Absent Common Vision, Israel Is Entering a Season of Drift

With the Netanyahu government dissolving and gas mask distribution centers open 24 hours a day in case Saddam Hussein decides to hit Tel Aviv with anthrax, and the peace process collapsing even as a Palestinian state rises, Israel has entered a season of drift.

During his abbreviated term in office, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu--who has said he will call for early elections unless the Israeli parliament supports his peace plan on Monday--has managed to impart a consensus of near-despair among Israelis, perhaps the only emotion that now unites this fractured society.

For West Bank settlers, Netanyahu is a traitor, the first right-wing prime minister to cede parts of the land of Israel and transform settlements into besieged islands in Palestinian-controlled territory. For leftists, Netanyahu is a destroyer, emptying the peace process of minimal trust and undoing Israel’s hopes of integrating into the Middle East.

In theory, the disillusionment of right and left should have transformed Netanyahu into the natural candidate of the center, to which a majority of Israelis instinctively belong. Netanyahu has, in fact, fulfilled the centrists’ mandate, accepting the inevitability of territorial withdrawal while linking every concession to tangible Palestinian reciprocity. Even Netanyahu’s recent suspension of withdrawal, in response to Palestinian rioting, would have been understood 1634624544in a clumsy attempt to retrieve right-wing coalition support. Netanyahu the opportunistic politician has eroded the credibility of Netanyahu the centrist statesman.

Israelis across the political and cultural spectrum share a growing sense of tenuousness, of “their” Israel slipping away. Secularists watch the rising clout of ultra-Orthodox fundamentalists and fear the prospect of a Jewish Iran; Orthodox Jews see the growing hedonism of popular Israeli culture and fear Babylon in the Holy Land. Working-class Sephardim--Jews from Muslim countries--feel abandoned on the periphery, as skilled Russian newcomers achieve the economic success that has eluded them for decades, while Russians searching for their place in Israeli society encounter a hostility from Sephardim that increasingly resembles simple anti-immigrant hatred. Arab Israelis, fully a fifth of the population, wonder if Jewish Israel will ever grant them equal status and allow them to feel truly Israeli, while many Jews view the growing Palestinian nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism among Arab Israelis as a long-term threat to the country’s survival.

In their common fear of displacement, each mini-Israel retreats into its own tribal identity, abandoning a common sense of Israeliness. The Zionist revolution sought to transform the Jews from disparate communities back into a people. But now that goal appears to be unraveling. One measure of our desperation is the astonishing rise of former military chief of staff Lt. Gen. Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, who emerges as the most popular candidate for prime minister in every opinion poll even though he isn’t officially running and hasn’t revealed his intended policies. Yet because he appears to embody the old Israeli ethos of integrity and directness, many see in him the leader who will somehow inspire us to retrieve a shared identity.

For a people who are routinely summoned to sacrifice for their country, vision is an existential necessity. Perhaps Netanyahu’s greatest failure is his inability to challenge the pull toward cynicism and fragmentation. The late Likud leader Menachem Begin inspired half the nation with his vision of a Jewish return to the biblical lands captured in the Six-Day War; then Yitzhak Rabin inspired the nation’s other half with his vision of winning peace by ceding those lands. After Rabin’s assassination three years ago and the abyss that opened between the right-wing religious and left-wing secular camps, Israeli society craved a reminder that diversity isn’t a threat but an opportunity, that the promise of Zionism is to synthesize the cultures and sensibilities gathered here from almost every nation. But Netanyahu has only deepened our sense of drift.

In the absence of any common vision, our anxiety about coping with the political and military dangers around us grows. We stagger through minefields, wondering how to summon the elusive strength that had pulled us through crises in the past. The optimists among us anticipate the arrival of the messiah or of Lipkin-Shahak, to save Israel from the chaos of its soul.