(Continued from p.3)
with Wye but resigned to it, and yet another group hoping implementation of Wye and further retreats in its wake can be avoided. Seeking at least to stave off an electoral run by Meimad, the NRP is moving leftward. Even the Russian immigrant party is splitting. The new Yisrael Ba-Aliya Party, in which Natan Sharansky plays a leading role, won an impressive 7 seats on its first showing in 1992, but is now being challenged by a competing party created by Avigdor Lieberman, former Director of the Prime Minister's Office.New ideological tensions are asserting themselves, even as the territorial issue loses some of its force with the Likud, Labor, and much of the religious party establishment accepting the idea of returning more or less to the pre-1967 borders. The long-contained conflict between the secular left and religious Israelis grows increasingly bitter. The left, infected with a peace messianism that expects the lion to lie down with the lamb in the New Middle East, cannot avoid seeing that in the wake of Oslo, violence has escalated and the rhetoric of hatred from the Palestinian Authority is unabated. Rather than blame the Arabs for failing to behave as envisioned, the left finds it easier to vent its frustrations on other Jews.
Much of the bitterness is directed against the ultra-orthodox "hareidim." And while there is some justice in the complaint that so many of their young men fail to serve in the army, the attacks from the left are often of a virulence that smacks of outright anti-Semitism. In seeming contradiction, the secular left also attacks the religious for contributing too much to the country's defense. Youth associated with the National Religious Party have become the backbone of the army's frontline troops, producing calls to limit the number of officers from their ranks. The contrary basis for the attacks from the left suggests that the hostility is based less on specific complaints openly aired than on fundamental issues of identity: religious Jews represent a stubborn Jewish identity that prevents, so the left believes, Israel's integration into the region.
While (as Sartori observed) the threat to survival and international pressures promoted unity in the state's first decades, such threats and pressures do not necessarily promote consensus. The Roman assault on Jerusalem that ended Jewish statehood in 69 A.D. was conducted while Jews in the city engaged in a brutal civil war. External pressures can lead to co-option of segments of the public who are then pitted against others resisting those pressures. What is crucial is not the threat as such, but how it is perceived. And it is the perception of threat itself, its source and its nature, which now divides the public in Israel. Once the threat is differentially perceived, it pits against each other those who identify different, contradictory, ways of meeting the perceived dangers. In Israel today, some see peace around the corner, tantalizingly beckoning after the next territorial concession or series of them, while others see doom at the end of the same process.
As the perception of threat becomes a factor dividing Israelis, international pressures too no longer serve simply to limit options, foreclosing areas of disagreement. (For example, in an earlier period, the far left Mapam party had to abandon its identification with Stalin as "sun of the nations," given the Soviet government's unequivocal hostility to the state.) Rather external pressures co-opt part of the public, pitting those who welcome them against those who resist the pressures.
And make no mistake, Israel is under greater threat--and subject to greater international pressures-- than at any time in her history. She is grievously threatened by the unconventional weaponry in the possession of her neighbors. Iran already has nuclear weapons and Iraq, once the weapons inspectors are finally gone, is not far behind. This is not to speak of the chemical and biological weapons in the possession of most of her
Israel is under greater threat -- and subject to greater international pressures -- than at any time in her history.
Oslo has not even had the hoped-for effect of bringing Israel out of her international isolation. After basking briefly in international approval for resurrecting the PLO from its near-death experience when it backed Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War, Israel is once again the target of massive international criticisms and pressures. More and more the Clinton administration treats Arafat as its favored "peace partner," shunting Netanyahu aside as an impediment. Israel's interests may soon be wholly ignored: there are already plans for an Arafat-Clinton summit early in 1999 that will shut Israel out altogether.
Under these circumstances, the new Prime Minister, whoever he may be, is going to find it even more difficult to build--and hold--a governing coalition together. As the need for unity mounts, Israel's ability to achieve it diminishes. Given the multiplicity of her enemies and her international isolation, this bodes ill for the state's future.
Rael Jean Isaac is the editor of Outpost. Much of the analysis in this article is adapted from the last chapter of her 1981 book Party and Politics in Israel: Three Visions of a Jewish State, published by Longman.
January 1999 - 5 - Outpost