The nutcracker dilemma

Part 1 - by Beate Zilversmidt

The elections were after all an earthquake. The blocs were broken up.

The Israeli multi-party system had more and more developed into a de-facto bi-partisan situation, with fixed right of center and left of center blocs. The ultra-orthodox (Haredi) religious parties were before 2000 still sometimes changing course, thereby acquiring much power as king-makers. But they seemed to have found their destination on the right. New parties trying to become recognized as "center parties" got crushed, or ended up being labeled "left wing". Kadima, the party created by Sharon just before he got the stroke from which he didn't recover was meant to be a center party. The remnant of it was considered in the 2013 elections as belonging to the left bloc.

But the blocs are no more. The anti-Haredi bond between the extreme right "Bayit Yehudi" and the center-left "Yesh Atid" is overriding other loyalties. What the nationalist-religious and the secularists - both led by new political stars - have in common is their dislike of the Haredi privileges. For the secular Yair Lapid it would be enough when Haredim will  be conscripted to the army. For Naftali Bennett there is one more target: to riggle the chief rabbinate out of Haredi hands. (If Bennett and Lapid would both enter the government and  succeed to break the Haredi privileges, they would soon stop being allies as they hold totally different ideas about  the elephant in the room, Israeli-Palestinian relations.)

Without the fixed blocs and though his party lost big, Netanyahu seemed still the only one who could be asked to form a government coalition. Now he is doing everything to avoid being crushed in the nutcracker - under coordinated pressure from the two novices, from left and right simultaneously. Therefore he needs everybody else's support.

From the point of arithmetic it should not be so difficult with Lapid and Bennett together holding not more than 31 seats of the Knesset's 120. But Netanyahu and his Likud are encountering some other hurdles. Though originally a "peoples party" the Likud became under Netanyahu  identified with hard-line economic liberalism. And exactly now the Labor Party (15 seats), under Shelly Yechimovitz, is taking its name seriously and demands a totally opposite economic policy.

Still, Netanyahu could probably gather together 57 out of the 120, with Tzippy Livni already in, and for whose 6 seats he was willing to emphasize the importance of the two-state solution;  Kadima (only 2 seats but still toughly negotiating); and the Haredim (two parties, together 18 seats) so to say "in Netanyahu's pocket". Added to that the 31 of the  Likud-Beyteynu alliance Netanyahu would still not have a majority in the Knesset, but it doesn't seem likely that anybody else could garner more without new elections being held.

If Israel would be a different place altogether there would be left a way for Netanyahu to make the 57 into 61, without any problem of having to compromise on such touchy matters as religious privileges and economic course. In an Israel different from the really existing one it would at least be considerable to include also Israel's Muslims. The Ra'am-Ta'al party (4 seats) would not create any problems on the issues Netanyahu singled out as crucial.

But, including an Arab party, appointing an Arab minister, and thus out of the ruins creating some new hope for Israel, of course Netanyahu would never do such a thing, not even out of despair.


The nutcracker dilemma

Part 2 - by Adam Keller


Uri Elitzur, who had been secretary general of settlers’ Judea and Samaria Council and Netanyahu’s chef de bureau and later became an influential columnist of the Israeli right-wing, is very enthusiastic about the political alliance forged between Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett. He writes: "There is something exciting that two people completely new to politics, both in their forties, are at the head of two big parties. Aside from their age and the enthusiasm of something new starting, there are other significant things that are common to both of the parties behind Lapid and Bennett. For example, an awareness that the old debate between Left and Right on the future of the Territories is not necessarily the most important of issues. A new generation has arisen, which is tired of this division and which sees a lot of important and urgent matters on which Left and Right can work together."

Apparently, this new generation considers the issue of forcing upon Haredi youths recruitment to military service as far more important and urgent than    the question of what duties and tasks the State of Israel imposes on its army.  And it is a fact that the opinion polls which made ​​headlines in the weekend papers predict great success for Lapid and Bennet and their respective parties, were repeat elections held in the near future.

Still, over there - behind the fences and walls, very close geographically but worlds away from the hearts and minds of the majority of Israelis – are  living millions of people who are far from tired of the debate whether Israeli occupation continues or ends. They care little if it is devout Haredim or irreverant  Atheists who don the IDF uniform and go out to harass drivers at checkpoints on Palestinian highways, guard the ever expanding settlements built on Palestinian land and shoot tear gas at protesters and demonstrators.

This week, an increasing wave of demonstrations and protests throughout the Palestinian territories, culminating on Friday at the East  Jerusalem’s Temple Mount  mosques, at long last forced the Israeli printed and electronic media to pay some attention to what is going on among Palestinian prisoners held in Israel’s prisons. Already soon after last year’s prisoner exchange, the security services found various pretexts to start re-arresting an increasing number of the Palestinians released in exchange for Israeli soldier  Gilad Shalit. Lacking other recourse, four of these re-arrested prisoners turned to a prolonged hunger strike endangering their lives – which makes them into heroes in the eyes of Palestinians regardless of political affiliation. 

On Thursday, Samer Al-Issawy, who had gone  without solid food for more than 200 days, appeared in court in a wheelchair. He was charged with having “violated the terms of his parole by leaving the boundaries of Jerusalem” -  having gone to a garage at a Jerusalem suburb which has not been annexed to Israel and is legally part of the West Bank. For this he was condemned to eight months imprisonment, the term deemed to have started with his arrest on July 7, 2012.

This would set him free in a few weeks from now - but that may not be the end of the matter. Through hastily enacted regulations, any breach of the law by a Palestinian released in the Shalit Exchange could lead to re-imposition of the original, years-long term. In the case of Issawi, who is determined to continue his hunger strike until he is free, this would be tantamount to a death sentence.

In several previous cases, Israeli authorities showed themselves wise and flexible enough to set hunger striking prisoners before any of them could die in prison. Hopefully, they would act as wisely this time, too. Which in itself is far from enough to avert outbreak of the often predicted and talked about Third Intifada.

Palestinians feel that the world has forgotten them and abandoned them to open-ended Israeli occupation and the steady encroachment of Israeli settlements, and are far from being impressed by Netanyahu reiterating his verbal commitment to the two-state solution and getting the famous Tzipi Livni to represent him in negotiations, if and when they are resumed. Lacking a real reason for hope, any chance spark could light the dry tinder. Exactly twenty five years ago, a pure accident – an Israeli driver hitting Palestinian pedestrians – was enough to set alight the fires of the First Intifada. Would President  Obama, in his visit scheduled for next month, provide a measure of real hope – or will still another disappointment be added to the combustible mixture?

Meanwhile, there is at least one young Israeli who is not “tired of the old debate between Left and Right on the future of the Territories”.  Nathan Blanc, a 19-year old Israeli from Haifa, is already for many months going in and out of prison due to a particularly firm position taken in this old debate.

Blanc’s cycle has so far repeated itself six times. He comes to the Induction Center, is ordered to join the army,  says "I will not serve in an army of occupation" and gets sent to another month at Military Prison 6. Gets out of the prison - and straight again to the Induction Center, refuses again and goes  back through the revolving door to prison. So it has gone on, and without an end in sight. The army has patience, the military authorities strongly insist that this young man must surrender and serve. But Nathan Blanc also has patience and perseverance, and he certainly does not intend to capitulate. Another month in prison and yet another, and the saga continues.


This morning, hundreds of activists of the Yesh Gvul Movement climbed on the mountain opposite Military Prison 6, to celebrate the Purim holiday together with with Nathan Blanc and his fellow prisoners. Artists came voluntarily to perform, and strong loudspeakers carried the sound of singing into the  prison courtyard. And meanwhile, the name of Nathan Blanc is becoming increasingly known internationally. In Switzerland a poster was published with his photo, the student newspaper at Emory University in the United States published an article praising him as a hero, When I was a month ago in at Hiroshima in Japan, I found that there, too, peace activists have already heard of Nathan Blanc.

Blanc has already rejected the option of getting psychiatric discharge.
If more months of imprisonment accumulate, what is waiting him is a court martial where he could be condemned to years in the harsh military prison conditions.  Then, also he may enter the headlines and the news broadcasts of the mainstream media around the world – another victim of the occupation.

From prisoner X to Lord Montagu

No court issued a gag order on the detention of Samer Al Issawi. The information was freely available, and anyone who wanted to could have published all the facts: Samer al-Issawi, a resident of Isawiya in East Jerusalem, was placed last July in Administrative Detention without trial and imprisoned at the Ramla Prison (yes, the same Ramla Prison which this week got to the headlines for other reasons). He began a hunger strike which already passed the 200 days’ mark, lost thirty five kilograms and  suffered severe damage to his kidneys. A few days ago he stopped drinking the vitamins and few nutritional supplements which kept him alive until now.  All this information was completely open to publication - everything except the charges against Issawi, which were contained only in “secret evidence” presented to the judge who extended his detention and of which Issawi himself was not told.

There was no problem in publishing it - but reporters and editors in Israel’s newspapers and electronic media just did not think it was of interest to their readers and listeners. Only when this weekend the deteriorating condition of Samer al Issawi precipitated a series of demonstrations across the West Bank and clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli soldiers, a few references cropped up in the media - and even then, in a very minimal way.

Had Ben Zygier been a Palestinian, still now nobody would have heard of him.

                                                    ***

So what did really happen, in this affair of which only a select few knew four days ago and which now captured the headlines in Israel and Australia and around the world?

How it started is well known: a young Jew raised in a distinguished Melbourne family, taking his Zionism seriously makes Aliya and goes to live in Israel and getting married here; entering the country’s spy service, Mossad, and taking on a series of mysterious tasks, and certainly not giving up his Australian citizenship. Much of his value to the Mossad consisted of his ability to carry (or lend to others) a genuine Australian passport, which would pass the closest scrutiny, and enter freely countries barred to carriers of an Israeli passport. And indeed, he did not cut his ties with Australia, where his family lived, and where he has gone to visit and study at university.

The middle of the story is still mostly hidden. In early 2010 unknown agents assassinated a senior Palestinian at the Emirate of Dubai. The assassins failed to disappear without a trace. Indeed, they left behind a spectacular trail – abundant photos taken by security cameras,  names in forged Australian passports, and a series of clues pointing to the State of Israel and the Mossad. But what exactly was the connection to Ben Zygier, the Australian Jew who went to Israel and made his Australian passport available for Israel’s daring espionage operations?

And the end - most of it is by now clear. A secret trial and a secret detention at a well-guarded isolation cell in the Ramla Prison and gag orders to hide every scrap of information from the public. Serious charges that could have kept him in that secret cell for very many years, and a plea bargain offered which was a bit more lenient but which also involved quite a few years in prison, a difficult choice between two harsh options. And then suicide in custody, in a cell with four surveillance cameras. If it was a suicide.

But what exactly did happen in the middle? What did he do or plan to do? Shalom Yerushalmi in Ma'ariv published what seems to be a message sent directly from within the Mossad: "Zygier, it is said, was holding a smoking gun. Had he not been stopped, he would have caused great damage. No one  in the Mossad wanted him to kill himself in prison, but after he hanged himself none of them went into mourning" . And on TV the veteran Ron Ben-Yishai pointed an accusing finger at the Australian security service: "They are the ones who got  Zygier into trouble". How, exactly?

A hypothesis, not based on any first hand information: At some time in late January or early February 2010, the security services of Australia turned to Zygier, an Australian citizen who traveled a lot with an Australian passport, and demanded that he tell them what he knew about the use which the State of Israel made of Australian passports, in ways which were liable to damage the national interests of Australia.  Australian tourists and business people arriving in various countries were increasingly suspected of being Israeli spies.

If this is what happened, Ben Zygier could not have gotten out of it well, do what he would do. Had he provided the information, he could have come to be considered under the laws of the State of Israel a traitor failing in his loyalty to Israel. Had he refused to provide it, he might have been considered under the laws of Australia a traitor failing in his loyalty to Australia. In short - the nightmare of Jews in Australia, as in the U.S. and many other countries – the charge of "double loyalty."

Did Israel have the moral right to place an Australian Jew is such an impossible situation? Did Israel, thirty years ago, have the moral right to appeal to an American Jew named Jonathan Pollard and convince him that as a Jew he owed to Israel a loyalty surpassing that he owed to the United States?

How many Jews in how many countries have paid a direct or indirect price for the acts and policies of Israel?

In July 1994 an explosive charge exploded in the Jewish community building at Buenos Aires, capital of Argentina, and eighty-five people got killed. Although not definitely solved, this is considered to have been an act of revenge for Israel's assassination of Hezbollah leader Abbas Musawi. The Argentinian Jews, certainly not sharing in Israel’s wars in South Lebanon, were selected as the available targets for revenge against the "Jewish State".

This affair continues to resound in Argentine's politics and comes up again and again. A few weeks ago the Argentine government chose to initiate an international investigation of the bombing involving also the Iranian government – against which the Israeli government lodged a strong protest with the Argentinians. The Argentinian Foreign Minister Hector Timerman – who, perhaps not coincidentally, is himself Jewish – summoned the Ambassador of Israel to lodge a protest at the Israeli protest and the Israeli government’s interference in the way that the government of Argentine chose to deal with the murder of Argentinian citizens at the heart of the capital of Argentine.

As reported at the time, "The Argentinian Foreign Minister was so upset that he almost hardly gave the Israeli Ambassador a chance to utter a word, cut her off  again and again: ‘Israel has no right to ask for explanations, we are a sovereign state’ said Timerman to Ambassador Shavit. 'Israel doesn’t represent or speak for all Jews. Those Jews who wanted Israel to represent them went to Israel and became Israeli citizens. Jews who live in Argentine are Argentinian  citizens. The bombing was against Argentine and Israel's desire to be involved in the matter only gives ammunition to anti-Semites who accuse Jews of double loyalty’”.

                                                       ***


In 1917 the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, promising  to view with favour “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”. In the prolonged deliberations held by the British cabinet before this declaration was issued, Edwin Montagu  - the only Jewish minister in the British government at the time – expressed his reservations and strong opposition to the planned declaration. "...I assume that it means that Mahommedans and Christians are to make way for the Jews and that the Jews should be put in all positions of preference and should be peculiarly associated with Palestine in the same way that England is with the English or France with the French, that Turks and other Mahommedans in Palestine will be regarded as foreigners, just in the same way as Jews will hereafter be treated as foreigners in every country but Palestine”. He expressed his concerned that a "dual loyalty" would be created among the Jews of the world - loyalty to the governments in their countries of residence vs. loyalty to their national home in Israel - and it would finally give anti-Semites a pretext to undermine the position  of the Jews in Britain and other countries and expel them, also against their will,  to their "National Home".

To appease Lord Montagu and other opponents, there were added to the text of the Balfour Declaration as finally issued a clear reservation. Establishment of the "National Home" was on condition of "it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country”

Ninety-six years later, the National Home has become a fact, and established the most powerful army in the Middle East as well as an intelligence service spreading a worldwide net. In light of this experience, it would be very difficult to argue that what was "clearly understood" in 1917 had been indeed complied with, or that there was no bases to the apprehensions of Lord Edwin Montagu.

Night life in the only democracy in the Middle East

It happens every night, summer and winter, on weekdays and Saturdays and also during the Jewish holidays. A quiet street in a town or village or refugee camp somewhere on the West Bank. Suddenly, the calm of the late night hour is disturbed by the arrival of a large force of Israeli soldiers. They surround a house which was marked out in advance.  Agents of the Shabak Security Service go in and after a few minutes they come out with  the tenant handcuffed and blindfolded. They enter an armored car and drive away quickly.

Sometimes the detainee's neighbors manage to wake up in time and go out into the street and try to block the soldiers' way. The soldiers sent on such missions are briefed and trained in advance for such contingencies, and they immediately open up with tear gas - sometimes with live ammunition as well – make their way through the crowd, and rush to get the fresh detainee directly to interrogation under "moderate physical pressure" at a basement somewhere.

That is repeated every night, sometimes at five homes in five different locations, sometimes in ten, sometimes more. The Oslo Accords established a division of the West Bank into three zones: "C" is under full Israeli control, "B" under partial control of the Palestinian Authority, and "A" under its full control. At least, in the agreements signed once upon a time by the Government of Israel and never officially repealed it is written "Full control by the Palestinian Authority." So, it is written. The Shabak agents and the soldiers accompanying and guarding them take little notice. They carry out detentions at any location they choose – sometimes also in the heart of Ramallah, the city which is supposed to be the capital of the Palestinian Authority, sometimes just around the corner from the government compound of Mahmoud Abbas and his ministers.

Usually, such arrests do not get published in the Israel media. To keep track of them, one needs to follow the Palestinian news websites, where there appears every morning an  accurate tally of the places where the soldiers arrived on the previous night and the number of Palestinians kidnapped there (Palestinians sites do not use in this context the verb "arrest"...)

http://www.imemc.org/
http://www.maannews.net/eng/Default.aspx

This week there was an exception. For once, the nightly detentions of Palestinians got published in the Israeli media (though they did not make the headlines). On Tuesday morning the army reported "a widespread arrest operation against wanted Palestinians", carried out as part of what the Shabak and IDF call "The Lawn Mowing Policy". As published, "25 wanted Palestinians were arrested, mostly Hamas activists." Why exactly were they arrested? Why were they wanted? What are they accused of? As usual, army and security do not provide information. These people are ‘wanted’, and that is that. It was only stated that the decision to make the arrests at this time stems from "concern at Hamas's efforts to rebuild infrastructure in the West Bank, in the aftermath of Operation Cloud Pillar in the Gaza Strip".

What infrastructure? To judge by the identity of the detainees – who were involved in open political activity and in charity organizations - it does not seem to be an attempt to organize armed activity. Rather, they appear to have embarked on resuming the activities of Hamas as a political party, towards a possible reconciliation between the Palestinian factions and perhaps also new elections for the Palestinian Legislature. In recent months we have heard, for the first time in quite a long while, of open activity by Fatah in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and a mass rally held by its supporters in downtown Gaza.  Reciprocally, at the same time there are manifestations of political activity by the Hamas movement in the cities and villages of the West Bank, rallies and demonstrations and a growing presence in the streets. It seems that someone here in Israel does not care for this celebration of Palestinian democracy.

Among others, those arrested on the "Lawn Mowing Night" include three Members of the Palestinian Legislative Council,. As in the Israeli Knesset and most other parliaments around the world, Palestinian parliamentarians have parliamentary immunity - but the IDF and Shabak care little about that. Many members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, entrusted with representing their constituents at the elections held in 2006, have spent most of their term behind bars in Israeli prisons. This week, three more detained parliamentarians were added: Hatem Qafisha in Hebron, Mohammed al-Tal in Dhahiriyya, and Ahmed Attoun in al-Bireh. In all,  fifteen of the Legislative Council's  eighty-eight members are currently in detention.

http://maannews.net/ENG/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=561892
http://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/2013/02/05/ufree-network-condemns-israeli-arrests-of-palestinian-mps/
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4340655,00.html

I met Ahmed Attoun a few years ago, at the East Jerusalem home of Muhammad Abu-Tir, who along with Attoun got elected in the Palestinian elections of 2006. At that meeting, the two Parliamentarians told us that "Yasser Arafat had signed all the papers with Israel, but did not get anything in return",  and added "we will only talk with Israel when it becomes clear that the Israeli government means to hold serious negotiations, negotiations  which will bear results within a short time." They then declared that Hamas is ready to stop all violent acts, in a truce to last twenty to thirty years - provided that for its own part, Israel also stops all acts of violence.

With the consent of the two of them, we sent immediately after the meeting an urgent  letter to then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, stating that in our humble opinion what they said may serve as a basis for starting  negotiations. A short time later Attoun and Abu-Tir were arrested, as were many other members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, and since then they are constantly going in and out of the prisons and detention facilities of the State of Israel.

On Tuesday morning this week – the same morning when Attoun, Qafisha and  al-Tal had their first breakfast in jail – newly elected members of the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, gathered for festive inauguration following the recent Israeli elections. A celebration of democracy, at the only democratic state in the Middle East. Israel's President Shimon Peres arrived and was greeted with trumpets. One by one, dozens of new Members affirmed their oath of office in front of their admiring family members. They talked about the complicated negotiations to form a new government coalition and gossiped a bit the scandalous new dress of the Prime Minister's wife, and finally went blithely to their homes.

None of the Members of our Knesset had the slightest apprehension that in the wee hours of the night their homes might be surrounded by the Palestinian Security Forces, whose agents would rush in and lead them handcuffed and blindfolded to detention and interrogation. What a crazy idea!

Winds of war

Suddenly, the agenda changed. The general elections and the distribution of seats and the mandates and the struggles and intrigues inherent to forming a  government coalition were relegated to the back pages. The headlines were caught by an air strike in Syria and an alert on the Lebanese border and threats from Tehran and an attack on an embassy in Turkey. Once again the winds of war began to blow. Israelis moved en masse from waiting their turn at the polling stations to the long waiting lines at the gas mask distribution stations.

Just what happened here? What for? And why now? For two long years the State of Israel watched the Syrian bloodbath from the sidelines and took care not to intervene. For two years IDF forces on the Golan border observed with great attention the course of the civil war taking place on the other side of the border and carefully noted on their maps which villages had been captured by the rebels and which are still held by Bashar Assad's loyalists – all the while, the Israeli forces holding their fire and not intervening. And suddenly, this week, an air raid in Syria, a high profile event even though no official responsibility was taken.

More ridiculous than ever was the insistence of the Israeli media to add "according to foreign sources” whenever Israeli responsibility for that raid was referred to. "Mr. General (ret.), what have you got to say about the raid which according to foreign sources our air force carried out in Syria? " "Well, I have nothing to add to what the foreign sources told, except to say that the mysterious unknown attackers did a good job. Well done, well done!"

Veteran commentator Amos Harel provided a thorough explanation on the pages of "Ha'aretz": "Israel had set out red lines for Syria and Hezbollah. Already during the term of the Olmert Government, long before the outbreak of civil war in Syria, Israel gave a warning that it would not tolerate the transfer of balance-breaking Advanced Defense Systems to Hezbollah, and would if necessary resort to force to prevent such a move. On several occasions the Israeli position was set out in greater detail: no transfer of advanced anti-aircraft missile systems, of precision ground to ground missiles or of long-range land to sea missiles. (...) The Air Force is especially concerned about the transfer of Russian-made anti-aircraft  missile systems, because they  might significantly limit the planes' freedom of action, undermined the present situation where Israeli planes enjoy complete air superiority over Lebanon and face no real risk. These flights over Lebanon are critical for gathering intelligence. The introduction of SA-17 surface-to-air missiles to Lebanon, a step against which Israel cautioned Russia even as these systems were sold to Syria, is a very problematic development." Apparently, it proved problematic enough for the Israeli Air Force to be sent to destroy these missiles while still en route, before they could arrive and be stationed on Lebanese soil.

All this is a bit interesting for those who know some basic principles of International Law. For example, it is universally accepted that a sovereign state (for example, the state called Lebanon) owns its airspace and has the right to protect that airspace, including the deployment of anti-aircraft artillery or  missiles and the use of these to deter foreign planes from entering this airspace without permission. On the other hand, International Law does not authorize any country (for example, the one called Israel) to regularly send its planes into the airspace of another country so as to gather intelligence. Certainly there is no reference in International Law to the right of a state to set its neighbor "red lines" and forbid it to obtain effective air defenses. But as with regard to building settlements in the West Bank, on this issue, too, successive governments of Israel have created their own peculiar international law which is quite different from that practiced in the rest of the world.

This state of affairs did not just begin recently. I well remember one evening in 1981, over thirty years ago, when the very same issue already came to focus of the public agenda.  All of a sudden, the government burst out with an outcry  about Syrian anti-aircraft missiles being stationed on Lebanese soil, and the smell of war was in the air. Then Prime Minister Menachem Begin spoke about it to the gathered masses at a city square (at that time Likud was still able to bring out great crowds into the streets). And so did the PM cry out: "These missiles are a serious threat to our security. They endanger our planes which fly over Lebanon, and prevent us from keeping track of what is happening there, from knowing which schemes are being plotted against us. We strongly demand that these missiles be removed from Lebanon forthwith." Later in the same speech Prime Minister Begin referred to another issue which was at that time on top of the agenda: "We are greatly opposed to United States selling  to Saudi Arabia the intelligence aircraft type AWACS. That aircraft is a serious threat to our security. Its intelligence gathering systems are so sophisticated that when flying over ​​Saudi Arabia it could keep track of what is happening in Israel, we will be transparent to it and lose the ability to keep our vital secrets. We strongly demand that this plane not be given into Arab hands. " Menachem Begin did not feel any contradiction between the two parts of his speech, nor did his audience.

At the time, the summer of 1981, the tensions faded out after about a week -  but this was but a temporary respite. A year later, in the summer of 1982, the great war broke out which was initially known as "Operation Peace for Galilee" and Israeli soldiers broke northwards as far as Beirut. At the very outbreak of this war, the Air Force launched a massive attack on these infamous missiles, and the Israeli media hailed the technical and operational capacity of the Air Force which destroyed the missiles in a masterful operation carefully crafted for years. (At that time the illusion still prevailed that it was going to be a short war ending with a quick and decisive victory, and it had not yet become "The War of Deception", destined to be the longest and most traumatic of Israel's wars to date).

After this achievement the Israeli Air Force totally dominated the skies of   Lebanon, and bombed Beirut day after day, and for years afterward the news broadcasts almost every day included the news items of "Air Force planes had bombed terrorist targets at … in Southern Lebanon". On the ground the "Security Zone" was established in Lebanon where the soldiers fought an endless guerrilla war impossible to win, and suffered increasing losses. It took   almost twenty years before the public protest over the endless attrition in Lebanon led to the withdrawal of the soldiers from there. But even after that, Israeli war planes continued daily cruising the skies of Lebanon, feeling quite at home.

And is the wheel now turning a full circle again? Already for several weeks, the well-informed Nahum Barnea is publishing gloomy forecasts in his weekly column at the weekend issue of Yediot Aharonot: "The IDF brass is convinced that in a matter of months Syria will become the most pressing security problem for Israel. Israel can’t stop all arms convoys. Hizbullah is problematic, but the Jihadist elements which might take over the Golan area are no less dangerous. They would have the same missiles, the same ammunition, and less responsible behavior. By pessimistic forecasts, it seems we are on the verge of a military confrontation on at least one of the two fronts in the north [Syria and Lebanon]. An IDF ground operation would be required immediately after the other side starts launching rockets, and possibly earlier. In Lebanon, a large-scale action is envisioned, a veritable full-scale war. In the Golan a takeover of the buffer zone is envisioned, creation of a security zone in the format that was used in southern Lebanon. Syria will not remain forever a TV news item, in the end it would directly affect every home in Israel "(Yediot Aharonot, February 1, 2013).

The General Staff is apparently making these plans for months already, but is the timing when they come into the news focus entirely coincidental? Exactly a week after the elections in which Binyamin Netanyahu was left  battered and bruised, even if he does form the next government. A week after the elections in which Yair Lapid became a superstar, a virtually indispensable  partner in forming the next cabinet, and he made a series of uncompromising demands on a whole series of fundamental issues, including the resumption of negotiations with the Palestinians.  And also the week when John Kerry is to take over as US Secretary of State, with the proclaimed intention of coming here and seriously pushing for resumption of the same negotiations. And also the British and French, with their designs of a new Middle East diplomatic initiative in which they want to involve the whole of Europe, as soon as a new government is established in Israel. Would anyone think about such issues and such initiatives when Israel embarks on the 2013 Syria War on the pattern of the 1982 Lebanon War, or perhaps on the First Syria War simultaneously with the Third Lebanon War?

And the entanglement which will follow afterwards? We will think about them  afterwards.

In short: Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

What future, exactly, did we vote for?

A week before the elections, I happened to get a glimpse of Israeli politics from the perspective of the other side of the continent of Asia. Japanese people  have quite a few problems of their own, especially their new Prime Minister who is playing with fire and escalating a confrontation with China over a group of islands where no one lives. "He is our Netanyahu" was how several of the  Japanese activists I met described him. Still, it turns out that quite a few people in Japan feel worried and concerned about the policies of the Israeli Netanyahu and about the continuing Israeli occupation of the Palestinians and the possibility that a flare-up in the Middle East would entail catastrophic effects well beyond the region. A considerable audience turned out at the University of Tokyo to hear what I – as well as Dr. Walid Salem of East Jerusalem – had to say.

The fast Japanese trains brought me to Hiroshima, where I spoke not far from the spot where in August 1945 the nuclear fireball exploded in the center of town and raised the temperature to 6000 degrees. A flourishing city, completely rebuilt physically but with its people still bearing a deep trauma and dedicated to spreading peace in the world. There and in Osaka, Japan's second largest city, I heard people concerned about our situation here and determined to act to achieve a solution. There are such people, and quite a few, there and in Europe and in America and all over the world, people who think it's their problem, and that it cannot be left only to the Israelis and the Palestinians. On the way back, during a short stopover at the airport of the Korean capital Seoul, I glanced at a local newspaper in English that someone had left and found a headline about the dire warnings made by U.S. President Barack Obama, aimed at the citizens of Israel on the eve of their going to the polls.

When I returned to Israel three days before the election, I found the papers full of commentaries asserting that the elections have already been decided and that Netanyahu's victory was completely assured. I embarked on a sequence of last-minute phone calls to tell people that the result was far from predetermined and that it was vital to go to the polls and cast a vote and throw one more personal mote of dust on the Left side of the balance. And on the last night before the elections, there was one more effort to cover the walls of Tel Aviv and Holon with red and green stickers, "If the government is against the people, the people are against the government" and "No doubt - vote against Bibi".  A bit of influence on the atmosphere in the streets where the decision would walk on the decisive morning.

On elections day I went to Polling Station 65 in Holon, to sit on the ballot commission afternoon shift – from three PM until the end of the vote count late at night. Polling Station 65 is located in the Shazar Elementary School on the Martyrs of Cairo Street. The street was named after the Egyptian Jews who in the 1950's paid with their lives when Israeli Military Intelligence agents lured them into taking part in provocative acts of espionage and sabotage. Once,  this affair had turned the Israeli political system upside down, nowadays hardly anyone takes an interested in the origin and meaning of the street's name. Outside the gates of the school a young man is crying out at the top of his voice: "Vote for the Shas Party! For the sake of the Torah! For the sake of Our Master, the Great Sage  Rabbi Ovadia Yosef! Vote Shas!"

We are sitting behind a long table in the school library, at out backs are shelves crammed with books on the history of the Zionist movement. Voters show their ID and go behind the screen.  Some of them emerge immediately with the voting envelope, some linger for long. "Why are there so many parties, even in America they make do with two," complained a man of about fifty with a heavy Russian accent. "What does it matter, as long as our voting slip was there" replies his wife.

"Are you a leftist? A real leftist, one of those going to demonstrate with the anarchists in Bil'in and confronting the army?" asks the ballot commissioner sitting next to me. "Certainly, I have a lot of friends in Bil'in" I reply. "Oh dear, I was there as a reserve officer. We might have met already, even if we were not introduced." The debate is cut short when a whole family arrives to vote and their names need to be located on the voters' roll. In the breaks in between voters, Left and Right ballot commissioners drink coffee and share the snacks they had brought with them.

A young woman comes in with a child of about three in a carriage. She is bored  when the mother goes behind the screen, but gets excited with the opportunity to drop the envelope in the ballot box slot. "Just so, dear, exactly like dropping coins in your little savings box" says the mother. "What a lovely child" says an  admiring ballot commissioner "in fifteen years she'll vote for herself." "If this  country still exists by then. Let's see the results tonight" says someone. "What did you say? How dare you say such a thing!" yells the mother, grabbing  the child and storming out.

From time to time we listen to the radio. There are hints of unexpected developments. Likud leaders are concerned about high voter turnout in left-wing strongholds. Our polling station is in a right-leaning  area, and the movement of voters seems rather sparse. "But among the Arabs the turnout is  low" my neighbor comforts himself. He tells me that he intends to move soon to a West Bank settlement. "A real villa for just eight hundred thousand Shekels. Where in Metropolitan Tel Aviv can you dream of such a thing?" "Don't make long-term plans for this villa, eventually you'll get evacuated." "Once upon a time Titus and the Romans evacuated us, in the end we came back." "Do you want to wait another two thousand years?".

Ten PM. The exit polls, exciting news. Lapid, Lapid. But there is little time to listen. We need to count the votes right here. There are precise and rigorous procedures, which require everybody's full attention. Before opening the envelopes they have to be counted, and the number compared with the number of voters. The chairwoman opens an envelope and announces the name of the party whose slip was inside, and it is recorded in two parallel lists. The final tallies are checked against each other, checked again and again to make sure there is no mistake. After midnight we take the duly signed result sheets to the regional balloting center established at the basketball stadium on Golda Meir Street, where a crowd of hundreds of ballot commissioners are impatiently waiting to deliver their results.

Finally at home in front of the late night TV broadcast. Netanyahu's victory speech sounded more like a funeral oration. Roving TV crews and  commentators in the studio immediately shift their focus back to the Lapid  Festival. There can be no doubt that Yair Lapid is the big winner of the evening, the Man of the Hour, the new kingmaker of Israeli politics. How come we did not see this was where things were heading? Meanwhile, some good news, Meretz doubled its parliamentary strength, while the racist Michael Ben Ari did not pass the vote threshold. The Central Elections Committee had not disqualified him, but the voters did. All in all, the evening ends better than we were afraid of.

Meanwhile, foreign ministries around the world are making urgent calls to their embassies in Israel: "Who is Yair Lapid?". International TV networks are begging for an interview with him. So really, who is Yair Lapid? Seemingly, everyone who lives in this country and sees TV and reads the papers here knows exactly who he is:  a TV personality and the son of a TV personality, a politician and the son of a politician, member of a second generation in the creation of new political parties from scratch. And yet, how did this man we all knew become suddenly such a glittering and dazzling star?

Many commentators have noted the link with the social protest movement of the summer of 2011, the hundreds of thousands who went out into the streets and chanted "The People Demand Social Justice!" and after a few months faded away as if they had never been. And now, so we are told, they emerged and came to the polls, and it was Yair Lapid who managed to channel their protest into his brand of electoral politics protest. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that Yair Lapid gave an expression to a very specific facet of that protest.

Already at the time itself there were two distinct trends, two competing narratives in the Social Protest Movement, and both could be discerned in the leaflets distributed at the tent encampment on Rothschild Boulevard and in the placards carried in the mass demonstrations and the divergent speeches delivered from the podium.

There were demonstrations and protesters who spoke on behalf of "The People", an abstract concept perceived as including just about everybody:    Ashkenazis and Mizrahis, Jews and Arabs, left-wingers and right-wingers,  peace seekers as well as settlers, students and academics and high-tech enthusiasts together with hard-pressed manual workers earning less than  the minimum wage - everybody except the handful tycoons at the top who suck everybody's blood, and the government of tycoons' lackeys. It was demanded that these tycoons be heavily taxed, and the money used to fund an Israeli Welfare State, high-quality social services and education and health for all.

This was the banner taken up by Shelly Yachimovich of the Israeli Labor Party. With great perseverance and conviction, she hoped that this would prove the  way to break the traditional boundaries of the Israeli political system and bring into the Labor Party fold masses of impoverished traditional Likud voters who, more than anyone else, have an interest in a Welfare State and strong social services. A nice idea which just did not materialize. The breakthrough did not occur, right-wing voters in the slum neighborhoods and development towns did not cross the lines, and in this week's elections the Labor Party gained votes only in the same places and among the same social layers which have always supported it . Far too little to sustain Yachimovich's dreams of achieving a political overturn.

But the protest movement of summer 2011 also had a different current. Those who spoke on behalf of "The Middle Cass" - also a term which is vague and difficult to define. A frequently heard joke expresses well the spirit: "In this country we have one third of the population who work, and one third who pay taxes, and one third who serve in the army - the problem is that it is always the same one third...". In fact, this is aimed especially at the ultra-Orthodox who, it is asserted, do not work and do not pay taxes and do not serve in the army, a deadweight under which the Middle Class in groaning. And this spirit was expressed by talented television presenter Yair Lapid. His late father Yosef (Tommy) Lapid had started once a party which dealt wit much the same issue.

Yair Lapid, establishing the "Yesh Atid" (There is a Future) Party and running it for a year until the elections, has already surpassed the achievements of his father. He did achieve what Shelly Yachimovich failed to do, getting the adherence of a significant portion of Likud voters (more affluent ones) and leaving Binyamin Netanyahu a battered, bruised and weakened Prime Minister. As all commentators agree, Netanyahu does not have a real option of forming  a government without Lapid and his party. He has no choice but to embrace Lapid as a primary and senior partner in his new cabinet. For his part, Lapid hastened to return the favor and deny outright any idea of participating in an anti-Netanyahu Block. But what use will Lapid make of the position of power which fell into his hands?

Lapid had chosen to open his elections campaign at the settlement of Ariel, and put forward the difference between "settlement blocs" which are considered legitimate and acceptable, as against "isolated settlements" in which there should be no more investment of money. (In the elections he got  ten percent of the vote in Ariel...). In general, during the campaign Lapid - like most of party leaders in these elections - avoided making statements on the Palestinians and concentrated on a "civil agenda".  In recent weeks, however, he did express some concern about the sustained international condemnation of Israel following the settlements building spree in general and in the highly  sensitive E-1 area in particular.

As my colleague Haim Baram writes today, the hundreds of thousands of supporters of "There is a Future" may not care much about the fate of the Palestinians under occupation in itself, but they are not willing to sacrifice their standard of living for a crazy settlement project or a dangerous adventure in  Iran. Unwilling to lose cultural and academic links in Europe and North America, they are not willing to give Netanyahu a green light for a head-on confrontation with President Obama.

And so, as the media reports, "There is a Future" will condition its entry into the government coalition not only on "sharing the burden" – i.e. taking the ultra-Orthodox into the army – but also on resuming negotiations with the Palestinians. The new MK Ofer Shelah – Lapid's close personal friend who together with him moved from journalism into active politics - stated firmly that this is not about empty talks, but serious negotiations leading to the signing of an agreement with the Palestinians and its implementation in practice.

Similar things were said by another of the new party's leaders – Ya'akov Perry, former security chief turned a very successful businessman, who like other former heads of the Shabak security service developed afterwards fairly dovish views. He stated that "the Palestinians are definitely partners to an agreement, even if they are difficult partners" and that Israel should come up with "a divorce agreement" which will put an end to Israeli rule over them. He added that "Yair Lapid is perfectly suitable to serve as Foreign Minister, and he could put an end to the international isolation of Israel."

Rabbi Shai Piron, Lapid's number two and a bit less of a dove (himself a resident of the settlement of Oranit) also elaborated on the same subject: "The concept of two states for two peoples is our one and only entry permit into the  world in which we live. Without this, we will be outcasts and pariahs. This is, provided that there will be no Right of Return in any form, that Jerusalem is Israel's capital and that under no condition will settlement blocs be evacuated. (...) three months ago the Prime Minister vowed to topple the Hamas regime and mobilized 60,000 troops. But then he got a call from Hillary Clinton and refrained from entering Gaza. He understood that Israel's standing in the world must be preserved".

"So, are you going to be Netanyahu's key to the world?" asked the interviewer, and Rabbi Piron confirmed "Yes, Netanyahu needs our key to our world" (Ma'ariv, Jan. 25, 2013).

So, is the aim to end the international isolation of Israel, or to really deal with the Palestinians? Would the main role of Foreign Minister Lapid be to travel around the world, make use of his talents as a former TV anchor and tell  diplomats and statesmen things which they would enjoy hearing (especially after the years of Avigdor Lieberman in this position)? Or is it going to be a real and sincere effort to reach an agreement and implement it? To a large extent, this would depend on the governments and leaders whom Lapid will encounter in the U.S., Europe and the rest of the world. But to some extent it would certainly depend on Yair Lapid himself and whom he chooses as his allies.

The Jewish Home Party, also one of the surprises of this election, is according to many "a natural coalition partner" for Yair Lapid's party, since it shares much of the same "civil agenda".  Number 10 on their list is Orit Struk, one of the settlers living in enclaves at the heart of Palestinian Hebron. Orit Struck is  well known for heading the "Judea and Samaria Human Rights Organization" whose activities focus on the Human Rights of the settlers, and documenting each incident of police violence during the evacuation of illegal outposts. 

On the after the elections, something happened at al-Arub, a Palestinian community located a few miles north of the settler enclave in which the new MK Orit Struk resides. An IDF officer and his driver were driving by on the  highway, embarked on a private pursuit of Palestinian stone throwers and opened fire, killing the 22-year student Lubna Munir Hanash. She was the sixth Palestinian civilian to be killed by Israeli gunfire in the past month. The initial investigation conducted by the army showed that she did not endanger them in any way whatsoever, and that it is very doubtful if their shooting was justified.  Will they be prosecuted? That is also highly doubtful. What is certain is that this incident will get no mention from the Settler Human Rights organization headed by Struk.

So, what will be the situation at the time of the next elections to the Knesset of Israel, due in 2017 - the precise year of the fiftieth anniversary of the occupation? Will the settlers still reside in armed enclaves at the heart of Occupied Territory, and actively participate behind their barbed wires in the Israeli democracy of which their Palestinian neighbors have no share? Will Yair Lapid's political tenure end with the sum total that the ranks of the army of occupation shooting down Palestinians will come to include also ultra-Orthodox soldiers, laying down the Talmud and taking up the gun instead? If so, Lapid will remain a marginal footnote, and the "There is a Future" party will not have much of a future.

On election night, shortly after hearing of the dimensions of his victory, Yair Lapid said in the victory speech to his party's gathered activists: "Tonight, a heavy responsibility was placed on our shoulders."

Indeed, a heavy responsibility. Perhaps much heavier than Yair Lapid himself yet realizes.

Perhaps with a lot of luck

Opinion polls without number. Several polls per week, almost one every day. Israel's political system is addicted to opinion polls, perhaps even more so than in other countries. Is it really certain that Binyamin Netanyahu will go on being Prime Miinister of Israel? Or is everything still open? Can things still change drastically during the two and half weeks remaining until Election Day? Can the continuing fall of the Likud Party in the polls plus the increasing tendency of oppositional forces to unite into an impressive large bloc, create a new reality?

Among the flood of polls striving to predict the results which would be published on the morning of January 23, a slightly different survey – testing fundamental, long-term positions. On the initiative of the American Jewish billionaire Danny Abraham, who is for many years active in efforts to promote a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, two major Israeli polling institutes were charged, those of Minna Tzemach and Rafi Smith, to check – each one separately and without knowing of the other - how the citizens of Israel would vote in the case that their government asks them to approve by referendum an agreement designed to put an end to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

Respondents were presented with detailed outlines of the agreement in question:


·    Two states - Israel for the Jewish people and Palestine for the Palestinians;
·    Palestinian refugees having the right to return only to their new country;
·    The Palestinian state would be demilitarized;
·    The boundaries would be based on the 1967 lines with exchanges of equal-sized territory. Those exchanges would take into consideration Israel's security needs and would retain the large settlement blocs in Israeli hands;
·    Jewish Jerusalem would be under Israeli sovereignty and the Arab neighborhoods would be under Palestinian sovereignty;
·    The Old City would be under neither side's sovereignty, but rather would be administered jointly by Israel, the Palestinians and the United States;
·    The agreement would be implemented only after the Palestinians held up all the obligations at their end, especially the war on terror, and the United States approved of the agreement.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/poll-most-rightist-israelis-would-support-palestinian-state-dividing-jerusalem.premium-1.490926

The two polling institutes got similar results: if and when a government is established in Israel which will achieve an agreement with the Palestinians (and the Americans) on such a  basis, it will gain the support of no less than two-thirds of the citizens of Israel. Furthermore, such an agreement would also gain support of the majority among the voters of the two main right-wing parties. 57% of the voters of the ruling Likud Party, 47% among those of Naftali Bennett's Jewish Home Party, the  rising star in the ultra-nationalist constellation who is challenging Netanyahu from the right.

It thus seems that somewhere in the misty future, the citizens of Israel might vote overwhelmingly in favor of a peace agreement with the Palestinians. But in the here and now, at the general elections due to take place in Israel two and a half weeks from now, the citizens - according to all polls up to today – seem likely to give a clear Knesset majority to the parties which strongly oppose such an agreement.

More than half of the Likud voters are willing in principle to support a peace agreement with the Palestinians based on 1967 borders. But there is no reason to suppose that in practice this would deter them from going to the polls and giving a mandate to Prime Minister Netanyahu, who staunchly opposes the same boundaries and who was willing to enter into a public confrontation over it with the President of the United States. Almost half of the supporters of the Jewish Home Party are ready in principle to support an agreement with a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders, but this is no impediment to their empowering Naftali Bennett, who is altogether opposed to the establishment of a Palestinian state in whatever boundaries, and whose plan calls for annexing sixty percent of the West Bank and leaving the Palestinians enclosed in a collection of narrow enclaves, with "autonomy under the supervision of the IDF and Shin Bet" (sic). Half of the voters for both these parties are willing in principle to support a peace agreement with the Palestinians,  but in practice they are about to fill Knesset seats with dozens of extreme right Members as well as those from the even more extreme right, who are completely opposed to even the most petty and cosmetic of concessions.

The fact is that most of the Israeli public completely believe what they had been repeatedly told over the past twelve years: there is no partner, the Palestinians do not want peace, there is no chance for peace, and all talk of peace is a pipe dream.

In short: if an Israeli government ever reaches a peace agreement with the Palestinians and presents it as a fait accompli to the approval of the Israeli public, the public will give its blessing to such a government and to such an agreement. But the Israeli public will not lift a finger to bring such a government into being or to get the government to sign such an agreement. The public would not come out en masse into the streets to demand peace, nor provide a parliamentary majority to the parties which support peace. The public would wait for somebody to once upon a time present it to them ready made.

So, how is it ever going to happen? Probably we need help from outside, a great lot of it. You can sometimes hear diplomats - especially American ones – saying things like  "We can't replace the parties themselves, we can't want an agreement more than the parties want it." But otherwise it will just not work. The International Community must get involved, far more than it ever was – if only because assorted religious and nationalist fanatics, playing with fire very near to a very sensitive powder keg, are not a regional problem but a global one.

An international involvement is needed – an involvement far stronger, far more intensive than ever before, of all who can in any way get involved. The President of the United States should get involved and push hard and refuse to be intimidated by powerful Congressional lobbies. The leaders of Europe and Japan, and Russia and China and anyone else holding any kind of leverage should make maximum use of it. And civil society organizations throughout the world should join the effort and work from below wherever they can. And Jews worldwide need to realize that the way to help Israel and ensure  its future is not by following orders and directives emanating from the government offices in Jerusalem. Quite the contrary.

And then, if all of us have a lot of luck, eventually an agreement will be signed, and the citizens of Israel will vote and approve it by a large majority and will accept the need to get out of the Territories which were under Israeli rule for decades and never became part of Israel. There would be no outburst of great enthusiasm, and we will probably witness no dancing in the streets. Rather, it would be a majority united by a sober hope - "Well, the whole world pressured us, and the government probably knows what they are doing. Let's give it a chance and see how it goes, maybe after all we will have some peace and quiet."

The Palestinians, in their own referendum at the same time, will have to accept that their cherished dream, the dream of the Return to hundreds of cities and villages destroyed in 1948, will remain a dream. A harsh and painful concession. There will certainly be no dancing in the streets there, and yet they too  are likely to give the agreement a chance in a spirit of sober hope. "Well, it's probably the maximum we could have gotten, let's give it a chance and see how it works out. Maybe after all the Occupation would really end and we would really and truly have a state." And then? We will certainly not live in Heaven, but maybe we can start to build a normal life on both sides of the border between the state of Israel and the State of Palestine.

All of this, in the best case and assuming all of us have a lot of luck. One can certainly think of much worse possibilities.

An order on which a black flag flies

"In my government there will not be a minister who supports soldiers'  refusal of orders" declared Prime Minister Netanyahu at the beginning of this week, and his words got banner headlines in the papers. It has been long since the last time that soldiers' refusal got to the focus of public attention in this country. And all due to Naftali Bennett.

A few weeks ago I took a long ride in a taxi, and in talking with the driver I found out he was among the first of the Israeli military refusers. In the early 1970's, when the West Bank military government and settlement movement were brand new, he was called up for reserve duty in the city of Hebron, was ordered to accompany Rabbi Moshe Levinger in the streets of Hebron and refused to obey and got sent to a military prison. At the time, this kind of act was not published and did not get into the media at all. "I'm not a political person. It is just that this Levinger is a bastard. He was going around in Hebron marketplace and overturn the Arab vendors' stalls. I told my commanding officer that I did not join the army to help bastards like that."

In the early years of the occupation, refusers were few and isolated. The poet Yitzhak Laor spent time behind bars at the beginning of his literary career, and Giora Neumann was repeatedly jailed and graffiti calling for his release remained for many years afterwards on the streets of Tel Aviv. The organized refusal movement, began in June 1982 when Defense Minister Ariel Sharon launched Operation Peace for Galilee which became the First Lebanon War and later became known as the War of Deception.

It was the time when soldiers heard their Prime Minister Menachem Begin stating on the Knesset floor that the army will not go deeper than forty kilometers into Lebanon and looked at the map and saw that they were already on the outskirts of Beirut, at least a hundred kilometers from the Israeli border. And they sung "Go to Lebanon/Fight for Sharon/Return in a coffin"(in Hebrew it rhymes).  And a few months later they were ordered to shoot flares over the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila and then found that they had illuminated the path of those who indiscriminately slaughtered hundreds of men and women, elderly and children.

Sharon's followers dismissed it as "Just Arabs massacring Arabs", but resentment and disgust of the war grew ever higher. Thousands signed a petition declaring their refusal to go to Lebanon, entitled "Yesh Gvul" – translated as both "There is a Border" and "There is a Limit". It was in 1984 that I went to the  military prison for the first time, when I refused to take part in escorting  supply convoys to the military outposts established throughout South Lebanon.

In December 1987 the Palestinians revolted and demanded to have the right which Israelis long enjoyed, the right to be a free people in their own country. It was just as the occupation became twenty years old, and at the time it seemed that twenty years was a long time, even that it was too long. There were Israelis who considered the Palestinians right in their aspiration to be free, Israelis who could not wholeheartedly take part in the army's operations aimed at suppressing the Palestinians and keeping them under occupation. Again, thousands signed the re-launched and extended Yesh Gvul refusal petition, and some spent time in prison instead of going into battle against the stone throwing youths.

In April 1988 I was doing a term of military reserve service and on the evening news I heard of soldiers forcing a Palestinian passer-by to climb an electricity pole and with his bare hands remove the Palestinian flag flown on it, whereupon he was electrocuted and died. On that night I went through the camp where I served and I wrote on 117 tanks, trucks and forklifts the following words: "Soldiers of the IDF, refuse to be occupiers and oppressors! Refused to serve in the Occupied Territories!".

After I was apprehended by Military Police Investigative Arm, the Southern Command Court Martial sent me to three months' imprisonment and also demoted me from corporal to private. And after another round of confrontation with the military authorities and a hunger strike in prison I was taken to a military psychiatrist who prescribed a psychiatric discharge from service. At that time I wrote a letter to the Army Chief of Staff: "If, in the army under your command, my conscience is considered to be madness, than I'm proud to be crazy."

In 2002 my son Uri got to the age of eighteen at the height of the Second intifada, and took the decision to refuse to join an army of occupation. I accompanied him during six months that he went in and out and in and out of the military prison, again and yet again, until a military committee declared him "unfit for military service" (which he is). He was lucky - five of his fellow refusers ended up facing a court martial and spending more than two years in prison. Among them was Hagai Matar who later became known as a journalist and intrepid anti-occupation activist, most recently  also heading a workers' union.

This was also when the Courage to Refuse movement flourished, a special breed of Zionists who demonstrated with large banners stating "Refusal of the Occupation is Zionism." And there was David Zonshein, the paratrooper officer who specifically wanted and indeed demanded of military authorities to court martial him for his refusal to serve in the Occupied Territories, which would have ended with his being sent for years behind bars - and, oddly, the army high command vehemently refused to take up the challenge.

http://www.calpeacepower.org/0101/refusnik.htm

A year later came the Pilots' Letter, whose signatories announced that they would refuse to bomb Palestinian cities. They did not yet know that in January 2009  other Israeli pilots, of a bit less sensitive conscience, would go out to bomb Gaza and manage to kill 1300 people in three weeks.

Altogether, during the forty-five years of the Israeli occupation over the Palestinians, there were thousands of refusers and objectors – conscripts  and reservists, young people at the start of their adult life and family men in their forties, and in the past decade also quite a lot of women. Many of them spent time behind bars, at Military Prison 4 and Military Prison 6 and Women's Prison 400. The latest is Nathan Blanc of Haifa, who had so far three times gotten the order to join the occupation army and three times refused and was three times sent to prison where he is incarcerated at this moment.

http://maki.org.il/en/political/133-news/11601-natan-blanc-was-sentenced-to-a-new-20-day-term-in-military-prison

Naftali Bennett was certainly not among these refusers, neither among the early ones not among the latter. An occupation lasting forty-five years did not bother him at all, and he remained unmoved by the ongoing oppression of millions of disenfranchised people. And quite certainly he did not mind that the Israel Defence Forces became more and more The Settler Defense Forces, an army whose primary role is to take over the land, pass it on to settlers and to protect and maintain tight guard over the settlers as they take firm control of the land.

All this was, in fact, quite to Naftali Bennett's liking. He had joined the army, and served in the ranks of Sayeret Matkal and other elite units (and definitely was not among the Sayeret Matkal refusers of 2003) and reached the rank of major, and then went into high tech and took up a position in Netanyahu's bureau until they broke in an angry row. Then he took charge of the settlers' Judea and Samaria Council and struggled mightily against the construction freeze in the settlements and for their expansion and deepening without limit and without restraint. He also came up with a sophisticated ,plan for perpetuating the occupation and annexation of the settlements and all lands around them and thus confining Palestinians in tiny enclaves which would be "autonomous under supervision of the IDF and the Israeli Security Services" (in South Africa they used to call  it "Bantustans"). And in recent months Naftali Bennett managed to take over an old and rotten political party and make it seem brand new and fresh and attract the right-wing voters and pose a tangible electoral threat to the Likud Party of his former friend Binyamin Netanyahu.

But still, a refuser? His words on TV echoed throughout the country in the past week. If Major (res.) Bennett is ordered to evacuate settlers, he will regard that as an order on which a black flag flies. He would not be able to carry out such an order, he would ask his superior officer for a personal exemption from doing it, if no option presents itself he would also go to prison. After the big furor which followed, he half retracted his words, at least partially, and asked it to be clear that what he had said had been a cri de coeur, truly from the very depth of his heart.

A cri de coeur? Quite possibly it truly is such . One may grant that indeed in Naftali Bennet's eyes the settlements are dear and precious and downright sacred, and the idea of evacuating settlers arouses in him horror and repugnance, and that for him this a genuine issue of conscience.

Still, all that a politician says and does is liable to be suspected of having political motives. All the more so with what a politician says at a very hot moment of an elections campaign. And Naftali Bennett certainly has a political interest in flirting with refusal and insubordination. First of all, according to recent polls this seems to helps him capture the hearts of voters in his segment of the political spectrum, towards the January general elections. In the longer term, there might be a consideration of creating a kind of deterrence.

Bennett belongs to and represents a sector of the Israeli society which in recent years is taking an increasingly  prominent place in the army, among both conscripts and reservists as well as in the officer corps, over and above their proportion in the general Israeli citizen body. For an obvious reason: they are the only sector that truly identifies, ideologically and emotionally, with the role that the army plays vis-s-vis the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.

What if at some future time this military is asked to play a quite different role, under a different government pursuing a different policy? What if there would be on the agenda such issues as ending the occupation and establishing a Palestinian state and evacuation of the settlements? Would  observant soldiers and officers,   placed in key positions, in great numbers  take Naftali Bennett's road, declaring "It is not that I'm refusing, I just cannot do it, this is really a cri de coeur from the depth of my heart"?

And then, what? Should consideration and respect for people's acts of conscience be extended also to the conscience and sincere faith of the settlers and their supporters? And if so, how could an Israeli  government ever take the way of peace – either from its own free choice or out of  recognizing the facts of life in the international arena in which the state of Israel must survive? Was an impassable barrier erected here?

Here, history might come to our aid. All of this had happened before. France ruled Algeria for a hundred and twenty years, and sent hundreds of thousands of settlers to live there. The war which ended French rule in Algeria was harsh and bloody, more so than even the worst moments in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. French settlers in Algeria were bitterly opposed  to a French evacaution, and fought with all their might for the preservation of  l'Algérie Francaise, and they had quite a few supporters within the ranks of the French Army. Moreover, there were more than a million settlers. Even without any refusal of orders, had soldiers and officers been required to physically grab each and every settler and drag them on board a ship sailing off to France, the entire French Army would not have been equal to the task.

French President Charles de-Gaulle, the man who got France out of Algeria, did not dream of such foolishness. In 1962 he signed the agreement which ended French rule in Algeria. This agreement stipulated that French settlers were free to choose whether to return to France or remain in independent Algeria. In the second case they could choose between French citizenship, Algerian citizenship or dual citizenship. In practice, almost all of them chose to evacuate, getting by their own power on the ships leaving the coast of Algeria.

If ever an Israeli government takes the path of peace - either from its own free choice or out of  recognizing the facts of life in the international arena in which the state of Israel must survive – it can be assumed that it will do so using the De Gaulle Method. The settlers will receive in good time a notification of the date for the evacuation of the Israeli military and the enactment of full Palestinian control and sovereignty. They will be able to decide freely on their future, each in his or her own way. Those who wish could remain in Palestine and establish there a Jewish community. Those who prefer to leave together with the army will get free of charge furniture removal trucks to transport their belongings. No soldier or officer will get the repugnant order to go in and drag them off by force.

Naftali Bennett and his fellows will not be faced with the difficult dilemma. They will not have to ask for a personal or a group exemption, nor face the possibility of refusing to obey an order. Will that satisfy them? That is far from sure.