Begin came to power.
To everyone's surprise 
he made peace with Egypt
and was seen as a man of peace.
The trouble was that no one 
understood Begin except me.
I say this only half in jest.
I grew up in the Revisionist movement 
and had been a member of the Irgun
I knew their worldview.
The worldview of the Revisionists 
and of the Freedom Movement and the Likud
is centred entirely on the map 
which appears on the Irgun symbol
and appeared on the masthead of 
the newspaper 'Hamashkif'
which belonged to the Revisionist party
and to the Freedom Movement. This is 
the map of the British Mandate of Eretz Israel
on both sides of the Jordan.
That was the land which the movement called Israel,
and it did not include any other country -
not Lebanon nor Syria 
nor the Golan Heights
nor Egypt nor Sinai −
only Transjordan and the Land of 
Israel 'from the river to the sea'.
Therefore, for Begin to make peace 
with Egypt and also with Syria,
for if he had continued to be in power he would certainly 
have made peace with Syria, without any doubt.
He had no ideological problem with this.
The ideological problem 
was with the Land of Israel.
Thus he made peace with Egypt.
From his point of view, it was an 
act of war not an act of peace,
and he removed Egypt from the 
fateful struggle for the Land of Israel,
which was the only struggle 
in which he was interested.
Therefore he was not interested 
in what was happening in Lebanon or Syria.
It was the Labour movement 
that always kept its eye on Lebanon,
or on part of Lebanon.
After World War I, when 
the little Zionist movement
presented its demands at the peace 
conference which followed the war,
they presented a map of the country, 
or the Zionist homeland that they wanted,
and it stretched from Al Arish 
to the Litani River in Lebanon,
which is a good few dozen 
kilometers from Rosh Hanikra.
The Freedom Movement 
had a completely different map:
mandatory Eretz Israel on both sides of the Jordan.
For that reason they made peace easily,
removing it from the frontline of the war.
Had there been time, he would 
have done the same thing with Syria.
Therefore, it was relatively 
easy to make peace with Egypt,
with the evacuation of the 
entire area up to the last millimeter,
with the destruction of 
Yamit and all that entailed.
