ISRAEL: THE WAR AND AFTER

...Even more remarkable is the belief, apparently held by members of the government leadership, 8 that the problem of the Palestinian Arabs can be solved simply by a combination of strong-arm tactics and semantic exercises...

...There are influential forces, led by the minister of defense, that, with intelligence and cunning, are taking well-considered steps to reach a situation that will leave Israel with no choice but to invade Lebanon even if it were to involve a war with Syria...

...The upsurge of anger culminated in the demonstration estimated at 400,000 held in Tel Aviv on Saturday night, September 25 (significantly, well after the termination of the Sabbath...

...We should return all gains except East Jerusalem and the Golan...

...In its pathological state, the nationalist vision of the world progressively narrows down toward a single dimension...

...After all, there was perhaps no other nationalist movement in East Central Europe that assigned so little importance to ethnic and so much to historical boundaries...

...The debit side of the balance sheet reveals that the war has not proved cheap...

...For once, the opposition was the beneficiary of powerful forces welling up from the depths of the national psyche...

...The most crucial safety mechanism —the sense of limits—thus becomes atrophied...

...This was much less true of Dayan and Allon, but they too were possessed of a very healthy respect for the jungle that is the Middle East and the world at large...

...Nobody [it concluded] is arguing that the regime has already succeeded in destroying free speech and the freedom of the press—but the public should be warned while the foundations of freedom are being destroyed—not afterward...

...resistance feeds paranoia...

...Peace is more important than real estate...

...As for Sinai, Sharm el Sheik, Gaza, the West Bank— let them go...

...It is true that the Lebanon operation was presented to the Israeli public—and apparently also to the Cabinet and the opposition leadership—as limited in nature, aiming solely to establish a 25-mile cordon sanitaire and to bring "peace to Galilee...

...age (the young versus the rest...

...He knows that every extravagant demonstration of force he makes will be welcomed—and, if he had any doubts, the opinion polls time and again prove that this is indeed the case...

...I was among the approximately 1,000 people who gathered to protest near the prime minister's home and were dispersed when the police fired tear gas into the crowd...

...The prime minister and the minister of defense found themselves with no choice but to agree to a full-scale judicial inquiry commission...

...But, for the most part, they did not blame the government...

...Will this deus ex machina really be prepared to step down from Olympus...

...This measure (carrying the personal hallmark of Arid Sharon) was bound to antagonize the important Druze community in Israel itself (which has supplied the IDF and the Border Police with many of its finest troops...

...According to the polls, there was a sharp drop in support for Begin and Sharon between the beginning and the end of September—a drop of about 15 percent...

...Time and again, one hears from the average Begin supporter the argument (irrefutable in its own terms) that whatever Israel has done to the Arabs pales into insignificance compared with what they would do to the Jews if the tables were ever turned...

...And interwar Poland was almost torn apart by the fact that about one-third of its population was made up of non-Poles...

...And the damage done to the image of Israel as a peace-seeking democracy will not be easily repaired...

...As with the subsequent assault on the PLO in Lebanon, the assumption seemed to be that the Palestinians would acquiesce in government plans once they were no longer intimidated by the PLO terrorists...

...It is thus hard to escape the conclusion that nothing short of some major setback in the economic, military, or diplomatic sphere could pave the way to a comprehensive settlement, for it seems that the sense of limits can only be restored when the national ego is brought up short by an immovable reality...

...And, in contrast, Begin's main political weapon today is his ability to threaten both his coalition partners and the opposition with early elections...

...and according to the opinion polls, support for him as a potential prime minister rose during September from under 5 to nearly 15 percent...

...The rapport that Begin has established with a majority of the Oriental Jews is extraordinary...

...In Palestine, Begin became head of the Irgun and Shamir a leading member of Lehi (often called the Stern Gang), two organizations that, whatever their merits, were hardly schools in the art of the measured response or the broad view...

...And Ben Gurion, for his part, in order to neutralize this opposition, nearly always preferred to present partition and compromise not as a matter of principle—the price to be paid for an almost mononational state and, ultimately, for peaceful coexistence—but as a recognition of force majeure, as a concession to Great Power diktat or military imperatives...

...President Navon reacted immediately to the massacre by issuing an eloquent call for a full inquiry, declaring it essential to safeguard the national honor and public morale...

...and the choice is between all and nothing...

...incitement against the free press which the Minister of Defense has called "poison...

...In its early days, members of Hashomer spoke often of establishing a Jewish version of the Cossack sech in Palestine...

...All that is seen clearly is the politics of power (above all military) while the other factors that also decide the fate of states—social, economic, moral—are perceived as possessing only a secondary, shadowy existence...

...On the contrary, the bitter resentment against an opposition that chose to criticize the authorities in wartime was now further deepened despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that it found almost no open or articulate expression...

...Meanwhile, there is little sign of an end to the unrest in the territories...

...On the following Monday, I began a period of 30 days' army reserve duty in Lebanon and now, with that behind me, I find myself asking what, if anything, has changed as the result of the massacre and the extraordinary furor it unleashed here in Israel...

...A long series of actions undertaken, and a much longer series of declarations made, by the second Likud government are unfortunately indicative of this syndrome...

...the Arabs have their own state elsewhere...

...And Eitan—even more Sharon—can best be understood as the fulfillment of this old dream: the Jewish Cossack who would fear nothing and live dangerously...

...It would be hard, in Israeli terms, to imagine an explosive mix of greater force than this...

...Meanwhile, on a totally different level, the demographic tide within the Israeli population was flowing inexorably against Labor...

...We are witnessing here a clear case (by no means rare in modern history, but nonetheless disturbing) of the pathology of nationalism...

...But, conversely, a radical change on one or more of these levels could, perhaps, start a reverse reaction...

...And on these we must negotiate...

...As for security, militarily defensible borders, while desirable, cannot by themselves guarantee our future...

...And they are profoundly convinced that in order to survive in the Middle East, there is no choice but to act with something like the ruthlessness characteristic of inter-Arab politics...

...And the Syrian army as well as many thousands of PLO members who remain in Tripoli and the Bekaa Valley will have to be removed from the country (by highly complicated diplomacy or much brute force) before the writ of the Lebanese government (if it can ever be effectively restored) has force throughout the country...

...Untold thousands of civilians, Lebanese and Palestinian, have been killed and tens of thousands rendered homeless...

...The domestic opposition, in turn, is accused by the government of a lack of loyalty bordering on treason...

...So long as the war has not yet broken out one must not tire of repeating this...

...Against Begin's divisive exploitation of one powerful myth—Greater Israel (Eretz Yisrael, "the Land of Israel")—Navon can oppose others perhaps more powerful: the idea of Jewish unity, of reconciliation ("kol yisrael chaverim") or the vision of peace...

...THE SWIFT AND TOTAL VICTORY in the Six-Day War proved the undoing of the Labor party...

...This thesis must undoubtedly be granted great weight so long as it is understood that the basic divide runs primarily not along the lines of ethnicity (Oriental versus Western Jews...

...Eitan, after all, was appointed not by Sharon but by Weizmann...

...But the influence flows in both directions...

...When, finally, Labor could no longer rely on intractable circumstances to justify flexibility, it proved incapable of practicing that self-limitation...

...But matters went beyond this...

...It is not true that—as we tell the Americans—we do not want to invade Lebanon...

...The leader inspires but, in turn, is inspired...

...Prime Minister Begin and Minister of Defense Sharon totally dominate the Cabinet (which they often just ignore), and they have been able to rely in their most controversial moves on new Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir and on Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan...

...The government's initial refusal to contemplate even the possibility of Israeli error and its insistence on terming every such idea a "blood libel" only added fuel to the flames...

...Nonetheless, they still retain the confidence of well over 50 percent of the electorate while, in contrast, Shimon Peres has gained no significant support and is regarded by less than 5 percent of the population as its first choice for prime minister...

...The Jewish people have the "right" to Judea, Samaria, and Gaza...

...the reality of partition in 1949...

...In political terms, however, it seems safe even at this early stage to say that the grand design has come unraveled...

...But, of course, below the level of personalities, profound political and social factors have combined to make real what even ten years ago would have seemed to most observers simply impossible...

...Navon as leader of Labor could conceivably give even Begin a good run for his money, because in his own totally different style he too can talk to the "people...

...and so this is a problem of only minor dimensions to be solved by an "autonomy" of commensurate scale...

...It was the failure of the previous political elite over an entire decade to tackle the basic issues of war and peace, which—together with major changes in the sociodemographic structure of the electorate— permitted Menachem Begin to establish himself as a charismatic leader acting in symbiotic relationship with a very large section of the people...

...HOW WE MIGHT ASK, could any responsible government of a small country in desperate financial straits undertake an adventure of this kind...

...The fact that (leaving Lebanon aside) almost 2 million Arabs are under Israeli rule—the great majority under military occupation—is treated as a matter of marginal significance, as is the fact that Jews form less than 2 percent of the population of the occupied territories...

...Or will they stand—and not necessarily fall—together...

...But a movement that had always conceded only in the face of perceived necessity was now paralyzed by having to do so as an act of free will...

...Begin and Shamir grew up in the Revisionist movement in interwar Poland, and their unyielding attitude to historical frontiers probably owes as much to the tradition of Polish nationalism as to Jabotinsky...

...As their biographies show, they represent two separate strands of extremism that run throughout the history of modern Zionism...

...But, of course, the impact of the war on the Palestinian question has proved to lee still less in accord with the original blueprint...

...A recent survey published in the newspaper Yediot Ahronot indicated further that moderate opinion on this issue has increased significantly since the Lebanese War, presumably because with the PLO removed, people are now much less afraid...

...But, be that as it may, it followed that once the four leaders were in control of the state, they would inevitably urge each other on toward maximalist tactics and strategies...

...Except for East Jerusalem for history, and the Golan for security—and considering the strength of Arab sentiment, some degree of accommodation will be necessary even here...

...The most dramatic warning of all was probably Jerusalem that sounded by the military correspondent of the newspaper Ha'aretz, Ze'ev Schiff, on May 12 (that is, some weeks before the "Operation"): With regard to the war in the North [Schiff wrote] Israel is now at one minute before midnight...

...The financial cost of the war is now put at over $1.5 billion and is bound to go much higher before the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) can be disengaged...

...and paranoia encourages a Manichean outlook in which everything that is not white is black...

...Nationalist movements carry within them the virus of solipsism that remains dormant only so long as the prevailing circumstances—both objective (the geopolitical environment) and subjective (the internal leadership and culture)—serve to hold it in check...

...Clearly, any answer at this stage must be preliminary, if only because the official inquiry commission has just begun its investigation and will not issue its findings for months...

...The symptoms are all too familiar...

...On the other side, the standard of reference is drawn from the political norms (rather than necessarily from the realities) prevailing in the Western democracies...

...Every new settlement established on the West Bank and the Golan Heights lent plausibility to Begin's claim that Labor was no readier than the Likud (or Gahal, which it was in 1967) to make the concessions necessary to reach a peace agreement...

...to do otherwise would be unpatriotic...

...But it can already be said with some confidence that there has been a fundamental split between the articulate and the inarticulate reactions...

...Supporters of the Likud were dismayed by the turn of events in Lebanon and were unable to produce a coherent response...

...and military withdrawal from the territory of neighboring states in 1949 and 1956...

...11 percent are willing to accept a Palestinian state...

...And it should not be forgotten that, for all the intoxication with nationalist rhetoric, the polls also show that at least half the public consistently supports the idea of territorial compromise with Jordan or the Palestinians...

...The PLO has been driven out of 7 southern Lebanon and Beirut and, in many thousands, out of the country...

...But given the anachronistic nature of Begin's world view, this is not necessarily the case as far as he personally is concerned...

...Here, indeed, is the entanglement from which, if we escape at all, it will only be by "the skin of our teeth...

...10 Their problem was different...

...Instead of giving the Likud government a free hand to push ahead with the de facto (or even de jure) annexation of the West Bank and Gaza—in exchange for services rendered in Lebanon—the Reagan administration has declared that those areas are Arab and should be linked, in a final settlement, to Jordan (Hashemite, not Palestinian...

...WHAT HAS MADE IT POSSIBLE for a government of this type to come to power, act in this way and retain— and actually increase—its popularity...

...Both camps, after all, draw their support from all ethnic, age, and class groups, albeit in markedly differing proportions...

...The moshav movement of cooperative settlements of small-holding farms is associated with the most nationalist wing of the Labor Alignment, perhaps because of the narrow horizons that are historically a concomitant of small-scale farming...

...With proper irrigation we now have quite enough land here in the Negev to care for all the Jews in the world—if they come...

...And, naturally enough, in their great majority the colonists, planted by Labor, are as opposed to its platform of "territorial compromise" with Jordan as the Algerian "colons" were to the de Gaulle of the withdrawal era...

...So a vicious circle builds up in which irrationality produces resistance...

...We simply haven't the available Jews to populate all Biblical Palestine...

...It hopes that the religious "swing parties"—Aguda and the National Religious party—will decide out of desperation to bring down Begin and elevate Peres to the premiership...

...These policies ensured that so long as Labor was in office it held on to the occupied territories, rather as the British had come to Empire, "in a fit of absentmindedness...

...And they certainly will not all come...

...Hence what is seen as normal and necessary in the one political culture—perpetual military rule in the occupied territories, ferocious bombings of Beirut—is seen in the other camp as an intolerable defilement of deeply cherished ideals, blows at the very raison d'etre of the state...

...Another remarkable development was the sudden appearance of Orthodox (religiously observant) Jews in the front ranks of the protest movement...

...The following is taken from an interview with David Ben-Gurion, first Premier of Israel, which was conducted by John M. Roots and appeared in the New York Times on February 8, 1975, after Ben-Gurion's death: "First," he stated firmly, "never forget that historically this country belongs to two races—the Arabs of Palestine and the Jews of the world— each of whom, first the Jews and then the Arabs, have controlled it for some 1,300 years apiece...

...The answer, regrettably, is very straightforward: this government is acting in a way that is neither responsible nor rational...

...Although there can be no easy response to such fundamental questions, there is room here to offer some tentative and provisional answers...

...There remains only the "I" without the "Thou...

...Third, the logic of all this is that to get peace, we must return in principle to the pre-1967 borders...

...Bashir Gemayel was indeed elected president, but only to be assassinated before his inauguration...

...More Arabs in the West Bank were shot dead by the Israeli armed forces this spring (during violent demonstrations against the new Civil Authority) than during the entire previous 15 years...

...In all probability, the ultimate (although by no means only) justification in their eyes for the sacrifice of Sinai was that it seemed to guarantee unfettered Israeli dominance on all other frontiers...

...Will Begin try to save his government by sacrificing Sharon...

...With the terrorists out of the way, the Arab Village Leagues would emerge as the dominant political force in the occupied areas and could be put in charge of the "autonomous" Council and other institutions...

...the withholding of information from military correspondents...

...At the same time, in this one-dimensional world the tendency is to lose touch with everything external and to reduce reality to the national ego alone...

...All this means, paradoxically, that Labor is now seeking to form a government within the framework of the present Knesset...

...purges among staff of the Army radio station...

...They are both ex-paratroopers, brave and hardened soldiers, whose whole lives, until recently, were lived on the battlefield...

...Even more important, perhaps, every passing year added to the number of citizens who could remember no other frontiers than those of post-1967 and could barely imagine a situation in which Israel could survive if Hebron and Nablus were to revert to Arab rule...

...Real peace with our Arab neighbors...

...A Polish Jew (in style, a Polish pan) enjoys a magnetic hold on this audience...

...and that in essence there was no longer any difference on this issue between the two movements...

...The decision to force the Golan Druze to accept Israeli identity cards against their will was then pushed through by the imposition of a military blockade that was maintained over a period of months...

...And, for his part, Begin hesitated for over a year before deciding to make Sharon the minister of defense...

...Labor did not take Eban's advice, preferring Dayan's policy of immobilism—"waiting for the telephone call from Hussein"—and ultimately Allon's plan to settle a very extensive security zone in the West Bank...

...attempts to use the military censorship for political ends...

...9 For their part, Sharon and Eitan are products of the labor movement, both born and bred on moshavim...

...Those who support Begin and Sharon generally hold with the axiom: "When in Rome, do as Romans do...

...This delicately balanced and Byzantine complex of forces could easily be blown apart when the Judicial Inquiry Commission issues its report, commonly described here as a time bomb...

...It was a government that made peace with the Egypt of Sadat a major priority despite the terrible doubt and dissension in Israel when it came to paying the inevitable price...

...Moreover, Labor adopted the principle of self-limitation, havlaga, when it came to taking military action against Arab violence in the final years of the Mandate...

...In seeking throughout to gain time and defer decision, Labor blithely played into the hands of the right...

...The influential evening newspapers Ma'ariv and Yediot Ahronot (which usually tend to support the Likud) as well as the state-owned television all carried masses of the most deadly criticism of Begin and, above all, of Sharon...

...So long as Begin leads the Likud and Peres Labor, as the economy escapes visible catastrophe, and the army marches on, the answer must surely be negative...

...and indeed it seems improbable that there is any precedent elsewhere for such a protest by perhaps 10 percent of the total population...

...Certainly...

...Navon completes his five-year term as president in May 1983...

...Meanwhile, moderates have to wait, like Micawber, for "something to turn up...

...As of this writing, in mid-September, some 350 Israeli soldiers have lost their lives and over 2,000 have been wounded— and that out of a Jewish population of less than 3.5 million civilians...

...IN 1967, ISRAEL for the very first time had attained the status of a truly sovereign state in the sense that it was now called upon to decide on an order of priorities, to make fundamental choices, and to pay the necessary price...

...Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, and Yitzhak Rabin each in their own way were cautious and thoughtful, endowed with a strong sense of "the other" and of Israel's ultimate vulnerability...

...That such an attitude is opposed to fundamental principles of democracy and that the permanent subjugation of so relatively large a population is steadily corroding the moral fiber of the nation seems to mean nothing to men who think in terms of frontiers, national symbols, and ancestral rights alone...

...The instincts of the gambler were quite alien to them...

...All this, of course, is so out of tune with the postcolonial era that, naturally, there is the suspicion that what the leaders really see as the long-term solution is the expulsion of the indigenous Arab population...

...To cap it all, given the prevailing legal status, the prime minister can only dissolve the Knesset if a majority of its members votes to endorse such a step—a factor that again places enormous power in the hands of Aguda and the NRP...

...But, to an unusual extent, the second Likud government has proved to be monolithic...

...It now seems that even Schiff did not describe the concept underlying the war in its full majesty...

...But this would be a profound misreading of reality...

...The Likud would therefore happily reelect him for another five years as president in order to keep him out of politics...

...The crowds—and the knowledge that the crowd is always there, if not in the public 11 squares then before the television screen—lift Begin to ever new heights of theatricality and daring...

...In military terms, the war certainly proved successful enough...

...In the first Likud government, which came to office in 1977, Begin was balanced by Moshe Dayan, then foreign minister, and by Ezer Weizmann (who became ever more moderate in regard to Arab-Israeli relations), then minister of defense...

...perhaps an Arab-Israeli alliance...

...I asked incredulously...

...Some sections of our people still have not learned this lesson...

...Thus an editorial in Ha'aretz reeled off the following complaints made by an emergency meeting of the Israeli Association of Journalists in mid-September: The closure to journalists of areas in the Golan Heights, Yamit, and South Lebanon...

...The percentage of Oriental, particularly Moroccan, Jews in the electorate was rising steadily and carrying more and more voters into the camp of the Likud...

...Never before had Israel seen a political demonstration on this scale...

...First, of course, there is no escaping the contingent, the personal factor...

...But, in such a case, there is always the danger that the cure could prove even more dangerous to the survival of Israel than the disease itself...

...Even as the final stages of the peace agreement with Egypt were being completed, this inner leadership group was systematically preparing for the war in Lebanon...

...To this must be added the fact that in their countries of origin, the Oriental Jews were treated very much as second-class citizens and they do not see any reason why this hierarchical system should be changed just because the roles have been reversed...

...And if Peres does form a government without new elections, will the trappings of 13 power restore to Labor some of its former prestige...

...On Sunday, the second day of Rosh Hashana, the first protest demonstrations were organized (primarily by the Peace Now movement) in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Rosh Hanikra, and on the coast road...

...Or rather, and much more probably, will not such a development be taken by the majority of the electorate as yet another proof of perfidy...

...This survey's findings, for what they are worth, showed that 39 percent favor annexation of the territories, another 39 percent want "territorial compromise...

...Hardly a voice was raised in its defense...

...So when I consider the future of Israel, I only consider the country before the six-day war...

...And both share the simplistic belief that the other side understands force alone and that there is, therefore, no point in a territorial compromise on the eastern fronts, for anyway the winner takes all...

...Moreover, given the exigencies imposed by the coalition system, even a government led by Labor (much chastened, one hopes) would be hard put to do more than freeze most of the settlement activity and seek better relations with Jordan, Egypt, and the Arabs in the area...

...Of course, elections are not referenda, and Labor would be rash to build its hopes on such findings...

...in any case a settlement they will not reluctantly agree to live with, but will enthusiastically welcome from their hearts as essential for our common future—that is our only true security...

...Second, remember the Arabs drastically outbreed us, and that to insure survival a Jewish state must at all times maintain within her own borders an unassailable Jewish majority...

...And there are clear signs that the existence of a truly free press, which remains stolidly, even heroically, resistant to the regime's political neuroses, is becoming an ever greater irritant to the Likud leadership...

...The Israeli army has linked up with the areas under the control of the Christian Phalangists...

...The annexation of the Golan Heights was carried through within hours on the orders of the prime minister (on the day he completed a two-week stay in the hospital) without any substantive discussion in either the Cabinet or the Knesset of its short- and long-term implications...

...and that the massacres made a far greater impact on the "formal" political world—the government, the Knesset, the media— than on the mass of the people, the "silent majority...

...everybody who is not for is against...

...The casual observer of the Israeli political scene could be forgiven for concluding that no government could long survive in so hostile a political environment...

...This was a bold, highly unusual move...

...And beyond this is the idea, constantly reiterated by Sharon and Shamir, that Jordan is the state of the Palestinians and that the Western Land of Israel (as they call the area from the river to the sea) is all Jewish...

...Finally, the Syrian forces— left defenseless from air attack by the wholesale destruction of their Soviet-built antiaircraft missiles —suffered heavy losses on the field of battle...

...It was also marked by actions so undemocratic in spirit—the sudden removal of all telephone communications, the exclusion of the press from the entire area, now just made part of Israel proper—that at least one respected commentator described the entire exercise as a rehearsal, whether consciously conducted or not, for a future military coup...

...Eitan is still a member of his native moshav village, Tel Adashim, which was founded some 70 years ago by members of the Hashomer (The Guard...

...What is far less clear is whom the explosion will damage most...

...In Alexander Haig, the Begin government lost its best, perhaps its only, friend (apart from Reagan himself) in the American leadership...

...Again, in the main, they, unlike the European Jews, understand Arabic, listen to broadcasts or watch television from across the frontiers, and are naturally both frightened and embittered by the depths of hostility they so often encounter...

...or class (lower versus higher income) —even though all these factors are most significant—but rather along that of cultural-political attitudes...

...The more the government falls out of step with the educated strata at home and the Western democracies abroad, the angrier its rhetoric becomes...

...It was not that the Labor leaders in the face of that military triumph lost their sense of responsibility or their sense of danger...

...However, these steps were not only opposed by the Revisionist wing of the Zionist movement —which denounced them as treasonable— but also by important groups within the Labor movement itself...

...and the view is heard ever more often that he, and he alone, could subsequently lead Labor to electoral victory...

...On the political stage of contemporary Israel he alone could conceivably carry this off...

...All gains...

...There is hardly a Western leader of note (Margaret Thatcher, Schmidt, Mitterrand, Weinberger and, by implication, Reagan himself) who has not come under blistering attack from the prime minister, and the underlying theme throughout is that the critics from abroad are motivated by anti-Semitism and represent nations guilty (directly or indirectly) of the Holocaust...

...The tradition of the Labor movement throughout its history since the turn of the century was to push to the very limits of what was both possible and reasonably safe...

...Perhaps all this can best be understood as a subconscious rebellion by the Jews, who had not known power for almost 2,000 years, against the fact that now they were the masters in their own house, free to make or break themselves, and could no longer slough political responsibility, and blame, onto others...

...A movement that had developed all the instincts necessary to survive as underdog could not adjust to the much more complex role that comes with the possession of real power...

...Even more remarkable, the change meant not only greater intransigeance—as, for instance, Sharon's intensive efforts to settle Jewish colonies in the heartland of the West Bank—but also, on the southern front, moderation of the highest order...

...Their numbers remained small, but the forms of action they chose—street readings from Torah scrolls, for example—lent weight to the widespread feeling that this great movement suddenly taking shape was a manifestation of the mass 12 repentance (tshuva) traditionally associated with the period leading up to Yom Kippur...

...The protest movement represented not the exposed tip but almost the entire bulk of the iceberg—while another, separate, and larger iceberg remained intact, albeit submerged...

...Thus the final irony is that Labor talks about the need for elections but, in fact, has every reason to fear them...

...At no time since the establishment of the state has there been so much discussion of the idea that the Jewish population of Israel is sharply divided into two cultures or, pace Disraeli, two nations...

...q After the Massacre October 25, 1982 THE ABOVE was completed on Friday, September 17, the eve of the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashana), at a time when, unbeknown to us in Jerusalem, Phalange troops were shooting down hundreds of men, women, and children in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila (both in areas of Beirut then occupied by Israel...

...Schiff went on to explain that the danger of war with Syria arose because the operation was not to be limited in scope but would aim, first, to "root out" the PLO utterly and, second, to make Israel the "policeman of Lebanon"—able "to decide even how the members of the Lebanese parliament vote when it comes to the election of the next Lebanese president...

...And this is seen as a conclusive justification for almost any act of coercion or violence...

...When it came to it, Mapai supported partition plans in 1938 and again in 1947...

...Extreme nationalism, historians usually agree, has a powerful attraction for a lower middle class caught in the throes of accelerated modernization, especially if the lower class is of different ethnic origin—and, of course, since 1967 cheap Arab labor has become of central importance in Israeli society...

...Various statements made later by the architects of the operation revealed their conviction that the physical destruction of the PLO in Lebanon would make it far easier than theretofore to impose a highly limited form of "autonomy" on the West Bank and Gaza...

...IS THERE ANY WAY in which this process can be halted in the foreseeable future...

...Schiff concluded that all this was a "trap from which it will be possible to extricate ourselves only by the skin of our teeth...

...The PLO, defeated militarily, gained unprecedented publicity during the long months of military operations, and Arafat, far from dead, moved triumphantly from one Western capital to another...

...Its term of office was as much a time of continuity as of change...

...Clearly, as Abba Eban declared right after the Six-Day War, what was needed was "magnanimity," the readiness to exchange the territories (or the great bulk of them, at least) for peace with ironclad guarantees of security...

...They share, it seems, the same resentment of the "goyim" who are always ready to do down the Jew, the same need to proclaim pride in one's own and angry scorn for those who dissent...

...This pressure (supplemented, of course, by reactions abroad, including those of Diaspora Jewry) inevitably shook the stability of the government...

...mutual respect and even affection...

...Instead of gaining time and wearing down the enemy in a limited war, we shall exhaust ourselves in a big war...

...During the ten-day period between the New Year and the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), there was an unprecedented outpouring of anguish and protest...

...In sum, this Likud leadership combines within itself the rhetoric and ideological maximalism of the right-wing Revisionist movement with the practical energy and concerns for results characteristic of Israel's Labor tradition...

...Labor allowed itself to be maneuvered into providing its bitterest enemies with massive support—and legitimacy— as when it built the new town Kiryat Arba as a suburb of Hebron for Rabbi Moses Levinger (later the mentor of Gush Emunim...

...The hope of establishing a stable regime in Lebanon, and of bringing the troops "home by Hanukkah" (as anticipated early in the summer) now has been dashed...

...One of the liberal ministers, Yitzhak Berman, resigned and at least three other members of the Cabinet (including the two from the National Religious party) threatened to do so...

...However, the true nature of the plans had leaked to the press and was published four months earlier...