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These two settlements, which have become flagships of the settlement movement, were the start of Jewish colonization in Samaria, the northern part of the West Bank. The previous year, as a young reporter, I interviewed Peres, after he and his political ally Moshe Dayan had refused “on principle” to join the government of Golda Meir. “If a single child can learn that politics is not just intrigues,” Peres told me, “I will be satisfied that we have done our bit.” Just one week later, when he and Dayan had reversed their position for no discernable reason, and were seated snugly around the cabinet table, I asked Peres what he had to say to the “single child.” His aides sniggered, but Peres didn’t bat an eyelid: “Just what my mentor, David Ben-Gurion (Israel’s first Prime Minister) told me: when the security of Israel is laid on one side of the scales, and everything else on the other side, security tips the balance.” Peres subsequently used that self-same argument to join every government that would have him. The late Menachem Begin lost nine elections before finally becoming Israel’s Prime Minister in 1977. He served as a pugnacious and dedicated leader of the opposition. Peres almost never headed the opposition, always preferring a ministerial appointment, once even designing a grotesque system of

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