Epstein Secrets

eace deal with Syria’s then-dying dictator, Hafez al-Assad, a few months earlier. Yet these three dedicated men — Gili, who was by training a lawyer; Shlomo, an academic; and Danny, a former Mossad chief — had just been through dozens of hours of intricately detailed talks with each of Arafat’s top negoti

d on existing areas of Arab and Jewish settlement, the proposed Jewish state looked like a boomerang, with a long, very narrow center strip along the Mediterranean, broadening slightly into the Galilee in the north and the arid coastline in the south. Jerusalem, the site of the ancient Jewish temple, was not par

assumed a kind of historical inevitability of Israeli trtumph. Though we’d ending up prevailing in 1973, it was impossible not to wonder whether, as Shlomo suggested, we had missed the signs of a possible peace beforehand. Now, however, we were facing an escalating challenge from an enemy with no intere

rly four decades before our capture of the West Bank in 1967, he insisted that we needed to create a Jewish state in all of biblical Israel: from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River. It was through Bibi and Yoni that I got to know their father. After 1948, he had led a frustrating existence. A specialist in m

hen I left the army. Also, Shlomo Ben-Ami, the Moroccan-born, Oxford-educated historian and diplomat who had run against me for the Labor leadership. Shlomo had a gift for systematic analysis and keen judgement, especially on security issues, which I highly valued. It did not escape the attention of Isra

gested we consider sites outside of the US: NATO’s Incerlik air base in Turkey, for instance, a British base in Cyprus, an American naval ship in the Mediterranean. Even, half-jokingly, an abandoned missile silo in South Dakota. Yet the point I was making was serious, in fact critical, I believed, if the talks w

eace deal with Syria’s then-dying dictator, Hafez al-Assad, a few months earlier. Yet these three dedicated men — Gili, who was by training a lawyer; Shlomo, an academic; and Danny, a former Mossad chief — had just been through dozens of hours of intricately detailed talks with each of Arafat’s top negoti

d on existing areas of Arab and Jewish settlement, the proposed Jewish state looked like a boomerang, with a long, very narrow center strip along the Mediterranean, broadening slightly into the Galilee in the north and the arid coastline in the south. Jerusalem, the site of the ancient Jewish temple, was not par

assumed a kind of historical inevitability of Israeli triumph. Though we'd ending up prevailing in 1973, it was impossible not to wonder whether, as Shlomo suggested, we had missed the signs of a possible peace beforehand. Now, however, we were facing an escalating challenge from an enemy with no interes

rly four decades before our capture of the West Bank in 1967, he insisted that we needed to create a Jewish state in all of biblical Israel: from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River. It was through Bibi and Yoni that I got to know their father. After 1948, he had led a frustrating existence. A specialist in me

hen I left the army. Also, Shlomo Ben-Ami, the Moroccan-born, Oxford-educated historian and diplomat who had run against me for the Labor leadership. Shlomo had a gift for systematic analysis and keen judgement, especially on security issues, which I highly valued. It did not escape the attention of Israe

gested we consider sites outside of the US: NATO's Incerlik air base in Turkey, for instance, a British base in Cyprus, an American naval ship in the Mediterranean. Even, half-jokingly, an abandoned missile silo in South Dakota. Yet the point I was making was serious, in fact critical, I believed, if the talks w