dramatic but newsless radio reports about the advance on Sinai, I drove to Jerusalem, fifty miles away.

I was the only civilian on the road. My white Mustang contrasted curiously with the immense number of tanks and half-tracks making their way toward Jerusalem. The Jordanians had started to shell Israeli territory, and the number of troops rolling eastward confirmed my guess that we would mount an attack on the Jordanian front. A foreign observer would have found the scene on the road chaotic. Tanks and half-tracks, command cars, jeeps, and guns were moving, overtaking each other, with military police here and there trying to create some order. But it was all going on in a thoroughly Israeli style. Our army is composed of people who know exactly what their job is and don't need any outward show of rigid order and discipline to do it.

What struck me was the excited, nearly gay, mood of everybody. It was an atmosphere of immense relief, after twenty-one days of mounting tension and uncertainty. Whatever doubts may have formed during those three weeks of worry seemed to have evaporated once the armor hit the road. The soldiers in the half-tracks were grinning, shouting jocular curses and making the "V" sign at the people in the tanks, who would answer in kind. One of the young tank commanders, recognizing me, raised three fingers instead of two. Three fingers signified the first letter of the Hebrew word shalom, meaning peace, which was a symbol I had adopted during my election campaign. There was something curiously appropriate in this gesture of a young soldier, going up to what must have been his first battle, making the sign of peace. Yet everybody thought that day that we were at war again to achieve peace.

Reaching the Knesset, after many detours, I found the new, imposing but rather ugly building under heavy bombardment-the only parliament in the world, it occurred to me, within one mile of enemy artillery. Shells were

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