Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 42, No. 21, Ed. 1 Thursday, June 2, 1988 Page: 3 of 24
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THURSDAY. IUNE 2. 7988 TEXAS IEWISH POST 3
■♦.f.
Features
initiate a peace process
with Jordan proved to
be too little, too late.
As foreign minister,
Peres continued to pur-
sue negotiations with
the Arabs. But then
Shamir was prime
minister and he had no
interest whatsoever in
the negotiations. And
the peace movement
had nothing to say
because Peres was —
however futile the ef-
fort — trying to get
something started.
The uprising in Gaza
and the West Bank, and
the government's
response to them, posed
obvious problems for
those opposed to the
occupation. First, the
architect of the govern-
ment's response to the
uprising is Labor's own
Yitzhak Rabin. Rabin's
game, partly out of
conviction and partly
out to dispel the notion
that Labor is somehow
"soft," is to outflank the
Likud by applying
necessary force in the
territories to quell the
uprising. The opposi-
tion can't criticize
Rabin without driving a
wedge through the
heart of Labor and fur-
ther dividing the forces
it has to rely on to take
peace initiatives.
What the opposition
to the occupation knows
— even if it cannot be
said publicly and may
not even oe aDie to face
the reality of it — is that
it cannot exist and cer-
tainly can't have any
impact without Labor.
The nature of Israeli
politics is such that no
movement can exist
outside a party; and the
last time supporters of
withdrawal from the
territories left Labor,
they got the Likud.
Now, as elections ap-
proach, the opposition
has no more reason to
expect that a gover-
nment more favorable
to a settlement will be
elected than it had
before. Israel is divided
The peace movement
— Peace Now is the
leading organization —
has remained a
movement of yuppie
Ashkenazis. It has made
only a minor dent in the
Sephardic community,
the Likud's primary con-
stituency. And nothing
that Peace Now does
gives any indication
that it has any plan or
strategy for winning
support in the Sephar-
dic community.
Indeed, despite the
good intentions and
purity of method
displayed by the mem-
bers and leadership of
Peace Now, the organi-
zation remains little
more than a slogan and
a state of mind. The
■ Shimon Peres
leadership has resisted
forming any kind of
permanent organization,
stating any kind of
program or developing
any kind of strategy.
Rather, as its current
leader, Tsoli Reshef,
made clear in a recent
interview in the Israeli
paper Yediot Ahronot,
the organization does
not want to stake out a
position on issues until
a moment of decision is
at hand in order to
maintain as broad a
following as possible.
But then where does
leadership come from?
Peres showed himself
competent but not in-
spiring as prime
minister. Now, in
private meetings, he
professes and upbeat
message of hope but his
manner and bearing
suggest that he is worn
out and dispirited. The
intellectual core of the
peace movement — the
academics from the
country's universities
who describe control of
the territories variously
as a cancer and a
ticking time bomb —
have nothing to offer in
the way of an agenda or
program that will either
broaden or intensify the
appeal of the op-
position and hold out
the hope that its
position will one day
spur enough popular
support to elect a
government.
In fact, Israeli in-
tellectuals in recent
months have begun
making overt appeals to
the American Jewish
community to make its
views known in Israel.
These overtures, which
have an antecedent in
Peres' appeal to
American Jews to sup-
port his efforts on
behalf of an inter-
national peace con-
ference in the face of
Shamir's opposition,
only serve to illustrate
the weakness and
isolation of the Israeli
peace movement.
At a recent conferen-
ce on Democracy in
Israel sponsored by the
Israeli Diaspora In-
stitute of Tel Aviv
University, Israeli in-
tellectuals were for-
thright in telling
Americans that they not
only had a right but an
obligation to speak out
and do what they could
to help nudge Israel
toward the negotiating
table. This turn of even-
ts only illustrates the
despair and isolation
that the Israeli in-
telligentsia feels.
This appeal to
American Jewry isn't
likely to carry the day,
either. The Israeli peace
movement shows no in-
dication that it is
capable of doing
anything beyond
staging an occasional
mass demonstration
But that impotence
doesn't mean that
Israelis will have to live
forever with sporadic
Palestinian uprisings
and disorder in the
territories. Appeals to
morality and ideology
may fall on deaf ears,
but a harder reality is
beginning to make itself
known. Many, if not
most, of the settlers
who have moved to the
West Bank did not go
there for ideological
reasons but rather
because the Israeli
government offered
them housing at sub-
sidized prices.
Now, with the
uprising, these non-
ideological settlers are
finding themselves
isolated. Their friends
and relatives from the
other side of the Green
Line are not interested
in risking their win-
dshields — and perhaps
more — to come visit.
The market price of an
apartment in the terri-
tories reportedly is
declining. Few Israelis
go any longer to the Old
City in Jerusalem —
much less to or through
the West Bank — unless
they absolutely must.
How is it possible
then that the opposition
to the occupation is
unable to communicate
to the Israeli public the
irony — and more — of
a significant portion of
the Israeli Defense For-
ce's being taken away
from its defense duties
to put down an insur-
rection in territories
supposedly being held
because they are vital
to the defense of Israel?
Sooner or later
Israelis are going to ask
themselves a basic
question: What is the
value of this land? What
are we willing to pay to
continue to control it
and what are we getting
for it? The opposition
might have been asking
that question now, just
as it might have been
asking it for the past six
months. But it hasn't.
One other group of
Israelis has begun to
make its unease with
the occupation felt: the
high command of the
Israeli Defense Forces.
The army has had to
multiply its presence in
the territories ten-fold
in the past five months.
It has done so by
removing soldiers from
guarding the borders
and reducing training
time. Last month, the
army announced that it
was increasing from 45
to 60 days a year the
time that reservists in
infantry units must
spend in the army. This
additional time will cost
the army more money
— the cost of the in-
creased presence is
estimated to be tens of
millions of shekels an-
nually — will further
cut into training time
for reservists and, high
army officers fear, will
leave the army less
prepared to fulfill its
primary mission —
guarding Israel from
external attack.
No one claims that
the army cannot control
the territories in-
definitely But what
price are Israelis willing
to pay to do it? And for
how long? That is a
question Israelis have
not had to ask them-
selves before. Now, with
the uprising, it is a
question that will slowly
begin to register on the
consciousness of the
Israeli public.
But not, it would
seem, because of any
effort from the Israeli
peace movement. If
anything, it will be just
the opposite. In the end,
it may be the Israeli ar-
my working on the
government leadership
at one level and on the
population at large on
another that will bring
about a change in a
policy that continues to
strain Israeli society
economically, socially
and morally. And if that
should come to pass, it
will be the army and not
the purists of the Israeli
peace movement who
will be able to claim the
credit for having found
a way out of the box
that Israel has been in
for two decades.
■ Yitzhak Shamir
Peres' effort in the waning
months as prime minister to
initiate a peace process
with Jordan proved to
be too little, too late.
But then Shamir was
prime minister and he had no
interest whatsoever
in the negotiations.
And the peace movement had
nothing to say. . . .
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Wisch, J. A. & Wisch, Rene. Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 42, No. 21, Ed. 1 Thursday, June 2, 1988, newspaper, June 2, 1988; Fort Worth, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth754459/m1/3/?q=wichita+falls: accessed July 4, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .