“The Art of Peace”. Speech by Lieutenant General (Retd.) Basemath.

I am the daughter of Ishmael the great archer who was the son of Abraham and Hagar; my husband Esau was the greatest hunter after Nimrod and the son of Isaac and Rebecca.  Esau’s brother, Jacob, was our enemy: he was physically frail, walked with a limp, but carried unusual courage and cunning. It was said he would wrestle an angel if he thought that could win him a blessing.

Jacob’s agents had spread propaganda about his wealth and power, and his spies studied our army’s numbers and strength. We remained focused on our own strategy. Our reconnaissance squadrons tracked Jacob’s regiments to their assembly area at Mahanaim. They watched a detachment of Jacob’s engineers set a pontoon bridge across the Jordan, over which rolled a lightly-armed Supply Unit.  I suspected this was a feint and this proved prescient the following night when my scouts observed Jacob’s spearhead battalion crossing the river in the dead ground further south. Esau’s vanguard by-passed the Supply Unit deployed to divert him and headed south towards Jacob’s Main Effort. Jacob feared he would not get all his echelons across the Jordan before first contact, and so his tactics became more desperate and underhand: believing Esau to be wild and impulsive, he put children amongst his front-line troops and tried to lure his brother into war crimes by standing on the high ground and bowing to him, ironically, seven times. Jacob had underestimated Esau (whose passions were now tempered by my good counsel) and misunderstood our tactics.  Esau and men from his Hunter Troop sprang from a position that was defilade to Jacob’s Headquarters: Esau pounced on his crippled brother, throwing red-haired brawny arms around his sloping shoulders and kissing him.

That night, Esau and I rejoiced that our children would not need to carry the cruel and inglorious weapons of war, but would instead pick up the plough and hold the pen that would protect them from famine.  We had won peace, but all victories come at a price. Jacob patronised Esau, persuading him to accept as gifts prizes that a warrior would have taken by force; and his people were not easy neighbours: snubbing our attempts to walk alongside them, they lived in their own castles and farms. But there was peace, wonderful, productive peace, and that was and is worth everything.

2020