Israel’s Unrest Breathes New Life Into Left

This kibbutz in the Negev desert is almost as far away from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip as you can get and still be in Israel. Most traffic on the main highway is either headed for the beaches of Eilat, about 40 miles south, or returning home, and the passengers are much more likely to be thinking about suntans than about Arabs.

So, motorists were understandably surprised one morning last week to see a mock Palestinian refugee camp perched nearby on a rocky, roadside hilltop. Cardboard cutouts of Arab women and children appeared to stroll among scrap lumber hovels with corrugated tin roofs, while more cutouts of Israeli soldiers carrying cardboard assault rifles stood guard.

Protest Organizer

After weeks of unrest in the occupied territories, “we have to show the government that people all over the country, not just those close to the violence, are concerned and want action,” said Leah Kayman, 32, a Qetura resident and one of the organizers of the protest.

The mock refugee camp, a bit of street theater, was one of several recent signs that the occupied territories have re-emerged as a grass-roots political issue within Israel. In particular, the unrest has reactivated the country’s political left, which had been virtually dormant since the withdrawal of most Israeli troops from Lebanon in 1984.

“We were in a state of quiescence,” said Galia Golan, a spokeswoman for the leftist Peace Now organization, about the last several years. “We did things, but we knew we couldn’t get large numbers of people out. It was a very frustrating period.”

But now, she said in an interview last week, not only was Peace Now able to attract an estimated 80,000 people to a protest rally in Tel Aviv two weeks ago, but other small, unaffiliated groups are cropping up “out of the blue” to register their own calls for an alternative to the army’s “iron fist” in the territories.

The change represents “the same phenomenon of moral indignation and frustration” that turned Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon into the country’s most unpopular war, Golan said. The movement “is not as big,” she conceded, “although I will say it’s very much like the beginning of the Lebanon war.”

On the other end of the political spectrum, Jewish settlers from the territories have also mobilized in the last few days. They, too, had been uncharacteristically quiet until then--not because they were unable to do anything, but because they saw no need to. Now, however, they are concerned that their supporters in the government, who advocate the status quo, may be wavering.

The conventional political wisdom in Israel is that the unrest has strengthened the right, triggering a sort of “circle the wagons” patriotism that reaches deep here whenever the country is perceived as under attack.

Movement Growing Fast

But whatever the left may lack in numbers of adherents, it seems to be trying to make up with the variety of its new activism. And supporters say their numerical strength is growing fast.

Three kibbutzniks wandered into the Government Press Office in Jerusalem last Sunday looking for some place to photocopy a handwritten, one-paragraph press release.

“We members of Kibbutz Shomria are protesting by our hunger strike against the government’s political impotence,” it said.

By the end of the day they had set up a green tent in front of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s official residence, where they remain today. Their note has been transformed into a sign that hangs on Shamir’s fence, demanding that he “start political negotiations immediately with all sides involved in the conflict in order to achieve a peaceful resolution.”

“Most who come here really support us and help us,” said Yuval Rosen, one of the trio. “Only a few have a negative attitude about us.”

Support From Neighbors

“The neighbors invite us to use their showers,” added Natalia Axebrod, another of the hunger strikers.

A group of college professors and another of mental health workers have launched separate petition drives calling for an end to policies that they say harm Israel as much as they do the Palestinians.

“Mothers Against Silence,” who first emerged to object against their sons being sent to fight in Lebanon, are trying to reorganize, and young people from the Galilee, in Israel’s north, called Peace Now the other day to ask for help in organizing a protest march to Jerusalem.

A group of “concerned photographers” plans a special exhibit in Tel Aviv next week of work that “expresses their discontent,” said one member.

And Peace Now, which was having trouble getting a quorum at its meetings, is now overrun with attendees.

“All of a sudden, all hell has broken loose,” said Golan.

Traces Change to Rabin

She attributes the change of attitude to the man responsible for implementing Israel’s “iron fist” policy in the territories--Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

“It was the hitting,” she said, referring to Rabin’s declaration last month that the troops should beat demonstrators. “What got them into the streets was this image that is so foreign to what the army was thought to be about.

“What has been hit is our image of ourselves,” Golan added. “The army is so central here, because the army is everybody,” she explained, alluding to the fact that Israel’s is largely an army of reservists in which all able-bodied men are called up annually until age 55 and many women also serve. The beatings policy triggered what some psychologists have called a “cognitive dissonance.”

In layman’s terms, explained Golan, “There was something just not right.”

Expected to Pass

Another factor in the change of attitude, the Peace Now activist said, was that at first many people still thought that, as violent as it was, the unrest would soon pass. That is not the case any more.

Peace Now plans a series of activities leading up to another major demonstration just before a planned visit to the United States in mid-March by Shamir. Golan has persuaded the group in the Galilee to change the route of their march to wind up in Tel Aviv, at the Peace Now protest, rather than in Jerusalem.

“The problem is to try and channel this into something with a more political focus,” Golan said of the spontaneous protests. Peace Now’s goal, she noted, is “not so much protest as pressure for a political initiative.”

The message was the same here in the Negev, where members from half a dozen local kibbutzim staged what was undoubtedly the most novel demonstration last week.

Many Are American Emigres

Most of the organizers were from Qetura, a settlement of about 200 people founded 14 years ago by the “Young Judea” youth movement of mostly American Jews who had emigrated here. Kayman, for example, was born in St. Louis, and spokesman David Lehrer is from Raleigh, N.C.

Their “street theater” extended for several miles along the main highway, featuring larger-than-life-size cutouts and signs. In addition to the mock refugee camp, the scenes included a roadside roadblock where kibbutzniks in white mime makeup performed a pantomime of what happens at a typical army checkpoint in the occupied territories.

Signs carried the monologue of military rule: “What are you doing here? Where are you going? Get out of the car! Take out your ID!” Some kibbutzniks in makeup were spread-eagled against a pickup truck while others acted out a body search. Still more rummaged through suitcases, throwing their contents on the ground.

“Is this a roadblock or a block to peace?” queried another sign.

Almost as soon as the kibbutznik street theater had begun, however, Eilat Police Chief Shmuel Shemtov and dozens of his men arrived to order it all taken down. There was some technical imperfection in the way that the kibbutzniks had requested police permission for their show, it turned out, and it had been ruled “an illegal demonstration.”

Sets Dismantled

The kibbutzniks dismantled their sets as slowly as possible as Chief Shemtov and his men raced from exhibit to exhibit along the highway and back again.

“I keep forgetting where everything goes,” lamented Lisa Fliegel, 27, a native of Newton, Mass., with feigned sincerity. “This is a soldier, but I sometimes think it’s a refugee,” she fretted as she carried a cardboard cutout back and forth on the hillside.

About then a man in ordinary street clothes drove up and took her photograph.

“That’s the undercover police,” Fliegel said. “I taught him in an art class. Eilat is such a small town that everybody knows who the undercover police are.”

Finally, Lehrer persuaded his fellow kibbutzniks to follow Shemtov’s order.

“There might be certain issues I’d be willing to go to jail for,” he said, “but I don’t think this is the right one. We’re not here to inspire civil disobedience against the traffic laws or police procedures.”

Lehrer said the kibbutzniks would try to stage their street theater again after seeking the necessary permits.

One police officer shook his head over the whole scene and was overheard commenting to a colleague: “Oy! So much trouble in such a small country!”