Hasidic Movement in Israel Starts Drive Against Yielding Lands

With the stark warning that territorial compromise will endanger Israel, the influential Hasidic movement Habad is undertaking a massive grass-roots campaign against an Israeli retreat on any front--the Golan Heights, the West Bank or the Gaza Strip--in peace negotiations.

“We don’t see withdrawal as an option, not at all, because it would put lives, Jewish lives, at risk,” said Rabbi Joseph Aronov, the head of Habad in Israel, explaining a stand that he described as religious and not a break from Habad’s normal, disciplined distance from Israeli politics.

“To put lives at risk, and deliberately to do so, is simply forbidden. To yield this territory is consequently impermissible, and to discuss it (in negotiations with the Arabs) is equally wrong.”

Habad thus brings to the faltering rightist campaign against territorial concessions--the basis, that is, of Israel’s current peace negotiations with its Arab neighbors--two things that opposition political parties have lacked: an unambiguous message of no compromise, and an organization capable of carrying it, door to door, throughout Israel.

“Most people in Israel are against yielding this land, but they have been lulled to sleep over the past year,” Aronov said. “We are trying to awaken them and urge them to speak out against what they, in their hearts, oppose: giving up any of this territory, even an inch.”

Billboards proclaiming that “Israel Is in Danger” are already going up by the score in Tel Aviv and other towns; Habad bumper stickers with the message “Don’t Give In!” are proliferating, and enough brochures, well-written and in full color, have been printed for every Jewish household in Israel.

“If Israeli land is transferred to Arab control, you will not be safe nor will your children,” big Habad advertisements in the weekend Israeli papers declared, urging people to “Speak out! Protest! Let your voice be heard!” “Mobilize your friends and neighbors, and together let us put an end to the current, suicidal negotiation track--before it puts an end to us, God forbid.”

Habad does not enter into the daily debates over why Israel needs which ridgeline on the Golan Heights, whether the West Bank settlements are religiously right or politically wrong or even the practicality of trying to administer the virtually ungovernable Gaza Strip.

“Our position is simple--nobody has a right to gamble with my life, and that is what (Prime Minister Yitzhak) Rabin is doing when he offers to return any of this land to the Arabs,” Aronov said. “This is basic, it is fundamental, it cannot be argued against, but so far nobody has made it clear.”

The opposition Likud Party has called for a full debate in the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, on Monday on Rabin’s reported readiness to accept a Palestinian proposal for Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho as the first step toward resolving the Palestinian problem.

“No one is allowed or has the right, whatever his job or position, to make such decisions as giving away the Gaza Strip or any other strip or Jericho or any other city in Israel, to give them to the Arabs or the Palestine Liberation Organization,” former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir declared Friday.

“If there are plans or proposals like this, they should be brought before the nation, and the people should be asked for their opinion. This is done by holding new elections to the Knesset.”

Among the government’s supporters, however, there was a surge of optimism Friday as Israel and Palestinian negotiators appeared to be closing the gap on the question of self-government, combining the Israeli proposal for a Palestinian takeover of the administration of the occupied territories with the PLO call for an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and Jericho.

“This will allow a chance for a breakthrough at the coming round of peace talks in Washington,” Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told the best-selling Israeli newspaper, Yediot Aharonot. “Today, there is more agreement between us and the Palestinians than ever before.”

Aronov, however, cited the longstanding opposition of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher rebbe and leader of the Habad movement, to any Israeli retreat on any front, including from the Sinai Peninsula which was returned to Egypt as part of a 1978 peace agreement.

Habad’s position is based solely on security considerations, Aronov continued, and does not go into the arguments advanced by some Israelis that the West Bank as biblical Judea and Samaria, the Gaza Strip and even the Golan Heights are inherently Jewish and must be retained.

“We are seeking the broadest base, and that is security,” Aronov said. “If there were another war, God forbid, would we not be better protected with these territories than without? Would we not be putting lives at risk, or increasing the risk, by returning them? This is forbidden under Jewish law. Our argument is that straightforward.”

Aronov said Habad’s multimillion-dollar campaign against any territorial concessions is just beginning. Protest rallies are planned here, and they are likely to dwarf the pitiful crowds that the main opposition groups, the Likud Party and groups of settlers from the occupied territories, have drawn to recent protests.

Habad also expects to carry the campaign abroad, particularly to the United States where it has extensive support, and to raise funds to extend its efforts here, according to Aronov.