HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_027952.jpg

We were married there, in the spring of 1969. My parents and brothers came
with two busloads of friends from the kibbutz. Avraham Arnan was there, of
course. But Ahraleh Yariv and Eli Zeira, two of the military intelligence heroes
of the Six-Day War, also drove up for the wedding, which touched both Nava
and me, not to mention her family and our guests. Years later, as I rose higher in
the ranks of the military, I would sometimes be invited to weddings by officers
under my command. Remembering how much we appreciated Ahraleh's and Eli
Zeira's gesture. I always said yes.

* * *

It was only weeks after our wedding that I formally returned to Sayeret
Matkal. Both Nava and I were aware of the additional pressures my military
commitments might place on our family life. But she understood why I'd
chosen to go back, and was supportive. As for me, I was, if anything, more
certain that I'd made the right decision. Israel was clearly facing a whole new
set of challenges to its security. Given the decisiveness, and speed, of our
victory in 1967, there seemed no immediate danger of Egypt's risking another
full-scale war. In Israel, where Golda Meir had become Prime Minister after
Eshkol's death from a heart attack, there was also little appetite for returning to
the battlefield. Yet the post-war skirmishes with the Egyptians along the Suez
Canal had escalated into far more than that: what would become known as the
War of Attrition. Nor could there be any doubt, after Karameh, that Fatah's
influence, militancy and determination would only grow, not least because even
more radical factions within the PLO were ready to step into the breach if
Arafat faltered. Israel needed to find an answer for all these threats.

Uzi Yairi's term as Sayeret Matkal commander had by now ended, but his
successor was someone I knew well. Menachem Digli was the officer on whom
I'd bestowed my stolen Syrian Mercedes at the end of the war. His leg was now
recovered from the motorcycle accident, and I returned to the sayeret at his
deputy. He delegated full responsibility to me for operational issues. I believed
that the new kind of challenges we were confronting, particularly the prospect
of intensified attacks from the new generation of Palestinian fedayeen, meant
that the sayeret would sooner or later have to broaden its reach, moving beyond
the kind of intelligence operations we'd done before the 1967 war to become
the SAS-like special forces unit Avraham ultimately envisaged. But that was not

104
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_027952