Exile by Patterson Richard North

Author:Patterson, Richard North [Patterson, Richard North]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Romance, Crime, Politics, Suspense, Thriller, Contemporary
ISBN: 9780805079470
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2007-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

4

The next morning, at the invitation of the Israeli government, David drove to Tel Aviv to meet General Ehud Peretz, head of the Intelligence Bureau for the Israel Defense Forces, the IDF.

The appointment, as Zev Ernheit explained, was Israel’s concession to David’s request for information. Peretz was a national figure; a heroic young officer in the 1973 war and an adviser to prime ministers on intelligence and terrorism, he was now charged with running counterterrorism activities on the West Bank, including the swift and comprehensive reprisals aimed at eradicating the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. It was only during the 1973 war, Ernheit said, that Peretz’s mother had told him she was a survivor of the Nazi death camp at Maidanek. When the war was finished, Peretz had gone there; once he saw, still preserved, the bones and ashes of the dead, he resolved to spend his life in the defense of Israel.

As David worked his way through the security procedures for entry to the massive cement-and-glass structure, Israel’s Pentagon, he reflected on this story. The young people bustling in and out of the building, barely out of their teens, bespoke a commitment to military service very different from that in the United States: even in this city on the Mediterranean, the border between Israel and the West Bank was at most an hour away. For Israelis, obliviousness was not a choice, and national defense not an optional activity. David Wolfe, the American Jew, was an outsider.

Ehud Peretz looked as smart and tough as he no doubt was—crew-cut hair, intent brown eyes, a seamed, rugged face, and a barrel chest, with muscled forearms exposed by a short-sleeved khaki shirt. Though he greeted Wolfe with a firm handshake, his cool expression suggested his distaste for David’s visit. Waving David to a chair, he said bluntly, “I am familiar with your theory. But the performance of Amos’s security detail is now the business of others. That leaves us to discuss the mythic people known as Palestinians.”

Directness was best, David thought. “My client doesn’t consider herself mythic.”

“Perhaps not. But then her husband is a chief perpetrator of the myth.” Despite its flatness, Peretz’s tone betrayed a weary sarcasm. “Do you know where Ibrahim Jefar and Iyad Hassan were from? Refugee camps—Hassan from the Aida camp, Jefar the cesspool of Jenin. And why do such places exist after nearly sixty years? Because no Arab countries will take those people, and the Palestinian Authority does nothing to relieve their misery. The camps dramatize our role as ‘occupier,’ and keep alive this fantasy of return. Most important, they breed hatred of the Jews—and, not so incidentally, suicide bombers.

“Let me show you something.” Circling his desk, Peretz sat next to David, angling his computer screen so they could watch together. A film appeared, apparently a mosque filled with men listening to an imam, his speech translated in English subtitles. “This was broadcast on public television in Ramallah—two days before Ben-Aron’s assassins departed for America. The imam is a darling of Hamas.

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