How Ben-Gurion Did It: Is Everyone Listening? The official offered his prisoners a deal: he might let them go if they agreed to halt their "terrorist activities" and to use only political means to pursue their dream of statehood. It was a proposal similar to the one Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister, is making now to Hamas and other Palestinian factions that advocate terrorism. But this particular offer was made by a British officer to a group of Jews, at the time that the British uneasily governed Palestine, before the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Among those who heard the proposal out, and rejected it, was a young extremist who went by a nom de guerre, Michael. Michael later escaped and returned to the underground, to a campaign of assassination, bombing and arms smuggling, with bank robbery thrown in to finance the effort. "Nothing would be permitted to stand in the way of Jewish independence in the Land of Israel," Michael wrote 50 years later in his autobiography. "Nothing and No One." By then, Michael was himself testimony to Israel's success at integrating militants into mainstream society. His violent life in the pre-state period had become the stuff of romantic national narrative and broad political appeal, and under a different name, Yitzhak Shamir, he had been one of Israel's longest-serving prime ministers, one who cracked down on Jewish terrorism in the West Bank. In the view of many historians, it was in no small part the leadership of one man, David Ben-Gurion, that transformed Zionist militants into Israeli politicians and even peacemakers. "Ben-Gurion was a state-builder," said Shmuel Sandler, the Lainer Professsor of Democracy and Civility at Bar Ilan University. "State-building means that at one point you understand there can't be any more violence or illegal operations in your camp." Times, terrorist tactics and international realities change; historical comparisons between the Zionist and Palestinian national movements can be easily strained. Yet there are echoes in Mr. Abbas's oratory now of the message of Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister. "On this land and for this people, there is only one authority, one law, and one democratic and national decision that applies to us all," Mr. Abbas said on assuming his post this spring. His meaning was that Hamas and other groups could no longer, in effect, conduct their own wars with Israel. In 1944, a representative of Ben-Gurion delivered a similar message to a militant leader: "There must be one Jewish military force in Eretz Israel," that is, in the land of Israel. The militant leader, Menachem Begin, recalled the episode in his account of those years, "The Revolt." Unlike Mr. Abbas, Hamas, which took responsibility for a suicide bombing in the West Bank today, officially rejects any two-state solution with Israel. Unlike the pragmatic Ben-Gurion, Begin in those days rejected any partition. His printed declaration in 1944 of "war to the end" against the British appeared under a map of Palestine that extended to the border of Iraq, enclosing the image of a rifle by the words "Only Thus." Eventually, of course, Prime Minister Begin would give up the Sinai Peninsula. Although Mr. Abbas has said Hamas must give up its illegal weapons, he has also repeatedly said he will not risk civil conflict to enforce his national vision, and the governing Palestinian Authority has yet to take action against terrorists. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/13/international/middleeast/13LETT.html