Israel Takes the Future Day by Day

How have Israelis been reacting to the popular Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories, now in its fourth month? How has the average Israeli been living with the need to forcibly put down that uprising, and to the growing perception that there is no telling how long it will go on?

Perhaps the best attempt at an answer to that question can be seen in the fact that there has been an on-and-off strike of physicians in most of Israel’s government and public hospitals almost since the uprising began. The doctors are protesting the Treasury’s adamant opposition--on anti-inflationary grounds--to proposals to raise their pay substantially in return for their performing surgery in second shifts, thereby reducing the long queues of Israelis waiting for elective operations.

The point of my juxtaposing these two seemingly unrelated problems is that after the initial shock, Israel--and the average Israeli--has come to take the uprising, and the military action entailed in putting it down, in stride.

The Israeli labor-relations scene has for decades been a chaotic one. But in the past, when wars broke out, all strikes and other forms of internal social friction stopped dead in their tracks asthe country mobilized and rallied to meet the threat from the outside.

Although in the present situation many Israelis buy the argument that the civilian uprising in the territories is yet another expression of the ongoing 40-year-old war of the Arabs against Israel, life has been going on as usual--including the internally more divisive aspects of life, such as doctors’ strikes. And early reports indicate that there is no decline in the number of Israelis planning to go abroad for their summer vacations. Life continues.

The uprising has had a polarizing effect on those Israelis who were already on either of the two extremes. Many more right-wingers have begun to speak openly and stridently of the need to expel large numbers of Palestinian Arabs from the territories to restore quiet--and possibly even to make way for more extensive Israeli settlement of the territories as a prelude to their annexation.

On the extreme left there is much more chafing over the greater use of brute force in conducting the occupation today than was the case in the previous 20 years. The public atmosphere hasn’t been so rancorous since the early days of Israel’s incursion into Lebanon in 1982, which led to deep divisions in the Israeli political scene.

The vast majority of Israelis who have never been on either extreme have, however, become more aware than ever of the dilemmas entailed in the occupation. The widespread hostility to Israel expressed by the Palestinians in the territories, and the readiness of many young Palestinians to court Israeli bullets, truncheons and tear gas to bring home that message of hostility, have provided a persuasive argument that outright annexation will never be in the cards.

On the other hand, Israelis are hearing, in the wake of the uprising, reputedly “moderate” Palestinians assert that their aim is not only an independent Palestine in the territories but the supplanting and annihilation of the Jewish state. This supports an equally persuasive argument that it would be suicidal for Israel to entertain the idea of simply getting out and leaving the Palestinians to their own devices.

All of this has been unfolding on the backdrop of an election year, which is certain to aggravate the tendency to polarization. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s Likud is more and more driven to compete for votes with the extreme right. The Labor Party is split between a desire to stem a hemorrhage of voters to the extreme left and angling for the centrist vote, which should find attraction in the fact that it is a Labor defense minister, Yitzhak Rabin, who has been in charge of putting down the uprising.

In the 40 years of Israel’s existence, the organized armies of the surrounding Arab countries have failed in four wars to undo the creation of a Jewish state in their midst. The Palestine Liberation Organization has similarly failed to achieve the same goal after pursuing for 20 years a strategy of terrorism against Israel. The popular civilian uprising in the territories, although it initially caught Israel by surprise, also has failed after four months.

The obvious solution would be a burying of the hatchet in the 40-year old war, and an Arab and Palestinian change of heart that would stand a good chance of persuading the large Israeli center that it is safe to work out an arrangement to get out of most of the Palestinian territories in exchange for a real peace.

As is the case in many other such national confrontations around the globe, there is not the slightest indication that such a change of heart is about to take place. Which means that Israel will continue the occupation, as a distasteful but necessary holding operation.