ABSTRACT

The helicopter left the Israeli security enclave and crossed the Lebanese border into Israel near Rosh Hanikra, whose exotic grottos Tamir had visited several times. While the pilot chattered on about his newborn son, Tamir gazed down at the scenery of northern Israel, the beaches, fishing inlets, villages, vineyards, and farming cooperatives. The thought of this land and its people being exposed to clouds of deadly nerve gases seemed unbelievable, but he knew it could hap­ pen. Tamir was thirty-three; a fourth-generation Israeli. Both his father and grandfather had fought in its wars. He had lost an uncle in the storming of the Golan Heights in 1967. His two older brothers had served in the military ahead of him, one injured in a 1985 clash with infiltrators.