COLUMN LEFT/ ANNE ROIPHE : They Want the Land, All of It : The extreme right in Israel is stealing the ground on which the peace table rests.

New Year’s Eve we watched the fireworks shoot up into the sky over Central Park. At least the bang was not caused by guns or Scuds, at least the room I was in was unsealed, my enemies oceans away. The next few days we drowsily contemplated the past and future and cleaned a closet or two.

Meanwhile in Jerusalem the government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir approved a budget that permits the building of 5,000 new housing units in the West Bank and Gaza, thus deflating the balloon of peace set aloft among the burning oil wells of Kuwait. Those 5,000 units represent two-thirds of the housing budget for the year. In the last few days of the old year, $75 million was added to the budget for new roads serving Jewish settlers. That’s 70 miles worth of tar into the disputed territories. At the same time, the Defense Ministry was issuing orders to expel 12 Palestinians suspected of terrorism or inciting terrorism.

While we were raising our glasses in hope of peace, the Israeli government--the Likud and their nationalistic far-right partners--was undermining the peace process. Our Israel has become hostage to the fundamentalists of expansion who say: I want everything; I was divinely appointed the entire land; anyone who thinks loans are more important than land is a weak-kneed turncoat, a Zionist with a halfway heart and no guts. The tango in Madrid may not have been the curtain-raiser we applauded after all.

What does this mean to me, an American Jew who believes that Israel should have its loan guarantees so that Soviet Jews can be welcomed? What should happen now to those loan guarantees if the Bush Administration wants to make them contingent on a freeze of settlement activity?

The Likud government has just turned its back on my American government. The give-me-an-inch-and-I’ll-take-a-few-miles-niks have made the peace process tremble. That was their intention. They would rather hang-glide than talk peace. They regard the prospect of discussions in Washington as an invitation to waltz in a mine field. They have said they don’t intend to return anything. Some of them have even admitted that it’s not about security. They want the land, all of it. This is Zionism of the great appetite. This is Zionism of the sword. This is not the Zionism of David Ben Gurion or Teddy Kollek, a Zionism of many voices and no idolatry. This is not the Zionism that made the desert bloom.

I am torn, bitterly rent. On the one hand, the guarantees will help Israel fulfill its mission: a homeland for all Jews who are in need, all who wish to join, a nation proud among nations, strong and good. On the other hand, because money spent in one place will free more for another, the loans will bring the backhoes and the cement mixers into the orchards and up the hills that crisscross the occupied territories. Indirectly, the loans will fill up the empty space where peace and mutual good will might have grown. A settler was killed two weeks ago in the Gaza Strip. More will be killed, requiring further action. We will enter a zone of provoke and protest and tear gas and imprisonment, and peace will never come.

The new year starts with my heart in my mouth, confusion in my mind. How to tell President Bush that there is another Zionism, not just Shamir’s? How to let Congress know that Ariel Sharon is a Bull Conner in the Middle East, a Bull Conner without dogs? How to keep the pressure on, the adversaries talking, when the extreme right in Israel steals the very ground on which the peace table rests? How to convince Shamir that the way to get money for Soviet Jews is to stop settlement activity right now, before the issue is considered by Congress?

As an American Jew, I watch and grieve. I can’t expect my government to give loan guarantees when Shamir is playing with historical fire, arsonist of our peace dream. I want the Soviet Jews alive and well, with a bright future in their new home. But if Shamir and Sharon persist, there will be no American banking support, and Soviet Jews will pay the price in human suffering.

I understand. All those years of Palestinian intransigence, of attacks across the borders, of Arab threats to drive Jews into the sea, have made Israelis mad with anger and fierce to the bone. Add to that the ones who believe God has given his word, and the conflagration is inevitable.

Can saner souls preserve the peace process? Can someone make Shamir and Sharon stop before it’s too late? Can Israel take its fury and create an oasis of human hope, a place of sweetness and decency? Or will the moment for peace fade like the dying fireworks above my New Year’s sky, brilliant for a moment and then nothing, ash.