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This Was the Day by Uri Avnery
This
was the day
on which the settlement enterprise in this country went into reverse for
the first time. True,
the settlement activity in the The
settlement enterprise, that had always gone forwards, only forwards, in
a hundred overt and covert ways, has been turned back. For the first
time. (Yamit and its settlements were not in Eretz A
historic event. A message for the future. This
was the day
on which the message of the Israeli peace movement finally got through.
A great victory, for all to see. True,
it is not us who did it. It was done by a man far removed from us. But,
as the Hebrew saying goes: "The work of the righteous is done by
others." Others: meaning those who are not righteous, who may even
be wicked. At
the beginning of the settlement activity, during one of my clashes with
Golda Meir in the Knesset, I told her: "Every settlement is a
land-mine on the road to peace. In due course you will have to remove
these mines. And let me tell you, Ma'am, as a former soldier, that the
removal of mines is a very unpleasant job indeed." If
I am angry, profoundly sad and frustrated today, it is because of the
price we all have paid for this monstrous "enterprise." The
thousands killed because of it, Israelis and Palestinians. The hundreds
of billions of Shekels poured down the drain. The moral decline of our
state, the creeping brutalization, the postponement of peace for dozens
of years. Anger with the demagogues of all stripes that started and
continued this March of Folly, out of stupidity, blindness, greed,
intoxication with power or sheer cynicism. Anger over the suffering and
destruction wrought on the Palestinians, whose land and water were
stolen, whose houses were destroyed and whose trees were uprooted--all
for the "security" of these settlements. I
have also sympathy for the plight of the inhabitants of Gush Katif, who
were seduced by the settlers' leadership and successive Israeli
governments to build their
life there--seduced either by messianic demagoguery ("It's God's
will") or by economic temptations ("A luxury villa surrounded
by lawn, where else could you dream of this?") Many people from the
remote townships in the The
television networks did us a great favor when they reran, between the
scenes of the evacuation, old footage of the founding of these
settlements. We heard again the speeches of Ariel Sharon, Joseph Burg,
Yitzhak Rabin (yes, he too), Hanan Porat and others--the whole litany of
nonsense, deceit and lies. During
the last few years, the peace camp has been seized by a fashion for
despair, despondency and depression. I keep repeating: There is no cause
for this. In the long run, our approach is winning. Now it must be
emphasized: the Israeli public would not have supported this operation,
and This
was the day
when the settlers' ideology collapsed. If
there is a God in heaven, He did not come to their rescue. The messiah
stayed at home. No miracle occurred to save them. Many
of the settlers were so sure that a miracle would indeed happen at the
very last moment, that they did not take the trouble to pack their
belongings. On television, one could see homes where the uneaten meal
was still on the table and the family photos on the wall. Sights I
remember well from the 1948 war. All
the boasts and bluster of the pair of settlers' leaders, Wallerstein and
Lieberman (who always remind me of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the two
villains in "Hamlet") went up in smoke. The masses did not
stream into the streets all over At
the decisive moment, the reality we always knew about was exposed for
all to see: the messianic-nationalist sect, the leadership of the
settlers, is isolated. In their behavior and style, they are foreign to
the Israeli spirit. The hundreds of settlers who have lately been seen
on television, all the men wearing yarmulkes, all the women wearing long
skirts, with their interminable dancing and their endlessly repeated ten
slogans, look like the members of a closed sect from another world. "It
looks as if we are not one but two peoples: a people of the settlers and
a people of settler-haters!" moaned one of the rabbis when his
settlement was emptied. That is accurate. In the confrontation between
the lines of soldiers, who were drafted from all strata of society, and
the lines of the settlers, it is the soldiers who, in this unique
situation, represent the people of At
the moment of truth, the Yesha leaders found that no part of Israeli
society stood up for them, except the gangs of male and female pupils of
the religious seminaries, who they had sent to Gush Katif. The bedlam
they created on the roof of the Kfar Darom synagogue, when they
viciously attacked the soldiers, put an end to their hopes of winning
public support. But even before that, the settlers had lost the crucial
battle for public opinion when their real purpose was revealed: to
impose by force a faith-based, messianic, racist, violent, xenophobic
regime, with its back to the world at large. But
most importantly, this was the day when
a new chance was born for achieving peace in this tortured land. A
great opportunity. Because the Israeli democracy has won a resounding
victory. Because it has been proven that settlements can be dismantled
without the sky falling. Because the Palestinians have a leadership that
wants peace. Because it has been proven that even the radical
Palestinian organizations hold their fire when Palestinian public
opinion demands it. But
it must be clearly stated: this withdrawal carries with it a great
danger: If we stop in the middle of jumping over it, we shall fall into
the abyss. If
we do not progress rapidly from here to a settlement with the
Palestinian people, Gaza will indeed turn into a platform for
missiles--as Binyamin Netanyahu is prophesying (which may well be a
self-fulfilling prophecy). In the eyes of the Palestinians, and the
entire world, the withdrawal from We
must immediately start serious negotiations, declaring in advance that
within a specific time-span the occupation will end with the
establishment of the State of Palestine. All the main elements of the
settlement are already known: a solution for This
was the day
that will go down in history as the day on which a great hope was born. Not
the beginning of the end in the struggle for peace, but certainly the
end of the beginning. A
small step towards peace, a giant step for the State of Israel.
discuss this column in the forum Uri Avnery is a peace activist.
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August
18th, 2005
