For Israel had also changed. From the spunky, intrepid frontier state that once exhilarated American Jews, Israel was increasingly portrayed by the press as a warlike and intolerant state. That discomfiting image, however skewed, could not camouflage the fact that Israel ruled over more than two million Palestinians and settled what virtually the

America’s new policies set conditions for talks that Israel could never meet and that Palestinians could not ignore.

During the course of Begin’s tenure as prime minister, the number of settlements doubled.