC 2. Fortunately for us, he liked our previous six-part television series, The Death of Yugoslavia , so he suggested that we choose Israels relations with the Arabs as our next theme. When Norma Percy, the series producer, and I began assembling a team for the Middle East, we decided that we must include two full-time specialists: an Israeli and an Arab. The two we eventually selected were Ahron (Ronnie) Bregman and Jihan El-Tahri. Ahron had written an impressive thesis entitled Civil-Military Relations in Israel ; Jihan was joint author of a newly published book on Yasser Arafat. Both showed a firm grasp of reality in examining the myth-filled recent history of the area.

When our production team went on their research trips to Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the territories under the control of the Palestinian authority, Ahron and Jihan played a key role both in helping to organize the interviews and in conducting many of them. They then helped Norma and the team plan the programmes. When, after filming, the team began to edit the programmes, Ahron and Jihan settled down to write this book, making extensive use of the transcripts of the recorded interviews.

By then, it had already become clear that this Israeli and Arab could work together. They both disagreed at various points with other members of the production team or with Norma or with me, but there was no consistent pattern to their disagreement with each other. They both proved dispassionate in their pursuit of accurate evidence. Once, at a party in Jerusalem after Jihan and Ronnie had been arguing about some point in dispute for most of the day, the team were surprised to see them bopping enthusiastically together.

The BBC television series and this book have unearthed significant new insights of behind-the-scenes negotiations and intrigues. For example, an extract from the conversation between King Hussein of Jordan and Prime Minister Golda Meir, taped by the Israelis ten days before the 1973 War, is published for the first time. In this, Hussein warns Golda Meir that his Arab brothers Syria and Egypt are preparing to attack Israel.

Secret talks between the representative of Egypts President, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and the representative of Israels Prime Minister, Moshe Sharett, are here authenticated for the first time. Our team has interviewed both Abdel Rahman Sadeq (Nassers man) and Ziamah Divon (Sharetts man) enabling the book and the series to reveal remarkable details for example of Nassers request that Israel help him in dealing with the Americans.