Faint Promise in the Promised Land

...He gushed on: "It's impossible to have a normal life, to plan a future, if you never know when you'll have to drop everything and go off to fight another war...

...of stopping at university campuses, where life is slowly resuming...

...Kissinger, I persisted, was said to be privately floating a scheme that would make a unified Jerusalem the dual capital of Israel and of a Jordan-linked Palestinian-Arab state...

...Prime Minister Golda Meir, the modern matriarch whose firm hand has held the disparate elements of the State together during some of its most taxing periods of internal and external pressure, remains the object of widespread admiration and gratitude...

...A TRAVELER'S IMPRESSIONS Faint Promise in The Promised Land BY MYRON KOLATCH Jerusalem Ask the average Israeli what he thinks of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's Middle East diplomacy before noon on a bright day, when the warm winter sun helps to melt skepticism, and he is likely to tell you that if the concessions so far extracted from Jerusalem are indeed the first steps toward a genuine peace, he approves of them...

...On the other hand, that very lack of a choice has produced a sense of dislocation, of imbalance—not to be confused with depression or fear-in post-Yom Kippur War Israelis...

...Mrs...

...the countercharges that he flaunted orders, recklessly playing to the polling booths—has changed all that...

...Personable and only 45, he sees a light at the end of the darkness, although he is extremely vague about how he would reach it, and about pretty much everything else for that matter...

...Today Kfar Etzion is once more throbbing with life—and no one will talk about a negotiated death...

...It is really a family matter, and what distresses people here is that it seems to be out of the family's hands...

...The unsettled mood here, however, is not entirely attributable to the energetic negotiation efforts of the somewhat enigmatic U.S...

...And they have been exhibiting flashes of stubborn independence from their respective parties' positions, encouraging many to view them as the source of Israel's future political salvation...

...Jerusalem is the outstanding exception, a fact that may owe as much to its current unifying role as to its unequaled position in the religion and history of the Jewish people...

...Meir's compromise was made on instructions from the Chief Rabbinate following a lengthy phone conversation with Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik of Yeshiva University in New York, recognized as the world's outstanding modern Orthodox rabbinic authority...

...The instinctive reaction everywhere to queries about the Golan Heights, for instance, was that they could never be relinquished...

...Was there a chance that support might develop for a solution of this kind...

...Likud's liability, too, is its leader, Menahem Begin of Irgun Z'vai Leu-mi fame...

...An even larger number confide that if seemingly gloom-enchanted Begin had not been at the head of Likud's list, they too would have supported it...

...First they will have to carry out our dead bodies," he says quietly, obviously aware of the risks because he knows Rabbi Levinger feels compelled to lobby among the politicians for the retention of Hebron...

...Insiders, especially the dedicated young kibbutzniks and scholars and professionals who make up the liveliest segment of the NRP's constituency, argue that the party has been fawning too long at the feet of power and speak of it in severely contemptuous terms...

...Ein brera (we have no choice...

...The most commonly voiced complaint of the citizenry is the absence of z'irim, young people, at the top of the protective party lists presented to the electorate under Israel's proportional representation voting system...

...Moreover, in every part of the country mention of Jerusalem and the bargaining table consistently provoked a response identical to the one registered in Tel Aviv...

...It was there in Judea that the Jewish patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob tended their flocks, that the Prophet Samuel anointed David King, that Jewish life and learning flourished...

...Particularly during the economic boom and the deceptive peace brought on by the seductive Six Day War victory, they were looked upon as impregnable "saving remnants" of the Jewish State's idealism...

...Likud's second star, controversial Yom Kippur War hero General Ariel "Arik" Sharon, has to some extent neutralized Begin's presence...

...What has actually been done so far arouses little negative response...

...Can we trust Kissinger...

...One need ride only 20 minutes out of Jerusalem into the snow-dappled Hebron Hills—whose ancient terraces, fertile valleys and austere rock outcroppings bring Biblical scenes alive—to gain a firsthand understanding of what is at stake for those who are directly involved...

...Of Labor's leading contenders for Mrs...

...Hence the nagging question: "If Kissinger was able to force us to give in to the Arabs at Suez, what is to prevent him from employing the same pressures and pretexts to force us to give in to the Arabs elsewhere...

...Their essential disagreement is on the maximum survivable price, and few on either side would disagree with the taxi driver who took me to the foreign ministry press office the morning after my arrival...

...As idealistic young orthodox Jews, they carried with them a concept of Zionism that included reclaiming the Holy Land...

...A tall, trim, broad-shouldered Sa-bra in his mid-20s who had been resisting my attempts at conversation with a stoniness that undermined my already shaky confidence in my Hebrew, he exclaimed unexpectedly: "Something has to be done...

...And while their land may not be the Garden of Eden, they are anxious lest anyone else transform it, however inadvertently, into Gehenna...

...Its 38 families live in comfortable, compactly arranged housing units, a beautiful dining room and a handsomely designed synagogue are being completed, and the turkey and candle industries are doing well...

...In localities where security is not affected by who is sitting up at the top, though, that was not the final word: If iron-clad guarantees could be obtained, preventing the Golan from again becoming a threat to the existence of the settlements below, then some could see turning it into a controlled buffer zone...

...Construction continues at Kiryat Arba, for a community intended eventually to accommodate 5,000...

...At a party in Tel Aviv, I asked the dozen-odd economists, lawyers, journalists, former military officers, and bureaucrats present if they could roughly sketch out a realistic compromise that might be put forward if the time ever came when the deadlock over the Holy City finally had to be faced...

...At the same time, the Chanan Porats of this country clearly want a true and enduring peace, and they are not about to extinguish the flicker of hope behind their uneasiness...

...A bit closer to the capital, at Kfar Etzion, they have already given their lives once...

...In September 1968, 20 of the children...

...One comes away from Israel with the impression that most Israelis view Henry Kissinger as neither the Messiah nor the Angel of Death, but rather as an enormously talented and somewhat inscrutable human being...

...They live now high on an exquisite hill overlooking the pleasant Arab city, in three- and four-story apartment buildings whose stone facades blend into the surrounding slopes...

...In addition, no one has ever seriously entertained the notion of retaining the Sinai...

...This has prompted the placing of an unusual percentage of younger men in slots high enough to insure them Knesset seats, so that upon visiting the 120-member chamber one is surprised at their number...

...What remains to be done involves far more thorny areas of the Arab-Israeli dispute...

...Avraham, it turned out, was picking up a few inflation-scarred pounds while home on two days' leave from the Sinai...

...Thus when the conversation turns back to a visitor's initial inquiries, the tables frequently turn as well: "What do you think about our present predicament...

...Appearances to the contrary, this is not meant to imply distrust of the Secretary...

...On other difficult issues attitudes were more inclined to vary with geography...

...For people not directly affected, an initial opposition to relinquishing these occupied territories sometimes softened: Should possession of this or that contested spot prove the only obstacle to a truly permanent and protected peace, they said, they were willing to explore its return...

...The government at first threatened to expel them from the occupied territory, later agreed to allow the opening of an advanced yeshiva, and ultimately relented...

...An independent lot, they have rejected the yoke of party solidarity...

...On the one hand, there is an overwhelming desire for peace in Israel today, among so-called hawks no less than so-called doves...

...Yet a remarkable number of people who cast their ballots for Likud, and for feminist Shulamit Aloni's small new Civil Rights Movement, are quick to note that they considered this a protest vote, a signal that they want Israeli politics and politicians to unscramble...

...For the process has laid bare a considerable erosion of confidence in both the vitality of the political leadership and the once-vaunted purity of the military establishment...

...What is he really like...

...Meir, events since the indecisive December 31 general election suggest, probably agrees...

...The answer was an unqualified No, accompanied by expressions of cautious doubt that the Secretary could be thinking along such lines...

...Does the U.S...

...Further, they were counted as the catalysts capable of transmitting a proper order of priorities to the nation's young men and women, who must spend three years in military service...

...And it was there in 1968 that Rabbi Menahem Levinger, his wife, and a handful of other couples, having come to celebrate Passover, stayed to establish Kiryat Arba...

...For the first time since the Jewish State was reborn 26 years ago, their aggressive certainty has given way to an uneasy feeling that they do not control their own fate...

...Almost invariably, questions about disengagement on the Egyptian and Syrian fronts were greeted with a shrug, a cluck of the tongue and an uncharacteristic "I don't know about such things...

...And the situation is complicated by their own far from unanimous agreement on those interests...

...That is, if he says anything at all...

...But his name does not brighten the eyes of disgruntled Israelis, who are put off by his rather flamboyant lifestyle, remember that he was directly in charge of the military when Israel was caught off-guard by Egypt and Syria, and occasionally wonder how much truth there is to the story that during the Sinai disengagement talks the supposedly soft Allon proved a harder nut for Kissinger to crack than the presumedly tough Dayan...

...The gap between the people and their elected officials runs across Israel's overabundant party lines, underscoring an unhappiness with what is and an uncertainty about what should be...

...The problem is that no consensus exists on who should replace her—the reason, it may be recalled, that an ailing Golda came out of retirement five years ago for what was to be a brief rule, just sufficient to resolve the dissension within the dominant Labor Alignment and settle the matter of succession to the Prime Minister's office...

...During 10 days of traveling around this tiny country by car?of talking to people in the stores, cafes and streets of towns along the way...

...Sitting in the bare office of the elementary-level yeshiva where he is the principal, he dismisses any thought that the development may one day be turned over to the Arabs...

...Ilitical readjustment and moral t is in this atmosphere of po-reassessment, with its own disconcertingly foggy patches, that Israelis at every level are anxiously discussing Henry Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy...

...Outsiders are angered by its refusal to delay debate for another year on the complex-and from its viewpoint crucial-philosophical issue that in journalistic shorthand simplistically reduces to the question, "Who Is a Jew...

...Its roots go much deeper, to the basic institutions of a nation that since last October has been engaging in serious soul-searching with often distressing results...

...of picking up countless hitchhikers, military and civilian—I encountered an unmistakable reluctance to speak freely to Americans...

...Free access to everyone could be assured, religious shrines could be protected, a formula for Arab municipal representation could be devised, but Jerusalem would be one and would be the capital of Israel...

...We have to take a chance with him...

...But it would be a grave error to assume that progress is imminent where the issues go beyond nuts and bolts to hearts and minds...

...feel that it has a stake in Israel's existence...

...Israelis, it soon becomes apparent, follow the ongoing struggle in Southeast Asia more closely than Americans, but their interest has less to do with the continuing fighting than with its reflection upon the Nobel Peace Prize agreement composed by the man who is now, as they see it, orchestrating their future...

...Then, after the conversation drifted to more mundane matters, it tended to return to its starting point, revealing an ambivalence that is important to understanding the tensions in Arab-Israeli relations which can be expected to develop over the next several months...

...In explaining their position, they seize the analogy of the American voter who, while lacking enthusiasm for George McGovern's Presidential candidacy, could never bring himself to pull down the lever for Richard Nixon...

...Its 66 women and 57 children were evacuated and dispersed, but over the years they kept in touch...

...A similar pattern emerged in the case of areas taken during the Six Day War that have a deep historical and religious significance...

...The decision to refuse Mrs...

...Founded in 1943, again by an Orthodox Zionist group dedicated to reclaiming, and in this case working, the Biblical lands, the kibbutz lost almost all of its 78 men during the War of Independence in a heroic struggle that Ben-Gurion has credited with saving the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem...

...Nevertheless, critics point out, he has never been to Israel and is reported to have turned down the late David Ben-Gurion's personal plea that a man of his stature was needed in the Chief Rabbi's post to cope with the difficult theological issues confronting a 20th-century Jewish State...

...In the six years since the original group took over an old hotel in Hebron, their number has grown to 800, religious and non-religious...

...of visiting friends in secure big cities and barging into kibbutzim and other communities located outside the pre-'67 war borders...

...Surprisingly, he has earned high marks for ingenuity and sincerity even from those who bitterly recall his haste in going to Moscow to arrange the cease-fire that saved the day for the retreating Arab forces...

...Put the same question to the same man in the evening, when the chill of descending darkness revives doubts, and he is apt to say he not only resents withdrawing to the Mitla and Gidi passes in Sinai while Cairo retains its forces on the east bank of the Suez Canal, but he cannot accept the notion of placing his faith in the hands of any Arab leader, including Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat...

...The Israel Defense Forces have from the beginning occupied a unique place in this society...

...Shimon Yifrach, a mild-looking, soft-voiced man, sees no reason why it shouldn't...

...His four-party Right-of-center grouping emerged from the December contest as the closest thing to a full-fledged opposition Israel has known...

...The old-line leadership of the moderate National Religious Party (NRP), traditional handmaiden of Labor in a host of coalitions, is being pilloried from without and defied from within...

...We can't go on living this way...

...After an awkward silence, it was patiently explained that no compromise was possible...

...Chanan Porat also goes to Jerusalem to lobby, and his plight cuts to the marrow...

...But the question does indicate the Israelis' pervasive concern about having someone else, regardless of his ability or intentions, determine their best interests...

...young women and 18 young men, led by Chanan Porat —returned...

...Meir's mantle—veteran coalition architect and Finance Minister Pinhas Sapir, dovish Deputy Premier Yigal Allon, and ambiguous Defense Minister Moshe Dayan—at least Dayan has shown himself as adept at reading the public mood as he is at mastering a battlefield map...

...But the feeling is strong that the redoubtable lady should relinquish the reins of power, that she has overstayed her time...

...Meanwhile, the imbroglio set off by his actions in Sinai and his sharp public criticism of the Army's senior commanders, with the careful exclusion of Dayan, has left a troublesome question mark on the one institution always thought to be beyond petty partisan meddling...

...The Sharon confrontation—his charges that political motives influenced the government's battlefield strategies to the detriment of national security...

...Perhaps the most telling question, and one that comes up repeatedly, draws an unexpected parallel: "Is Kissinger arranging the kind of peace for us that he arranged for Vietnam...

...Despite complaints that the Egyptians have been unfairly rewarded at Suez, and protestations that too much of the disengagement depends on President Sadat's word, the direct risks are recognized as small...

...Maybe Kissinger has the answer...

...So are the 65 children of this unspoiled, low-keyed kibbutz—three of whom lost their father in the Yom Kippur War as he had lost his father in the War of Independence, and all of whom are reminded of their heritage by a small, poignant museum on the grounds...

...Just as Israelis now consider their short fling at the affluent life a foolish, costly indulgence, they wonder aloud about the ultimate effects of what has been described as their "mini-MacArthur affair...

...The present, though, is still in the hands of the established figures, none of whom can rally the full support of his own rank-and-file, let alone the enthusiasm of a broad national cross-section...