Whose West Bank?
Schnall, David
DAVID SCNAHL WHOSE WEST BANK? "You mean Elon Moreh?" I had called it Kadum, the name of the army base just below, but Zev was insistent on calling it by its "proper" name, the name by which...
...Not one inch," its leaders proclaim— both because of the imperatives of the Divine Promise as well as those of realpolitick...
...Other nations act in terms of what they consider to be their best interest...
...This concern for the conventions of "law-and-order" has also been expressed by those who feel that there should be more settlement, but only under government auspice...
...It wouldn't be the first time that Jews lived under Arab rule...
...It has also led, however, to a rejection of other values that have mattered to Israel...
...If they are, as they are often accused of being, "true believers," they are true believers with very sophisticated diagnostic capability, planning their tactics carefully and using their resources cleverly...
...Except, of course, that they have given up careers (most of them are professionals) and comforts to settle in this place...
...They point to the general unrest of West Bank Arabs, epitomized in the "Land Day" riots which took place on March 31, 1976, as a vindication of their tactics...
...Now for the first time we have to act in terms of what we consider to be our best interests...
...Hardly...
...By what right—if not the Eretz Yisrael idea—did the Third Aliyah people come here and establish Kiryat Anavim...
...This decline in the spiritual nature of Israeli society is attributed to "a general lack of affinity to Eretz Yisrael," the Land of Israel...
...Further, they hold that the Gush is also damaging the legitimacy of the Israeli authorities...
...Among those who have spoken out against the movement and its goals are religious and political leaders in Israel and abroad, high-level administrators in governmental and institutional positions, and a broad spectrum of intellectuals...
...Democracy can no more vote away Zionism, aliyah, settlement, than it can vote that people should stop breathing or speaking...
...This will, in itself, resolve many of our social problems...
...They are veterans of the B'nai Akiva youth organizations, often former residents of religious kibbutzim who saw action during the 1967 and 1973 Wars...
...They particularly note the activities of Shabtai Tzvi, the sixteenth-century messianic pretender who eventually converted to Islam...
...Rabbi Moshe Levinger, the Gush leader whose bespectacled visage has been the subject of caricature and derision, makes this very clear...
...Even within the religious camp there are many to whom the movement is repugnant...
...Quite clearly, the most controversial aspect of the Gush philosophy is its hard line on Palestinian rights and territorial concessions in the name of peace...
...They fear that should the Gush find, despite hitnachalut, that "the majestic kingdom of the King Messiah is not to materialize now...
...It is clearly at odds with the "vision" of which Rabbi Levinger speaks...
...I don't like living in the city...
...The resort to the conventions of "respectability and legality" among many who flaunted such institutions in the independence period is hypocritical and self-serving...
...For other secular sympathizers, the roots are of a different nature and the support is anything but unequivocal...
...The Gush is a Jewish movement, linked to Jewish history, whose value is the Jewish People...
...For the families of Elon Moreh, the politics of settlement are a distinctly secondary issue...
...We are open to any Jew— religious or not...
...members joined with settlement activists of all stripes at a convention at Kfar Etzion...
...Rabbi Yochanan Fried, a spokesman for the movement and director of its Diaspora section, explained: "K'dushah, holiness, is a concrete reality, not just a set of legal concepts...
...Many of the supporters of Gush policies come to their position out of purely political considerations and their perceptions of Israel's national interest...
...At this convention, the movement adopted its name and a loose organizational structure...
...You cannot simply go out and act on your frustrations...
...They argue that the movement is damaging the cause of peace by attempting to "limit the options" of the government and perhaps harm its credibility in negotiations with the United States...
...Perhaps the simplest and most common dispute covers not so much what the Gush does as the manner in which it does it...
...To this, Gush leaders counter that waiting "until the next election" is not a satisfactory form of redress...
...but if, hypothetically, it was given back to Jordan, that would not change its status as a part of historic 'Eretz Yisrael.' It would still be holy and we would continue to live here...
...Israelis, they argue, have lost their respect for "productive labor...
...Some part of their motivation has to do with the rejection of the materialism they perceive as growing in Israel's cities, and some part of it derives from a desire to be done with the distress of urban life, and some part from the desire to pioneer...
...I knew this even before 1967.1 got my education from , my movement, a settlement movement...
...There are only 30 of them, but they are not isolated...
...It was here that a town was reestablished after the 1967 War by the children of those who had been killed there in 1948, when it fell to Jordanian hands...
...What is important about Wo-dak's statement is that it reflects the capacity of the Gush to attract active support from the non-religious sector...
...The Gush, as might be expected, replies simply that it seeks to advance peace, not to impede it...
...Similar and equally disturbing comments have been made by British Chief Rabbi Im-manuel Jakobovits and the distinguished American scholar, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik...
...It is time to confront historic questions in preparation for this Redemption: what is the meaning of living as a Jew, living in Israel, the quality of our life and its relationship with other Jewish communities...
...I had called it Kadum, the name of the army base just below, but Zev was insistent on calling it by its "proper" name, the name by which it was called in the Bible...
...The trailer-camp village, which houses some 30 families, contradicts the policy of the Israeli government, and has become the focus of intense debate on West Bank settlement...
...it is the blind belief in peace of so-called realistic politicians that is religious/romantic mysticism—peace as a supreme value, as the one value worth dying for, as it were...
...In a recent interview, one such settlement activist, Aluf Dan Laner, asserted that at 8 o'clock one fine morning the Ka-dum settlers should be removed, and at 8:15—"I repeat: no more than 15 minutes later"—four settlements should be established at places that fit in with government policy...
...It is, in fact, a kibbutz established by members of Gush Emunim at the periphery of the Kadum military base just a few miles from Nablus...
...The significance of this location was not lost on them...
...They do not impress the visitor as either militant or mystical, either radical or rebellious...
...Despite this, their loyalties to Mafdal, the National Religious Party, have been severely strained...
...To quote a ranking Jewish Agency official: "We have established procedures in this country, procedures that are predicated on democracy, the rule of the majority...
...and in our case, peace as an immediately attainable value, in exchange for territory, in exchange for our recognition of the Palestinians...
...Arabs may live as a minority in the country with the rights of residents of the Land, but they have no right to the Land...
...Such a mentality leads to weak morale and a low self-image...
...But the core commitment that draws them here is hitnachalut—absolute religious conviction...
...Cut away the rhetoric, says the Gush, and you find an interest group arguing forcefully for its policies...
...Instead, their concerns are with child-rearing, with privacy, with economic and personal development...
...It is also the government's position which is in the minority, they argue, and its official pronouncements indicate that it is "running scared...
...will, like Shabtai Tzvi and his followers, discover that they no longer have roots in this Judaism and that they no longer have any interest in the continuation of this Israeli and Jewish reality...
...It was to sever its formal relationship with the N.R.P...
...But the fact is that this visitor to Elon Moreh was struck, again and again, by the conventionality of its people...
...Most of the members of Gush Emunim and all of its leaders have been schooled in the traditional institutions of religious Zionism...
...We are not a partisan movement...
...A Sabbatean sect...
...Instead, as a result of the Open Bridges, the Arabs of Israel as well as those of the West Bank have become umbili-cally linked to Amman...
...Whatever the underlying motivation of the settlers, their lives seem normal, their manner thoughtful...
...So says Jerusalem-born writer Yeshayahu Leibowitz...
...This clearly conforms with the belief, expressed by Justice Minister Haim Zadok, that such "illegal settlement" was a danger to Israel's democratic institutions and must "be rejected and prevented by all legal means, including force...
...We are a people that is especially linked to a vision...
...Anybody who knows history in general and our history in particular knows that it is this blind belief in peace which is dangerous...
...Too many of us are living in this land according to alien ideological transplants...
...They are all reminders of the Hitler Youth movements and the organized churches in Nazi Germany...
...Every piece of our Land is holy—a present from G-d...
...Though the leadership of the movement expresses a deep respect for the law and its authority, it is quite candid about its belief that hitnachalut is above the law—or, more properly, that it is the Law...
...It was the insistence upon such visionary rhetoric that created the internal conflict within the National Religious Party, which led to the creation of Gush...
...So, in the words of Zev: "Our first concern as Jews must be that what we are doing is right...
...If you don't agree with our policies then you must wait until the next election and choose a new government...
...And, in the meantime, there is housing to be built, children to be raised...
...And who is a more authentic interpreter of Rav Kook's thinking than his own son...
...It is easy to see how so powerful a theological identification with the Land might lead to a philosophy of hitnachalut and a willingness to sacrifice in its name...
...The only answer," he continues, "is settlement...
...In diplomatic circles, the nation is looked upon as a collection of international "schnor-rers," to use Rabbi Fried's words...
...They point further to a recent survey conducted by the Institute for Applied Social Research...
...If you do, then you must be prepared to suffer the consequences...
...And they'll respect us for it...
...All of Zionism," says this kibbutznik, "is based on Eretz Yisrael and settlement...
...The future...
...This seemingly arrogant pretension is irksome to many...
...They draw analogies to the events of Germany in the 'Twenties and early 'Thirties, where such movements were common...
...The territories taken during the 1967 War were not occupied, they were liberated...
...It represents, for even those far from Jewish ritual, a return to our roots...
...We are a political pressure group—and a spiritual movement...
...It appeared to have an appeal that transcended party lines, but it was distasteful to the very practical values of the party faithful...
...The use of phrases such as "national renaissance," "process of Redemption," "link to a vision," and "above the law"—all common to the rhetoric of Gush Emunim—are quite disturbing...
...Only the pioneering spirit can lead to a national rejuvenation that will set hearts aflame," Levinger continues...
...Gush was little more than a pressure faction within the N.R.P...
...Americans like people who stand up for themselves, and don't get down on their knees the minute pressure is applied...
...Further, the Gush maintains that it ought to be judged according to its pragmatic policy proposals, not in terms of its philosophic orientations...
...Are not such prescriptions unduly harsh and naive in their mysticism...
...They express displeasure with the crass partisanship and materialism that they sense in the party, a reflection—they feel—of Israeli society in general...
...Indeed, they are oddly middle class, conventional...
...The modern translation of the word is "settlement," a benign concept to be sure...
...As used by the settlers here, hitnachalut is a religious obligation which cannot be bartered away or forfeited...
...Gush Emunim (literally, the bloc of the faithful) traces its ideology and motivations to the thinking of the late Rabbi Abraham Kook...
...The Israeli government originally came into being, they argue, on the basis of illegal activity—underground violence, gun-running, undercover immigration, and the like...
...He did not write a systematic work, so it is wrong to lift selected passages from his writings and say: this is Rav Kook...
...It is the genuine belief of Gush leaders that a return to the pioneering spirit and the link to the Land will cure many of the ills they perceive in Israeli society...
...But the word derives from the Bible, and its connotation is the claiming of a heritage, of an inheritance...
...Not according to at least one Gush spokesman...
...Do they not injure the cause of peace in the name of a rather vague messianism...
...The Jewish national renaissance," he asserts, "is more important than democracy...
...There must be a link between this K'dushah and that of the Torah and the People...
...The fear exists that though Gush Emunim professes deference toward Israeli institutions, its confrontations notwithstanding, there may be others—particularly on the left—who would be inspired to take counteractions—and might not feel so deferential...
...If Gush activity has been met by a wave of support stemming from diverse sources, it has also been confronted with an equally variegated storm of opposition...
...It is, of course, difficult to cut away the rhetoric, since so many Gush leaders spend so much energy on hortatory statements...
...David Schnall writes on a variety of contemporary Jewish issues...
...They are like merchants in the marketplace...
...The days following the 1973 War were dark and unhappy ones...
...As Fried was later to note: "These religious parties are no longer spiritual...
...The focus of this opposition is diverse, but, in sum, it has come to include much of what the movement stands for: from religion to tactics, from ideology to politics, from mysticism to diplomacy...
...A counter-organization has developed, parallel to Gush, known as "Oz V'Shalom"—"strength and peace"—led by Orthodox intellectuals who question the policy prescriptions as well as the interpretations of Rav Kook that have been made by Gush Emunim...
...But if they start laying down hard-and-fast definitions on religious, social, and economic questions, many of us will most likely have to part ways with them...
...Says one secular Gush supporter, living at a Hashomer Ha-tzair kibbutz: "I am a secularist Jew, but I belong to 4,000 years of Jewish history...
...In order to prevent that from happening, they have embarked upon a program of confrontation, hoping to "limit the government's options...
...At its roots, our people know this...
...In particular, it is inspired by his son, Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook, and his staff at the Yeshiva which bears the Chief Rabbi's name— Mercaz Harav Kook...
...at the time, led and organized by the younger party members...
...Yitzchak is more pointed in his feelings...
...And Gush Emunim unites us all around Eretz Yisrael— "I see the Gush as a continuation and renewal of basic Zionism...
...If others, less purely motivated, choose to endanger the State by acting illegally, let the criticism be directed at those others...
...Moses, if such a person existed, copied from Hammurabi' and all that...
...They are not following Rav Kook in his very strong concern for other nations or in his all-embracing concern for all aspects of life...
...But peace can only come, the Gush argues, if Israel can achieve security in all its land...
...This also explains, they claim, the ambivalence in the government's treatment of their settlement: official embarrassment and rebuke coupled with covert benevolence...
...Approximately 30,000 supporters of the Gush Emunim movement took part in a march from Beth-El to Jericho just one year ago to press for retention of the occupied West Bank territory...
...When we studied Biblical values in school, we were always told: 'very nice, but not really original...
...The data indicate that a majority of the Israeli population favors settlement in the West Bank, and fully two-thirds are not opposed to the immediate annexation of that territory...
...The specter of two popular movements rising against each other outside the traditional governmental arenas is a chilling one, indeed...
...they...
...Photograph of Kadum settlement, Henri Bureau, Sygma Inset photograph of marchers, David Rubinger, © Time, Inc...
...The economy is depressed because of difficulties whose roots lie in the emphasis of the purely personal over that which is national...
...Idealists, to be sure, but with full awareness of the delicate political situation they have chosen as the arena for acting on their ideals...
...Mind you, that's true as long as the issue is Eretz Yisrael—that's what we non-Orthodox have in common with the others...
...To quote Hebrew University sociologist Janet O'Dea: "The Gush risks becoming a 'Kulterreligion,' risks becoming in Israel today what the Protestant churches were in Germany...
...Indeed, hitnachalut is a necessary prerequisite to the Redemption...
...And they have done so in the name of an idea—the idea of hitnachalut...
...Only a large civilian Jewish presence in the West Bank will bring quiet...
...Gush settlers call it Elon Moreh...
...There were no wild eyes, no manic presentations...
...Though Israel did not lose that war, it failed to gain the elegant and decisive victory to which it had become accustomed...
...a vacuum that badly needs filling...
...to the members of Gush Emunim, the Land has a mystical quality which binds the people to their historic and divine mission...
...These Arabs, they say, suffer from their ambiguous position within Israel—a result of the government's decision not to annex their territories...
...If the goals of settlement and spiritual renaissance were to be pursued, remaining within the party would be a liability—for the party was too highly organized and too pragmatic to accommodate it...
...This is the political—as distinguished from the religious—aspect of Gush ideology...
...The fate of Eretz Yisrael and a free and whole Jewish life in it are not subject to a majority vote...
...They are, in fact, part of the most provocative—and successful—pressure group Israel has ever witnessed, Gush Emunim...
...It will remove the individual, as well as the nation as a whole, from viewing only the narrow, personal perspective...
...This is the beginning of the Redemption, the time to join these forms of K'dushah...
...Zvi Yaron, a founder of Oz V'Shalom and author of a study of the late Rabbi Kook's work, argues: "I know of nothing that supports Gush Emunim's view that this is precisely the time for their particular theoretical or practical interpretation of the Messianic Redemption process...
...It is hard to believe...
...How can we expect the world to accept the idea that our army has the right to be present in an area that we say doesn't belong to us...
...And this, of course, makes the Gush considerably more potent than it otherwise would be...
...I don't for a minute believe that this land will be returned...
...All Arabs had expected Israel to close the borders immediately after the Six Day War," argues Ernst Wodak, an Israeli industrialist and Gush Emunim sympathizer...
...The program has included demonstrations in front of the Prime Minister's office, fund-raising activities in Israel and abroad, and—of course—hitnachalut...
...There are no "legitimate" rights to the Land of Israel beyond those of the Torah...
...But in its name there have been mass demonstrations, bitter cabinet debates, and international expressions of concern...
...In this regard, Gush is a radical movement...
...Some take this thought a step further...
...But by "land" they intend far more than a piece of territory...
...soon afterward...
...I can only speak for my family," says Zev, "but the only thing that might make me leave is the development of a bustling city on this spot...
...Aside from the question of whether foreign policy should be made in the streets or in the halls of government, many opponents of the Gush hold that it represents a two-fold danger, one external and one internal...
...Thus, they conclude, there is no Palestinian problem beyond that which is created by Arab propaganda...
...Kadum or Elon Moreh, the settlement has become the focal point for much of the debate that now rages in Israel regarding Jewish policy in the West Bank region...
...Alienated from the Land and spiritless, the nation has developed a hyperbolic bureaucracy and an orientation toward earning "the highest wage for the least work...
...Tomorrow Israel may return the West Bank to Jordan, so how can the Arabs there be expected to display any overt loyalty to Israel...
...Democracy, when it conflicts with settlement, has been one of its victims...
...The leaders of the movement correctly believe that the more settlement takes place in "occupied" territories, the more difficult it will be to return these areas...
...The place is a collection of prefab trailer homes, and the population numbers some 30 families...
...The nation was left in a state of demoralization, recrimination and self-doubt—reflected in the harsh accusations and forced resignations that followed...
...The members fear that the Israeli government is overly willing to hand back territory, indeed, to support the formation of a Palestinian state, in return for vague promises and statements of good intentions...
...The formal founding of the movement may be dated in February 1974, when a group of several hundred younger N.R.P...
...Still others draw disturbing analogies between the Gush and messianic movements of the past, within Jewish history...
...For Zev and his friends, Elon Moreh marks a return to ancient Jewish soil, not a temporary military occupation of Arab territory...
...And they see something more: a government that is indecisive in its response (why else would Elon Moreh have received a small defense contract for its workshop, in the face of announced government opposition to its existence...
Vol. 2 • April 1977 • No. 6
