Gaza

By Fania Oz-Salzberger
August 22, 2005

If the Israeli disengagement from Gaza and the northern West Bank is completed the way it began, with passive resistance and restrained enforcement outplaying brutality, Israel will emerge a slimmer, stronger, more just society. If the evacuation of settlements ends as it began, with much more shedding of tears than blood, Israel will have passed a crucial test of maturity.

Palestinians may well rejoice these days in Gaza. There will be dancing in the streets of deserted settlements, gloating against the background of torn-down homes, and gleeful gun-waving around destroyed synagogues. There will be statements, like those that some Hamas leaders have already uttered, to the effect that Jerusalem will be next. All this is a predictable outlet for Palestinian feelings at this moment. But there may also be room for rejoicing in Israel. Different rejoicing. Subtler rejoicing.

None of the many hurdles of its history has prepared Israeli society for this test to its sovereignty, humanity and cohesion. Out of the rubble of the settlements many truths are emerging. Let me begin with the ugliest. The two Jews who recently unleashed their firearms on innocent Arabs in Shefaram in northern Israel and Kedumim in the West Bank, reflect the worst of the settler psyche gone awry. Hatred and racism have been part of the rhetoric of the Israeli extreme right for a long time. Its leaders have pretended they are nonexistent. The disengagement has smoked out Jewish terrorism: indeed, far scarcer than its Arab counterpart, but potentially far more dangerous, and, by common Israeli and Jewish standards, unforgivable.

Disengagement has also revealed the spectrum of mainstream Israeli views of the settler movement. Emotional and political terminology is intertwined: many have no sympathy for the settlers' agony and refuse to acknowledge the collective responsibility of Israeli society for the settlement project. Yet Israeli society, most notably its policemen and armed personnel, has also proven capable of understanding the pain of the evicted. Such cross-party solidarity, however, need not obscure the human sympathy for the plight of numerous innocent Palestinians.

Israeli rhetoric of civil rights has been used both by settlers and by defenders of Palestinian causes. The Israeli judiciary and executive must measure the weight of collective wrongs against individual rights, and come to terms with complex questions of justice and pragmatism, along routes unchartered by other modern democracies. The most pivotal instance is Ariel Sharon himself, emerging from his lifelong image as an amoral pragmatist, and openly stating what many Israelis have argued for three decades -- that the ongoing occupation of a million-and-a-half Palestinians cannot be morally condoned.

The Israeli polity has reached its great philosophical moment: Is the highest authority spiritual or secular? Is God, through the mouthpiece of nationalists and rabbis, the sovereign of Israel? Or is the political nation, through the Knesset and government, the true ruler of its destiny? It is strange to speak in philosophical terms as dust rises from destroyed homes, but there you have it: Israel has always blended action and ideas in the most peculiar moments.

The pending victory of Israel's rule of law owes something to the deep juridical substructures of traditional Judaism. For every messianic fanatic, the religion has bred a dozen moderates, with a strong sense of civil and human responsibility. This legacy is not heralded from the rooftops of Gaza. Yet it is quietly manifest in the Supreme Court in Jerusalem and the businesslike calm of Tel Aviv.

There are many apologies to be made: to innocent Palestinians (who are owed some apology by their own leadership, too, but it is no reason to withhold ours); to the well-intentioned, non-violent, less-than-messianic Jews who were led to believe that making the occupied territories their home was a great national service; to the Israelis who have been crying out against the settlements for years; and to the children, all children, whose lives have been caught up, even destroyed, by deadly dreams. Israel has a tremendous repository of social solidarity, human energy and resourcefulness. Too long have the problems of poverty, underemployment, and religious and cultural gaps been relegated to the bottom of the national priority order. If the evacuated settlers bring into the Green Line, into the internationally recognized State of Israel, even a half of the power and love they had invested in their lost homes, they will prove a blessing for their country and even for its neighbors. Their project may not altogether have been in vain, if the Arab world now acknowledges the legitimacy of Israel within its international borders; this was hardly the case before the settlement era began. And if Israeli peace-seekers can accept the evacuees into their midst with some degree of solidarity, they may be all the more empowered to seek a fair agreement with the Palestinians. The slimmer Israel, relieved of some of the burden of occupation, will be counting its losses -- but it may also be wise enough to count its blessings.

And what of the Palestinians? This writer no longer believes that disengagement would be accepted by them as a true stepping stone to peace. Indeed, terror attacks may well increase when Israeli withdrawal is completed. Talk of Zionist defeat may well overshadow Premier Abu Mazen's judicious effort in the direction of a peace dialogue. But the Palestinians, too, may be facing a test of maturity. Many of them will also be counting their losses and observing the potential blessing in a slim, yet truly Palestinian, land of Palestine. In both societies, disengagement will serve the cause of disillusionment. This, now, is a good cause. It may yet promote the prospect of a future positive engagement.

Ms. Oz-Salzberger is a senior lecturer at the University of Haifa.