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Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu is a freelance writer who formerly worked as a reporter and senior copy editor in Virginia, Montreal, Edmonton and as an op-ed contributor for the Vancouver Sun. He made aliyah in 1983 and has spent 17 years working on kibbutz and moshav in irrigation, turkeys, orchards, security, repairs and upkeep. He lives on Moshav Bet Yatir in the southern Hebron Hills.
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By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
May 23, 2004
The silent majority in Israel is holding a big surprise for the vocal minorities.
Both left and right wing parties, encouraged by partisan media, have been shouting at inaudible levels and assuming most of the people are listening.
The recent Likud party referendum on Prime Minister Sharon's proposal to evacuate Jews from the Gaza Strip displayed the illusions and exaggerated the strength of the opposite sides of Israel's political spectrum.
Right wing nationalists are under the illusion that the party's opponents of the referendum also support the Greater Israel vision in which all of the land over the pre-1967 borders is as much a part of Israel as Haifa, Tel Aviv and downtown Jerusalem.
Left wing Peace Now advocates presume that the referendum lost only because the settlers were highly organized and that most Israelis support an unconditional and immediate transfer of Jewish settlers from Gush Katif.
Both sides are wrong.
More than 100,000 Israelis flocked to Gush Katif on Independence Day in support of Jewish presence in the Gaza Strip. Another 120,000 gathered in Tel Aviv last Saturday night in a Peace Now Rally to encourage Sharon to bring the plan before the Knesset and win a vote of confidence.
But this combined force of quarter of a million includes thousands of children. The vast majority of Jews remains silent.
It is this "middle-of the-road" mass that split its vote in 1996 between Shimon Peres, the eternal peace negotiator, and Bibi Netanyahu, the semi-demagogue who promised both peace and settlements and won by a fraction of a percentage point. Three years later, the same voters, egged on by the media, dumped Bibi and voted for Ehud Barak, untainted as a newcomer to politics.
Barak's crumbling support and the Arabs war of terrorism following the failure of peace talks forced him to resign in December 2000. But the same voters who once supported Barak then dumped him in favor of Ariel Sharon's promise of peace and security.
The middle-of-the-road have been burned by worthless peace agreements and messianic speeches for the redemption of Greater Israel, from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. They know that any unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip will not bring Israel any closer to peace and simply will bring terrorist attacks closer western Negev kibbutzim, Ashkelon and even Tel Aviv.
They also know that Jewish presence in the Gaza Strip is not going to convince the Arabs to lay down their weapons.
The silent majority knows the truth: there is no solution at hand and there will be no solution so long as the nation's left and right wing parties maintain hold the stage with their illusions.
The media, almost all of which are increasingly political and unreliable, encourage these deceptions and have become a part of them. They refer to the right wing as extremists, but avoid that description even when Yossi Beilin insists that the PLO is a "partner" for peace talks.
It prolongs the dilemma, insisting that a national referendum would win support for an unconditional evacuation of Jews from the Gaza Strip.
Most of the people do want an evacuation, but they would not support such a move without an overthrow of the Arab policy of terrorism. That seemingly unlikely event cannot happen so long as the Arabs believe that the left and right wing elements speak for the Israeli majority.
The polemic has reached ridiculous extremes that show the desperation on both sides.
A recent article in Haaretz claimed, "The Jewish settlers in the territories replaced loyalty to the state with loyalty to the Torah" and that "those who believe in the Torah deny the government as the final word."
Israel's star journalist Nahum Barnea wrote that there is going to be an uprising of the people against Sharon and for evacuating the Gaza Strip as soon as possible.
Such statements from the right usually bring on media calls for charges of incitement.
For its part, the right wing act as if God has given them a mandate. Their media, which consists of two weeklies and the Internet site of Arutz 7, whose radio site the government and courts managed to close after years of harassment, call for evacuating Arabs instead of Jews, from the Gaza Strip, and leaving the United Nations.
Religious leaders have usurped the podium, forgetting that a large number of secular Israelis also support Greater Israel. "It's a tough situation, but we have seen that G-d controls the events," Arutz 7 quoted an outpost settler this week.
The near-term future does not look pleasant. There will be violent confrontations in the wake of any attempt to evacuate any outpost.
The left and right will shout even more and try to blame the settlers or the Arabs as the cause for Israel's problems.
Eventually a solution will come when the media and political leaders stop confusing punishment with solutions.
The silent majority wants some peace and quiet and it will come only when it elects a government that can exist without the left or the right.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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