But what has been most traumatic for Israelis is the uprising of their Arab fellow citizens. Jews in Israel had resolutely closed their eyes to the fact that one of the most serious effects of Oslo was to mobilize Israeli Arabs. There was plenty of warning: Israeli Arab Knesset members made no secret of their identification not only with Arafat but the entire array of Israel's enemies. But there was no escaping the reality now. In the heart of Tel Aviv's Jaffa, in Acre, in Jerusalem, throughout the Galilee, Israeli Arabs shot, threw rocks, and set fires. There were Jewish towns and villages in the Galilee where food and supplies had to be airlifted in because there was no open roadway in or out of the villages (they had been sealed off by Israeli Arabs.) The situation was so bad that the Israeli daily Ha'aretz (Oct. 17) reported that the Israel Defense Forces, fearful local Arabs would overrun Jewish communities, was compelled to deploy its soldiers in both northern and lower Galilee settlements. Israelis are being forced to recognize that many Israeli Arabs are as hostile as Arafat's Fatah. A huge and rapidly growing fifth column lives in their midst.

Arafat has given innumerable speeches since

The prospect of new elections is in fact strong. But the probability that a Likud-led government will change anything is virtually nil.

So what do you do if, as an Israeli, you come to the conclusion of novelist Naomi Ragen, (Jerusalem Post, Oct. 5): "I have come to despair that our government has the ability or will to fulfill even its minimum obligation to those that put them into power. And that obligation is to protect and defend and maintain order." What do you do if you come to recognize, as former Supreme Court Justice Moshe Landau put it in his Ha'aretz interview: "[Israel] sometimes makes me think of the Titanic -- about how when the Titanic was already beginning to sink to the depths of the ocean, in the upper halls, the orchestra was still playing gay operetta tunes."

Israel is a democracy and an obvious answer is to replace the government. The prospect of new elections is in fact strong. But the probability that a Likud-led government will change anything is virtually nil. The opposition is as tied to Oslo and devoid of genuine alternative policies as Labor. On U.S. public television, at the height of the uprising, Charlie Rose interviewed Netanyahu and asked what he would do. Netanyahu differentiated himself from Barak by saying that he would wait more than a few days to restart negotiations. Ariel Sharon wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that started off bravely but which ended "Peace is at hand." The opposition had as its slogan in 1996 "Peace with Security" and judging from recent pronouncements plans to revive it. That slogan is a lie. It means Oslo and the Titanic. A real alternative offers neither peace nor security -- only the painful rebuilding of Israel's shattered deterrent capability.

But once they recognize that elections give them no alternative worth the name, that their leaders feel helpless in the face of relentless American pressure to "resolve the conflict," that security steadily deteriorates while external pressures mount, Israelis are liable to abandon the nation and seek a personal way out. In the Tzarist pale of settlement many Jews did find a way to escape the cycle of "lick your wounds and wait for the next pogrom." They fled by the hundreds of thousands wherever they could go, above all to the United States, then still open to mass immigration. Ironically, those who first seek to save themselves in this way will be the most ardent proponents of Oslo, the self-confident Peace Now activists with the heaviest responsibility for creating the disaster they are the first to flee. They are the Israelis most oriented to the West, proudly "post Zionist," i.e. without commitment to Zionism, speaking at least one foreign language, many of them with skills that will win them entry and enable them to thrive elsewhere. This is what Arafat promised in his Stockholm speech: "They will give up their dwellings and leave for the U.S....at least a million rich Jews will leave Israel."

Is there anything that can avert this bleak scenario? This month's editorial, by Ruth King, provides one alternative. If the people of Israel were to emulate those of Yugoslavia, rise to their feet in every city, town, kibbutz and moshav, and say "Enough," the deadly pro-

[(Continued on p.5)]

Outpost               - 4 -               November 2000