Zohar Etgar

Zohar Etgar is an industrialist, Manfred Zakheim’s son-in-law, and a prospective partner in Michel Sommo’s land-development ambitions. His importance lies less in an independently narrated personal life than in the connections he helps organize: Zakheim presents him as the business-minded counterweight to Sommo’s political energy, and later accounts place him at the financial center of their joint venture.

Identity and Introduction

Zakheim introduces Zohar as the husband of his only daughter, Dorit, and the father of his two grandchildren. He describes him as an industrialist from Herzlia who has begun considering a move into land development. Zakheim arranges a meeting between Zohar and Sommo, expecting Sommo’s wealth and connections to complement his son-in-law’s energy.

Zohar first appears in Ilana’s account through a visit with Dorit to the Sommo home. Dorit calls Sommo Micky and brings along her husband, who is polite, nervous, and formally dressed despite the heat. The Etgars bring a Bangkok-bought wall hanging featuring monkeys and tigers and a windup doll for Yifat. Their outing with the family includes lunch at the Intercontinental Hotel, where Sommo, reluctant to raise the question of kosher food, invents a stomach upset; the meal is reduced to hard-boiled eggs and cream cheese. The episode places Zohar within the polished, affluent social world that is beginning to draw Sommo away from domestic routines.

Partnership with Michel Sommo

Zakheim’s proposed alliance rests on a division of strengths. He expects Sommo’s money and political connections to serve the enterprise, while Zohar supplies energy and commercial direction. Their prospects are tied to Zakheim’s expectation of a change in government and to the possibility that new opportunities will open in the Sinai, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. These are Zakheim’s projections, not evidence that Zohar himself holds a particular political office or belongs to a named political movement.

The partnership becomes concrete through Tentpeg, an investment company established by Sommo and Zohar with a group of religious investors and discreet backing from Paris. Zakheim reports that Sommo’s Jewish Fellowship organization has been converted into a reconnaissance unit or security guard serving the company. He identifies Zohar as the holder of Tentpeg’s joint financial control, while the other partners handle what Zakheim calls the ethical side of the business and secure charitable recognition from the revenue authorities. The arrangement connects land investment, political organizing, and the management of the company’s public standing.

Land, Politics, and Financial Maneuvering

The venture develops against Sommo’s effort to acquire land in politically sensitive areas. Zakheim writes that Sommo’s organization proposed paying Arab owners for their land and property and financing their departure, while questioning the enormous cost of such a plan. He also reveals that Sommo’s Paris trip had involved negotiations with a Christian religious order headquartered in Toulouse over land west of Bethlehem, on the West Bank. The order was reportedly unwilling to sell its land but might exchange it for a substantial building and attached land within the pre-1967 borders. In Zakheim’s account, Zohar’s partnership with Sommo belongs to this broader effort to connect private property transactions with a political program.

Zakheim also links Zohar to the proposed financial use of Alexander Gideon’s properties. A contemplated transaction would connect land near Bethlehem, the religious order’s holdings, and Gideon’s property in Zikhron Yaakov. Zakheim says Gideon’s shifting intentions about selling the Zikhron property made the plan uncertain, and he undertakes to influence Gideon while arranging Sommo’s business relationship with Zohar. The scheme therefore depends not only on investment and political access but also on whether Gideon will sell.

Role in Sommo’s Transformation

Ilana’s account registers the domestic consequences of Sommo’s new business life. He leaves his teaching job, entrusts his new wealth to Zakheim and his son-in-law, and begins spending his days away on business. He adopts a pale-blue summer suit and hosts religious land dealers after the Sabbath, while his conversations with Ilana increasingly concern plots, loans, property law, and investment. Zohar is not depicted as directing these changes inside the household, but his partnership is part of the business world that Sommo enters.

Zakheim later claims that he has bound Sommo to Zohar and redirected him from a course he considered disastrous. In the same letter, he says that Alexander Gideon’s hundred thousand dollars are now being put to work and predicts that the sum will soon become two hundred thousand. This is Zakheim’s account of the venture’s intended outcome, not an independently confirmed financial result. It nevertheless captures Zohar’s narrative function: he provides a channel through which Sommo’s wealth and political contacts can be organized into a commercial project.

Narrative Significance

Zohar is characterized primarily through other people’s descriptions and through the transactions attached to his name. The domestic visit shows the cultural distance between the Etgars’ affluent social ease and Ilana’s discomfort; the business correspondence reveals a more consequential partnership in which land, political influence, charitable status, and investment become interdependent. Zohar’s presence makes the proposed alliance practical, but the evidence does not give him an extended personal voice or establish the ultimate success of the plans. His role remains that of a business organizer at the junction of Sommo’s ambitions and Zakheim’s strategy.