AUGUST 2004
IDF military activity in Gaza has created a complex political situation in the Knesset : the two following articles neither elucidate nor analyse this confusion for the international community - but atleast give a picture, however erratic, of the arguments that are going on in
the Israeli Parliament.
Nisanit-
Jerusalem-Paris
By Akiva Eldar
Mon., July 26, 2004
"the Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel whether or not there are Arabs here, whether or not there is international agreement to our presence. The Land of Israel is the Jewish Homeland".
Indeed, this is the summary of the Zionist idea. In order to implement Professor Eldad's logic, he and his settler friends should have been carrying huge signs yesterday calling for the liberation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank from the Arab foreign occupation, as he calls it.
It is too bad the Zionist peace movements didn't join the human chain yesterday from the north Gaza settlement of Nisanit to the Western Wall through East Jerusalem. It is hard to imagine a route that better symbolizes the chasm separating the Gaza Strip from the State of Israel. "The chain" started outside Israeli jurisdiction and ended in East Jerusalem, which has been annexed to Israel from the formal-legal perspective.
All the governments, including distinctly right-wing governments, that have ruled in the past 37 years since the territories were occupied did not annex Dir El-Balach or even "City of the Patriarchs" Hebron.
No country in the world supports perpetuating Israeli occupation in the territories. In contrast, even the Palestinian leadership has recognized the Israeli bond to the Western Wall and expressed willingness to leave the Old City's Jewish Quarter and Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem in Israeli hands. Even Arab states and the international community - headed by the U.S. - understood a long time ago that the situation in East Jerusalem will never go back to what it once was. Right-wing protesters, who planned to connect Nisanit and Jerusalem, ignored the gap between a small controversial sphere and official Israeli sovereignty.
In an article published in February in the settler magazine "Nekuda", National Union MK Arieh Eldad wrote that "the Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel whether or not there are Arabs here, whether or not there is international agreement to our presence. The Land of Israel is the Jewish Homeland".
Eldad mentions that "Zionism is the movement to liberate the Land of Israel from foreign occupation, just like it is the movement to liberate the people of Israel from the slavery of exile."
Indeed, this is the summary of the Zionist idea. In order to implement Professor Eldad's logic, he and his settler friends should have been carrying huge signs yesterday calling for the liberation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank from the Arab foreign occupation, as he calls it.
As long as Nisanit and Hebron have not been "liberated", converted into inseparable parts of the state of Israel like East Jerusalem, the quarter of a million Jews living there are in the slavery of exile.
It is interesting that even while in the ruling coalition, the leaders of the extreme right did not propose annexing these "little strips of Israel" to the state of Israel. Even today, at the height of a struggle against the disengagement plan which they call the transfer of Jews from their homes, the settlers do not demand that Nisanit be annexed to their national home.
The conflict between the Zionist idea and Jewish life outside the jurisdiction of the Jewish state typifies not only the margins of the far right. It is also evident in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's call on French Jews to immigrate to Israel, when he himself - under cover of the disengagement from Gaza storm - is nurturing the Jews in the exile of "Judea and Samaria".
It is interesting what Sharon would say to French president Jacques Chirac, if Chirac were to ask why he doesn't call on the settlers to immigrate as well. Isn't the Jewish community in the West Bank a minority of the population, like the Jewish community in France? Are the Muslims of Marseilles more dangerous than the Muslims of Hebron?
If the Zionist mitzvah is bringing Jews to immigrate to the sovereign Jewish State in order to strengthen its Jewish characteristics, the chain pulling Jews into their homeland should start from the exile closest to home. Later, maybe, there will be peace, and then who knows, maybe our brethren from overseas may follow.
© Copyright 2004 Haaretz.
No way to leave
the territories
By Sefi Rachlevsky
Mon., August 09, 2004
"Anyone who
really wants to begin to leave the territories doesn't
have to save Sharon: He has to bring him down. The flag
of the return to a normal world, which is neither corrupt
nor fanatic, awaits. Anyone who raises this flag will
also win."
"According
to his statements, Sharon has already done the most he
can concerning the land of settlements that he initiated.
He is not the person who will be able to really carry out
the evacuation."
The
religious-right world in Israel is having no trouble
dedicating itself to the delegitimization of a government
that is attempting to leave parts of Eretz Israel. They
live according to the teachings of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook
(the son of Israel's first chief rabbi, Avraham Kook),
who ruled that no government, whether Jewish or foreign,
has the authority to evacuate parts of the country.
However, we can make the process of delegitimization
easier or more difficult.
It is not for nothing that after the clear victory of
Labor Prime Minister Ehud Barak in the 1999 elections,
the religious right did not dare to use the word
"traitor" (which they had used in connection
with the assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin). The
widespread feeling was that the public had chosen. It is
no coincidence that even the intentions at the time of
dividing Jerusalem did not arouse a storm of opposition.
The government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, on the
other hand, is doing everything possible in order to make
the process of delegitimization easier.
The arbitrary manner in which the commitment to the
democratic process of the Likud referendum was violated,
the capricious dismissal of ministers and most important,
the taint of corruption - after all, we are talking about
a prime minister whom the entire State Prosecution
recommended indicting in a bribery affair, and whose
rescue by the attorney general seemed to be more than a
little surprising to many people - all these create a
heavy sense of delegitimization. The fact that the move
Sharon may make has been accompanied by so many winks,
mistakes, double talk and the absence of profound moral
conviction, doesn't contribute to legitimization either.
Perhaps more important than all of the above is political
fragility. Sharon may succeed in establishing a political
structure that will ensure his own survival, but a
coalition that won't fall apart long before the
dismantling of a single houseplant in a settlement or an
outpost does not seem to be in the offing.
There is not, nor will there be, any religious body that
will allow - if the evacuation depends on it - the
expulsion of religious Jews from their homes. Such a
religious political entity, if it enters the coalition
for budgetary reasons, will not remain in it when the
time comes for the real decision on evacuation. And the
coalition that we call "a secular unity
government" doesn't have a genuine and stable
majority in the present Knesset. The opposition to it
within the Likud is too strong. After all, that party
doesn't really want it.
In the spring of 1990, the entire Knesset waited for MK
Avraham Verdiger (Agudat Yisrael). The Knesset was all
ready to crown Shimon Peres prime minister. But Verdiger
didn't show up. After a long wait, the festive Knesset
session dispersed, Yitzhak Shamir became prime minister,
and without the three shots fired by Yigal Amir, Peres
would not have returned to center stage.
Sharon may not mind playing Verdiger's game. For his
part, he can remain in power for a while until the moment
of decision, and then to go to elections while putting on
the act of "I wanted to, but they didn't let
me," in the hope of winning, and gaining another
term in which he will be able to continue to do nothing
except generate spin.
Sharon may not mind doing this. But anyone who is really
interested in leaving the territories has to mind. It is
no coincidence that Israel sank into the black hole of
the territories when it was headed by a paralyzing
national unity government. The way out has to be
different. Not with tricks, not with winks, not with
criminal affairs, not with spin and not with a
"Verdiger." But with a clear victory in the
elections.
According to his statements, Sharon has already done the
most he can concerning the land of settlements that he
initiated. He is not the person who will be able to
really carry out the evacuation. However, the vast
majority of the Israeli public - the public that longs
for a normal, non-fanatical country that will begin to
leave the territories - is not going to disappear.
But this majority requires leadership--decent, moral and
guided by a genuine vision. The fact is that in two of
the last four general elections, when the center-left
merged the fight against government corruption, religious
extremism and the dead end in the territories - it won in
a big way. That was the case in 1992, under Rabin, and in
1999, under Barak.
A victory in the near future is more possible than many
believe. The majority exists, and the need for a genuine
rather than a tactical political step exists as well.
Only the leadership is missing. The vestiges of the
center-left leadership are going the opposite way,
Verdiger's way. That's the way that combines political
blindness with the encouragement of government corruption
- since there is no system as corrupt and improper as a
system without a critical opposition. When that is the
case, the democratic game is ruined and is replaced by
the distribution of government perks among the political
oligarchs, who only seem to belong to different parties,
but are actually all members of the ruling party.
Anyone who really wants to begin to leave the territories
doesn't have to save Sharon: He has to bring him down.
The flag of the return to a normal world, which is
neither corrupt nor fanatic, awaits. Anyone who raises
this flag will also win.
© Copyright Haaretz.