Israel's Right and Left Converge
By YORAM HAZONY
JERUSALEM — Despite the suicide attacks on trendy hangouts like Cafe Moment, Cafe Rimon and Cafit, Israeli intellectuals still frequent Jerusalem's cafes. Conversations still linger late into the night over espresso, served Italian-style with a small glass of soda. But the atmosphere has changed. Now many of these late-night heart-to-hearts are between lifelong members of Peace Now, the vanguard of the Israeli peace movement, and veteran supporters of the West Bank settlement movement — people who were, until recently, bitterly divided strangers.
For nearly 30 years, we have known an Israel whose political, cultural and social life was dominated by the eternal struggle between these two powerful ideological extremes: one that wanted to cover the West Bank with Jewish settlements, and one that urged recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization and a Palestinian state.
But the 1993 Oslo agreement had an effect no one intended: It destroyed that Israel forever. By withdrawing Israeli authority from the Arab population centers of the West Bank, Oslo made the ideology of the old Israeli right irrelevant; in bringing the carnage of Lebanon to the pedestrian malls of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, it demolished the ideology of the old Israeli left, which held that giving the P.L.O. authority over the West Bank would bring Israel peace and security. Now, for the first time in a generation, most Israelis are at neither pole. Instead, they find themselves uniting with former adversaries in the center of the old political spectrum.
Among those who represent this new center is Amnon Dankner, editor of Ma'ariv and for decades an icon of the Israeli peace movement. The Oslo process showed "blindness, self-deception, arrogance and a denial of reality," he now says. "All the brilliant minds of Oslo have not succeeded in squeezing the water of genuine acceptance of Israel out of the Palestinian stone."
Another writer of the new center is Ari Shavit, a Ha'aretz journalist and one of the founders of Peace Now. After the acceleration of Palestinian terror operations in September 2000, Mr. Shavit wrote sharply against "the conception that held that flooding the country with 50,000 Palestinian Kalashnikovs would bring peace to the Middle East," which he said "has brought Israel to the edge of the abyss."
No one doubts the reason for this reassessment. Israeli casualties at the hands of Palestinian terrorists since the Oslo agreement amount to 774 dead and 10 times as many wounded — numbers that dwarf anything Israel has ever known. At the height of Yasir Arafat's terror-state in Lebanon from 1970 to 1982 (the years of the Munich and Ma'alot massacres and the Entebbe raid), Palestinian terrorists claimed only 162 Israeli lives. In the last 18 months alone, terrorists have taken 469 Israeli lives. Virtually everyone in Israel knows someone killed or maimed in the attacks. In my case it was my next-door neighbor in Jerusalem, a young businessman named Gadi Rejwan, slain by a Tanzim gunman.
Remarkably, this experience has not produced a swing to the right so much as a gathering toward the center. Surveys show that 86 percent of Israelis support convening an international peace conference — once a bête noir of the Israeli right. A poll at the end of March found that 70 percent say they are prepared to remove some West Bank settlements in exchange for a stable peace.
But at the same time, most Israelis are no longer willing to accept the basic assumptions of the Oslo process. A Mina Zemach/Shalem Center poll conducted last week showed Israeli Jews solidly united in the view that Yasir Arafat will not fight terror seriously (82 percent); is not interested in real peace with Israel (87 percent); cannot be trusted to keep agreements (90 percent); and cannot be believed when he condemns terror (98 percent). Most believe that Israel should not conduct substantive negotiations with Arafat (74 percent).
"Even if Arafat will sign an agreement," Benny Morris, a historian long associated with the peace camp, said, "I find it hard to believe, in view of his behavior during the last two years, that he or his successors will abide by it."
For the great majority, these hard-won lessons have meant support for the government of Ariel Sharon, whose Operation Defensive Shield was assessed last week as "the right policy" by 88 percent of Israeli Jews. An overwhelming 83 percent support Mr. Sharon's unity government or would prefer a narrow Likud government, as against 8 percent who wish to see the unity government it replaced by a narrow Labor government. Moreover, 76 percent consider Mr. Sharon "well suited" to his job, while only 28 percent think Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, considered an occasional critic of government policy, would be well suited to be prime minister. Opponents of the government's policies are essentially without a constituency: Shlomo Ben-Ami is thought well suited to lead the country by 11 percent of respondents, Yossi Beilin by 7 percent.
The new Israeli center also exhibits a unified attitude toward the United States: 88 percent support America's present war on terror; 79 percent believe the United States is a "true friend." But at the same time, 89 percent call America's demand that Israel halt its anti-terror sweep in the West Bank "unfair."
I thought of these numbers this week when public radio announced the capture of the gunman who murdered my neighbor Gadi Rejwan. He was seized among a clutch of terrorists after a gun battle in the Kalandia refugee camp in Ramallah on Sunday night. This was 20 days after Washington's call for Israel to withdraw. Had Israel fallen into line, Gadi's murderer would still be free.
The point that seems to escape many observers is that the Sharon government's policies are inseparable from the views of the Israeli public. That public has given Yasir Arafat nine years to show he can live alongside Israel in peace. Now it expects Ariel Sharon to do what is necessary to protect our country — even if it means braving international censure.
This is not to say Israelis have stopped disagreeing with one another on many points. We haven't. But it is a serious mistake to think of Israel as a divided nation, as it was. This is an Israeli government that represents not half of Israel, but an overwhelming, united majority of the people. In a democracy, one could not get a stronger mandate.
Yoram Hazony is president of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. His most recent book is "The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel's Soul."
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