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aptitude for focusing on the minute details of a problem, yet never losing sight
of the /arger picture, the wider issues. From my experience as commander of
the sayeret and during the 1973 war, and from watching other officers whom I
respected, it struck me that this was an essential part of effective leadership.
By “leadership”, at that stage in my life, I did not mean political leadership. I
was thinking in terms of the army. But I’d now finished my masters degree, and
it was impossible to be unaware of the political context in which I’d be
returning to uniform. Since Camp David, our negotiators and the Egyptians had
been trying to thrash out a formal deal. Sadat was being denounced as a traitor
in the Arab world. Begin was seen by most in the outside world, and many
Israelis, as dragging his feet on the negotiations and risking the chance for peace
altogether. If we did manabge to sign a peace treaty, however, we would be
withdrawing for the first time from land captured in 1967. That would mean
finding a new approach to security in the south, as well as a new focus on the
majority of our Arab neighbors who were railing against Sadat and seemed less
interested than ever in making peace.
In some ways, it was hard to leave our mini-kibbutz in Palo Alto. Michal,
now nearly nine, had thrived, quickly learning English and ending up with a
perfectly American accent which has never left her. Yael has less vivid
memories of our time there. But we’d had the nearest thing to a normal family
life since our first, war-truncated, time at Stanford. During the university
holidays, we’d also travelled: to Canada. Mexico. Lake Tahoe. Even Las Vegas,
where, thankfully, we lacked the money to chance our luck, but where my years
in the sayeret suddenly came in handy. We spent the day at Circus Circus, a
joint casino-and-theme park tailored for families with kids. At a shooting
gallery in the amusement area, I had no trouble landing dead-center hits on a
passing procession of metal geese, to the consternation of the guy behind the
counter but the delight of my two young daughters. In probably the single
greatest moment of parental accomplishment I’d experienced since their birth, I
bagged a huge fluffy teddy bear for each of them.
I returned to Israel not just with the hope, but a reasonable expectation, that I
would get command of one of Israel’s two regular armored divisions: the 252,
which was responsible for defending the south and, at least for now, was based
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