Pre-’67 Borders
[“The Book I’ve Been Avoiding Writing” (a.k.a. “Three Years of Writing and 40+ Years of Thinking About The Lion’s Gate“) is a mini-series about the writing of my new book, The Lion’s Gate. Thanks for tuning in as it runs Mondays and Fridays over the next few weeks.]
I’m here.
Israel.
Starting research for The Lion’s Gate
Danny Grossman—Lou’s friend, a retired Israel Air Force lieutenant-colonel—has picked me up at Ben-Gurion Airport, gotten me checked in to my hotel. Danny’s going to be my guide and mentor. I’ve got my rental Toyota, had time to catch up on a little sleep, as well as wolf down some hummus, a couple of eggs and a salad.
We’re driving north on the freeway out of Tel Aviv. Tonight is my first interview. Danny has arranged an hour with Uzi Dayan, who is a neighbor from his community of Kochav Yair, about twenty minutes north of the city.
Uzi Dayan is Moshe Dayan’s nephew. He’s the son of Zorik Dayan, Moshe’s younger brother, who was killed fighting the Syrian Druze during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948.
Among many other posts, Uzi has commanded the Sayeret Matkal, Israel’s Special Forces.
As we drive, Danny points out several Arab towns visible a mile or so to the side of the highway. The villages are sprawling, prosperous-looking communities climbing rounded hillsides. You see domed roofs, satellite dishes, towers. “How can you tell an Arab village from an Israeli village?” Danny begins my education. “By the minarets.”
The city of Kalkiliya
I had imagined that Arab villages would be off somewhere in the boonies or hundreds of miles away, beyond a border. Here they are within a few miles of Tel Aviv. Danny points ahead to a handsome, picturesque town on rising ground about a mile to the right of the highway.
“Kalkilya.”
“That’s Kalkilya?”
In my reading, I have studied the notorious reprisal raid from the ’50s overseen personally by Moshe Dayan. A force of several thousand Israeli troops had crossed the border at night to assault and destroy a police fort in the Jordanian town of Kalkilya. The attack went awry. Arab Legion reinforcements flooded in. The action required desperate measures (and cost the reprisal force 18 killed and 68 wounded) before the Israelis got back across the border, barely beating the dawn.
The raid became famous because of how close it came to starting a war. Dayan had been minutes from calling in fighter planes and tanks to cover his troops’ withdrawal. If he had done so and the Jordanians had responded in kind, it could have touched off a conflagration.
“Wow, I had no idea Kalkilya was so close. I thought it would be a hundred miles away, somewhere in Jordan.”
“This was Jordan in ’67.”
We exit the highway at a place called Eyal, passing a kibbutz of well-ordered orange groves and irrigated fields. Danny points ahead. “That’s where I live. Kochav Yair.”
I’m dumbstruck.
Kochav Yair is the absolute next town to Kalkilya. You can practically throw a stone from one to the other.
I’m thinking, Americans (including me) have no idea of the crazy-quilt geography of Israel.
Kalkiliya is 25 miles from Tel Aviv. It’s like coming upon the site of the battle of Little Big Horn—and discovering it’s in Scarsdale.
We drive into the upper middle-class community of Kochav Yair. A tree-lined entry leads into an American-style development with traffic circles and attractive colonies of contemporary houses.
“Before we go to Uzi’s,” Danny says, “I want to show you something.”
He directs me through darkening lanes to a hilltop rising maybe fifty feet above the valley. It’s evening. The sun has just set. We park in a dirt turnout along a street lined with construction sites for houses a-building.
“Let’s go up there to the overlook.”
We do.
The hillside community of Kochav Yair spreads directly beneath us. Pretty. Wooded. Population about 12,000.
“See the border fence?” says Danny. “The patrol road?”
The fields of Kalkilya lie about two hundred yards away. The town has been sealed off since 2003. There’s a crossing point, Danny says. Armed sentries of both sides man it.
“That was the armistice line before June 1967,” he says. “That was Jordan, right there.”
Danny directs my attention to the sunset. The afterglow over the Mediterranean is clearly visible. So are the lights of Tel Aviv directly beneath.
“How much,” Danny asks me, “do you know about artillery?”
“I know it can fire from here to there.”
We drive down the hill to take a look at the security fence. Danny shows me torn sections and weedy gaps broad enough for two men to walk through abreast. “It’s peaceful now,” he says, “so nobody’s too worried.”
Time to go see Uzi.
We get back in the car.
“I just wanted you to get a feeling for the distances,” says Danny.
DO THE WORK
Steve shows you the predictable Resistance points that every writer hits in a work-in-progress and then shows you how to deal with each one of these sticking points. This book shows you how to keep going with your work.
THE AUTHENTIC SWING
A short book about the writing of a first novel: for Steve, The Legend of Bagger Vance. Having failed with three earlier attempts at novels, here's how Steve finally succeeded.
NOBODY WANTS TO READ YOUR SH*T
Steve shares his "lessons learned" from the trenches of the five different writing careers—advertising, screenwriting, fiction, nonfiction, and self-help. This is tradecraft. An MFA in Writing in 197 pages.
TURNING PRO
Amateurs have amateur habits. Pros have pro habits. When we turn pro, we give up the comfortable life but we find our power. Steve answers the question, "How do we overcome Resistance?"
The last place I expected to have my coffee this morning was Israel Steve – thanks for taking me there with this post. Can’t wait to read more.
The smallness of Israel is something most people don’t grasp. There’s not a lot of room to maneuver or ground to yield.
I’m coming more and more to the realization, thanks in part to posts like this, that peace is harder than war: In war, one side does not have to be rational or wrestle with the morality of compromise. And that side’s irrationality or immorality evokes, if it does not justify, an “equal and opposite” response.
But peace requires rationality – first the kind of awareness that Danny shared with you – then the kind of reflection evidenced by the lucid descriptions of this post.
Thanks for creating resonances.
Just heard that Isreal called off the peace talks with Hamas.
Your description of the geography helps me to understand living next to neighbors who hate you.
I had a very unfriendly neighbor and was delighted when she moved. Fortunately she never took a shot at me.
You’re bringing awareness to a world I don’t know or understand. Thank you, Steve.
You’ve been hiding quite an adventure from us, it seems.
I’m hooked; looking forward to the next post. But you do this all the time, Steve.I love Israel, and look forward to the day I will be able to visit. A friend misleading a you in 6/15 which want to be apart of..there are others before then, but the 6/2015 timing works.
Steve, you’ve met many interesting people through the years of researching and writing your books. Publishers should ask writers and historians to do more video interviews, photography, and tours with their sources. Your video with Shawn on the Black Irish YouTube site is really good.
This stuff was never properly covered in school. I’m really enjoying and learning from these dispatches. Thanks for keeping such detailed notes 🙂
Steve,
Your story about your how you wrote your book is as interesting as the story itself.
Yes, Mr. Pressfield, you are a story teller. Thank you for sharing.
Steve,
You capture the big geographical scheme of Israel, which is actually only the size of Vermont. When I studied Old Testament and Tanach in seminary, our first mandate was to know the maps, the land, the architecture of terrain then and now. I didn’t get why at first, but then of course like you when I first visited Israel the scales fell from my eyes.
I spent hours buried in maps, a favorite collection the old Macmillan, of which I found a first ed. in a local university library. Wanted to steal it. What’s your fave map source overall?
I purchased Accordance Bible software at a Society of Biblical Literature conference in Atlanta, a wonderful feature is you can layer various editions and types of maps over each other. No doubt there are better modern war maps ; )
Thank you for these views and reminisces as only you can lay them into story.
The food is good in Israel, isn’t it? That surprised me too.
Shabbat Shalom
Love, Sharon
Amazing perspective. I didn’t realize any of that either. I am soooo looking forward to this book and the continuing line of blog post as you research and write it. Thanks again.
Looking forward to the the Lion’s Gate.
I’ve also been lucky enough to see the West Bank/Judea and Samaria (for no political point is meant here) with a guide. I agree; the geography is fascinating. My guides were Palestinian, and as you might expect, placed a different emphasis on both events and terrain. Travelling with them, I learned not to look for minerets, but for the pinky-red roofs and consistent build of Israeli settlements (again, no partisanship intended).
The short ranges were a wake-up call. But even more interesting for me was the evidence of tactical considerations in a modern setting. The high ground (largely) held by settlements built in the era of mechanically pumped water, cleared fields of fire, walls and towers, gates in the side of walls lining roads used by the IDF; their use every bit as apparent as medieval sally ports.
Great place to see.
From the River to the Sea Palestine will be free, jew Goebbels.