To Live in Peace Read Online Free PDF Page A

divisions. Rachel liked the leg, Carol the wings, Josh the breast, Sydney the thigh and Kitty disregarding her own preferences, taking what was left with the addition, if she was lucky, of the parson’s nose. Rachel deplored her attitude, as she had her mother’s habit, when her father was alive, of no matter who was at the table serving him not only with the choicest morsels but first.
    In his father’s absence it was Josh who took preference, who sat in his father’s place in the walnut armchair with its tapestried seat and ball and claw feet, the seat in which Sydney had been sitting when he’d hadhis first fit, precursor of the cerebral tumour which was to kill him.
    “The Security Council – has admonished Israel to withdraw her troops to the old lines,” Josh had said, by way of conversation. “I heard it on the radio coming along.”
    “Pity,” Rachel said. “They should let them just get in there and finish the job.”
    Josh applied himself to his chicken. He felt personally discomforted by what he considered both uncharacteristic and unjustified aggression by his co-religionists.
    “What good has it done us? Israel should go to war only when there’s no alternative.”
    “You know very well the Israelis were responding to PLO terrorist attacks on civilian targets, which have been escalating since 1968, and their occupation of the Lebanon which they used as a base to attack Israel,” Rachel said.
    “Still no excuse…”
    “They didn’t try to assassinate the Israeli Ambassador in London?”
    “Argov was a pretext. The invasion must have been planned for months.”
    “Do you really think Begin wants to put the lives of all those Israeli soldiers at risk?”
    “What about the Lebanese? The women and children who are getting killed?”
    “If you took the trouble to open your newspaper you’d have seen General Sharon’s statement that no nation on earth, or any other army during a war, had so deeply considered – to the extent of impeding their own progress – the question of avoiding civilian casualties, which was their prime concern. Every one was regretted, every one was a tragedy…”
    “Regrets won’t bring a single one of these children back to life.”
    “You know very well that most of the casualties occurred because the PLO deliberately put their guns next to homes and schools…”
    “Don’t get so excited,” Kitty said.
    “…they set up anti-aircraft bases round clinics, put their artillery on the roofs of hospitals, crates of explosives…”
    “I’m not denying…” Josh began.
    “…and boxes of ammunition in the cellars of blocks of flats, and the people have to sleep on top of all that! If Israel cared nothing for civilian lives they could have finished the job long ago.”
    “10,000 dead! 40,000 wounded! 600,000 homeless!”
    Rachel put down her knife and fork. “If you’re going to talk rubbish…”
    “Rachel!” Kitty said.
    “Where does he get his figures?”
    “The Red Cross,” Josh said.
    Rachel picked up her knife and pointed it at her brother. “I presume the news hasn’t reached Bayswater that those figures came from the Palestine Red Crescent which, by a curious coincidence, is headed by one Dr Fathi Arafat, brother of the celebrated Yasser Arafat, who just happens to be chairman of the PLO you seem so fond of, whose Covenant specifically dedicates it to revolutionary violence, the annihilation of Israel and the Israelis, and of anybody else who gets in the way.”
    “For the last time!” Kitty said.
    “Let me finish. He knows perfectly well that those figures he quotes have been discredited by both Arab and Israeli sources.”
    “That’s enough!”
    “There couldn’t possibly have been 600,000 homeless because the entire population of the area which came under Israeli control was only 510,000 and the true figure was nearer to 20,000, all of whom are being cared for and hoping eventually to return home…”
    “You’re