by Orli Goldklang
Even Ran Edelist is no longer promising us that there will be peace, just a transfer of the terror lines to new borders, nearer to the centers of population. To reject this idea is not a messianic response, but a well-considered response
After the with thunderous failure of the Oslo Accords to the
beat of Hamas’ cannons, and after the concept of unilateral disengagement was
shattered with the necessity for repeated military operations in Gaza, now, the
settler Right is once again expected to surrender its principles and its word
view, this time for “the sake of cohesion within the people and the country”.
At the end of his emotional missive, after all of the dubious assumptions that
we are expected to align ourselves with, Ran Edelist asks the settlers to
accept the principle of land for unity. Edelist, a Peace Now person, no longer
offers us regional calm nor does he use the word “peace” even once in his
article, except to mention the name of the movement of which he was a founding
member. On the contrary, he offers us war, and just moves it to borders that he
and his friends will be willing to defend together with us. The new border –
which will bring the enemies’ missiles within a distance that will threaten Ben
Gurion Airport and Route 6, Kfar Saba and Petah Tikvah – will not be free of terror,
just free of settlers. In any case, the price in blood that Edelist seeks to
prevent will be inevitable. Because of the very proximity of the new border to
crowded population centers, not only will the number of casualties not
decrease, they will even increase significantly.
Not only is the vision of peace missing from the article,
the potential partner for such an agreement – the Palestinians - is also
missing. While the settlers are demanded to open their eyes and emerge from the
blindness holding them in its grasp regarding the settlements’ contribution to
regional unrest, it seems that it is even clear to the writer that our promised
partner does not play according to the rules of the game. After Arafat and his
successor, Abu-Mazen turned a cold shoulder to Barak’s and Olmert’s, far-reaching
gestures it is difficult for even the most entrenched people on the Left to promise
a rosy future in the Middle East. The reasons for this are still under dispute:
we see that radical Islam is waging a world war in various continents, while
Edelist, on the contrary, sees the settlements as an existential danger. He
feels that the establishment of communities in Judea and Samaria pulls him
unwillingly into a dangerous gamble and suggests that we should be pulled into
an even more dangerous gamble under the borders of the ’67 lines. While there
is still a Palestinian yearning for Jaffa and Haifa, Acre and the Galilee – the
randomly defined Green Line continues to star as a magic solution to all the
dangers that the State of Israel is up against.
There is also
fluidity among the Arabs
“You will agree with me that there is something basically amiss
when a country conducts an all-out war against children who stab people and old
ladies who run people over with cars”, asks Edelist. It seems that there are
many more who would agree that there is something wrong with the basic
educational system and the faith that sends children out to stab people and old
ladies to run them over. True, you don’t have to be a bleeding heart, but it is
better to be intelligent and understand that there is no excuse or
justification for terror. The long-suffering Jewish people, even in its periods
of despondence and lacking an assured horizon of continued existence, has never
taken up these violent means against regimes that it lived under. Not in the
Islamic countries of the previous millennium, and not in Europe of the previous
century.
Edelist does not promise us that we will beat our swords
into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks, but he prefers that the next
war be waged against a regular army, and not against children or old women. On
the question of who that army would be – a Palestinian army or Da’esh [Islamic
State] – he does not bother to answer, and rightly so. If there is one sentence
that we can both sign on, it would be the statement that “there is nothing like
the Middle East to prove how volatile today’s existence is”. This is true
regarding the future of the settlements, as the “etrog”, Ariel Sharon,
demonstrated. It is true regarding the entire Arab area, as demonstrated by
Al-Baghdadi’s group.
Ultimately, the conflict that the writer of the article
seeks to solve is not with the Palestinians, but with the various international
bodies. In his article, Edelist reminds us of the limitations of the State of
Israel’s power, which is subject to the external pressures that he and his
cronies create with their own hands. The Israeli Left has fallen into bad
habits – pushing and encouraging a boycott on its own country, and then warning
against the process of “South Africanization” that will befall all of us. If the
bodies that are threatening us now with recognizing a Palestinian state had stood
shoulder to shoulder with us against the evil decree – and such a decree is indeed
both bad and dangerous – we would not have had to hear threats of civil war, or
of being defined as war criminals. To our great misfortune, even the cohesion
that Edelist promises us within the boundary of the Green Line, does not have a
strong basis. Ask Zochrot. Ask Breaking the Silence. Ask the African Refugee
Development Center.
Despite the polite request, even with a fourth and fifth
reading of the article I was not able to feel the sectorial disgrace that I was
supposed to, not even the collective shame. Bottom line – the fight between the
Palestinians and Israel is not over the West Bank, but over the entire area
between the sea and the Jordan River. The Israeli Left, both the radicals and
the moderates, have not had any proven, dizzying success in the area of making
predictions in the Middle East. The Right, to the contrary, unfortunately has.
All of the threats that were predicted by the disparaged prophets of doom have
come true. They cannot be charged, as they usually are, with faulty vision.
We also have
determination
In our region it is often claimed that the Right has no
alternative, but reality proves that on the contrary, it is the Left that does
not create an alternative vision for the existing situation. We have already
tried its dangerous and armed peace agreements, despite all the cries of “Don’t
give them rifles”. These weapons were ultimately turned against us, and even as
we bled, we were demanded to surrender more and more. The refusal to make
additional concessions does not stem from a messianic concept, or a stubborn insistence
to hold onto land at any price; it is a considered step in light of the
consequences of all of the previous withdrawals. As long as the Palestinian
people do not accept the existence of the State of Israel, but hope for its
elimination, the terror will continue and will punish us mercilessly. Until
today, the Palestinians have never been impressed by the idea of the Green Line
as a border, and they will not begin to be impressed by it even if the vision
of the Left comes to be.
As Edelist noted, the existing situation is based on the
Palestinians’ determination. It is a good thing that opposite them stands an
absolute majority of people no less determined, that is ready to stand in the
front line for the sake of the stable and secure existence of the State of
Israel. Contrary to Edelist, it does not entertain the illusion that uprooting
the settlements would promise a paradise.
Orli Goldklang
Source: Makor Rishon Newspaper, Dec. 18, Issue 958, Diokan section, pg. 5
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
No comments:
Post a Comment