Prince of Fire

sunlight, the intense social cohesiveness, the crackling tension of the atmosphere—that had the power to dramatically alter the appearance of its citizenry even within the space of a single generation. Yonatan Shamron was six inches taller than his famous father, strikingly handsome, and possessed none of the old man’s natural physical defensiveness—a result, Gabriel knew, of having been raised here instead of Poland. Only when the colonel leapt from the armored jeep and advanced on Gabriel with his hand out like a trench knife did Gabriel catch a faint glimpse of Shamron the Elder. His gait was not so much a walk as a death charge, and when he shook Gabriel’s hand fiercely and clapped him between the shoulder blades, Gabriel felt as though he’d been struck by a chunk of Herodion stone.
    They set out along Road Number One, the old border between East and West Jerusalem. Ramallah, the nominal seat of Palestinian power, lay just ten miles to the north. A checkpoint appeared before them. On the opposite side lay the Kalandiya refugee camp—ten thousand Palestinians piled into a few hundred square yards of breeze-block apartments. To the right, spread over a small hill, were the orderly red roofs of the Psagot Jewish settlement. Rising above it all was an enormous portrait of Yasir Arafat. The inscription, in Arabic, read: ALWAYS WITH YOU .
    Yonatan jerked his thumb toward the backseat and said, “Put those things on.”
    Gabriel, looking over his shoulder, saw an armored vest with a high collar and a metal combat helmet. He’d not worn a helmet since his brief stint in the IDF. The one Yonatan had brought along was too big, and it fell forward over his eyes. “Now you look like a real soldier,” Yonatan said. Then he smiled. “Well, almost.”
    An infantryman waved them through the checkpoint, then, seeing who was behind the wheel, smiled and said, “Hey, Yonatan.” Discipline within the ranks of the IDF, like the Office, was notoriously lax. First names were the norm, and a salute was almost unheard of.
    Gabriel, through his cloudy bulletproof window, studied the scene on the other side of the checkpoint. A pair of soldiers, weapons leveled, were ordering men to open their coats and lift their shirts to make certain they weren’t wearing bomb belts beneath their clothing. Women underwent the same search behind a barrier that shielded them from the eyes of their men. Beyond the checkpoint snaked a line several hundred yards in length—a wait, Gabriel calculated, of three to four hours. The suicide bombers had inflicted misery on both sides of the Green Line, but it was the honest Palestinians—the workers trying to get to jobs in Israel, the farmers who wanted only to sell their produce—who had paid the highest price in sheer inconvenience.
    Gabriel looked beyond the checkpoint, toward the Separation Fence.
    “What do you think of it?” Yonatan asked.
    “It’s certainly nothing to be proud of.”
    “I think it’s an ugly scar across this beautiful land of ours. It’s our new Wailing Wall, much longer than the first, and different because now people are wailing on both sides of the wall. But I’m afraid we have no other choice. With good intelligence we’ve managed to stop most of the suicide attacks, but we’ll never be able to stop them all. We need this fence.”
    “But it’s not the only reason we’re building it.”
    “That’s true,” Yonatan said. “When it’s finished, it will allow us to turn our backs on the Arabs and walk away. That’s why they’re so afraid of it. It’s in their interest to remain chained to us in conflict. The wall will let us disengage, and that’s the last thing they want.”
    Road Number One turned to Highway 60, a ribbon of smooth black asphalt that ran northward through the dusty gray landscape of the West Bank. More than thirty years had passed since Gabriel had last been to Ramallah. Then, as now, he had come by way of armored vehicle, with an IDF helmet on his head. Those early years of the occupation had been relatively calm—indeed, Gabriel’s biggest challenge each week had been finding a ride from his post back home to his mother’s house in the Jezreel Valley. For most West Bank Arabs, the end of Jordanian occupation had led to a marked improvement in the quality of their lives. With the Israelis had come access to a vibrant economy, running water, electricity, and education. Infant mortality rates, once among the highest in the