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| Forty Years Later, Six Day War Still Shapes Middle East |
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June 29, 2006
Israelis Are Ready for a Divorce
By Pierre AtlasHAIFA, Israel-- For the past week I have been traveling around Israel with other American academics who study the Middle East, attending a series of seminars and meetings with Israelis and Palestinians from various academic, professional, political, and security backgrounds.
A few things have become clear as I've listened to experts in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa. The dream of the Israeli left, where Israel is welcomed into the region, everyone gets along and develops together economically, is decades or perhaps generations away from reality.
What is even clearer, though, is that the dream of the Israeli right, of a "Greater Land of Israel" stretching from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, is dead. The Jewish settler movement has lost its power to persuade--or to intimidate--Israeli policy makers and the nation's majority.
As Israeli pollster Tamar Hermann told our group, "there is a growing estrangement between mainstream public opinion and the settler movement." The vast majority of Israelis wants physical and psychological separation from the Palestinians and is willing to give up land to achieve it.
Separation is already becoming a stark reality with the "wall." The past 5 ½ years of violent conflict has produced broad support among Israelis for the construction of the security barrier, which is a fence in most places but a high cement wall near Palestinian population centers near Jerusalem and in the West Bank. The high tech barrier has played a critical role in reducing the number of suicide bombings over the past two years, even as it causes tremendous hardship for ordinary Palestinians.
Popular support for the "fence/wall" cuts across Israel's ideological spectrum. Hermann's survey research indicates that fully 80% of Israelis support its construction.
According to Marc Luria, founder of the grassroots organization "Fence for Israel," those who most oppose its construction are the Jewish settlers. They see--correctly--that the "wall" divides pre-1967 Israel from most of Judea and Samaria. Despite the fact that it cuts into Palestinian land here and there to include some settlements along the Green Line, the settlers understand that this Israeli-built barrier will sever the Jewish state from their dream of a Greater Land of Israel.
Within the next 10 years, Jews will become the minority between the Mediterranean and the Jordan. An emerging consensus understands that if Israel is to remain both a democracy and a Jewish state, it will need to end the occupation, withdraw to narrower borders and bring the Jewish settlers into pre-1967 Israel, thus increasing the Jewish population of a geographically smaller state.
Professor Asher Susser is director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University. He says that due to the demographic trends, "time is working for the Palestinians and against Israel. It is in Israel's interest to make territorial concessions even if they get nothing in return." Today, he said, "Israel has a greater stake in a two-state solution than the Palestinians do. That's why Israel is willing to do it unilaterally if necessary."
Indeed, recognition of this dilemma was a driving force behind Ariel Sharon's Gaza pullout, and is the central theme of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima party agenda. If Olmert's "convergence" project is carried through to completion, all Jewish settlements on the other side of the separation barrier, including those in Hebron and Kiryat Arba, will be dismantled.
Even Jerusalem will be on the table. Amir Chesin, a reserve colonel in the IDF who served as Arab Affairs advisor to former Jerusalem mayors Teddy Kollek and Ehud Olmert, doesn't go so far as to call for a re-division of Jerusalem, but told us that the eastern half of the city should have some sort of "functional sovereignty" in a future Palestinian state. Hermann's surveys indicate that support is steadily increasing among Israelis for giving up the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. And Susser boldly predicts that "Israel will withdraw from the West Bank and half of Jerusalem. It will happen in the next few years, I have no doubt."
Palestinians also want separation, although not on Israel's unilateral terms. Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, told us that a majority of Palestinians have long supported a negotiated two-state solution that includes recognizing Israel as a sovereign Jewish state. In his most recent poll, conducted just one week ago, 62% took this position.
Shikaki says that Palestinians are extremely pessimistic about the future. "The short term is grim, and the long term is grimmer." But both Israelis and Palestinians are tired of this conflict, and for the first time, it seems that majorities on both sides might be willing to live with less than what they want. Perhaps the future needn't be so grim after all.
