Withdrawal opponents arise

NECHEMIA MEYERS

Most of the balconies in our neighborhood were festooned with national flags on Israel's Independence Day. But one flag stood out from the others. Hanging from it were a dozen orange ribbons, which the residents of that particular apartment had sewn onto their flag as a demonstration of their belief that the withdrawal from the Katif Bloc had been a mistake and that further withdrawals would be a disaster.

This point of view was put to me forcefully by a member of the family that had hung out the banner in question. "The withdrawal from Lebanon," she declared, "was seen by the Palestinians as proof that terrorism pays and so they embarked upon the first intifada. Now, with the withdrawal from Gaza, they are raining rockets on Ashkelon. Can you imagine," she asked rhetorically, "what will happen if we withdraw from Judea and Samaria?"

There are other opponents of the present government's policy on territorial issues that would, in certain circumstances, support limited withdrawals in order to guarantee the Jewish character of the Jewish state. "But first," a Bar-Ilan professor told me, "we must evaluate the consequences of the pullback from Gaza. The first thing I do after one scientific experiment and before I embark upon a second one, is to evaluate the results of the first one. We haven't done that, as a country, where Gaza is concerned."

The professor in question has his own clear views on the issue. He pointed out that many of the settlers forced out of the Gaza Strip are still without proper housing and jobs. "And if, as [Ehud] Olmert proposes, tens of thousands of Jews were to be expelled from the territories, the problem would be multiplied many times over."

Although this man thinks that the Arab-supplied population figures for Judea and Samaria are very exaggerated, he does not deny, as do some people on the right, that there is a demographic problem to be faced. But he feels that borders can be drawn that will ensure Israel's control of strategically vital hill areas and water sources, while including very few Arabs. In the meantime, in any case, he sees no point in Israel unilaterally deciding on borders that no one, not even the United States, will recognize. "We'll be worse off strategically and no more legitimate in the world's eyes than we are today," he declared.

Can the convergence plan be defeated in the Knesset? The professor believes that it can, if the opposition is united and forces a serious public debate on the issue.

There are other voices, not necessarily of right-wingers, who call for the Olmert plan to be put on the back burner in the meantime. They include respected Ha'aretz columnist Ari Shavit, who warned that his fellow countrymen are so preoccupied with other matters that they don't realize that the first item on the national agenda must be the threat of an Iranian A-bomb. The only man who can stop them from producing one is George Bush. Continuing with the convergence scheme will, Shavit argued, present him with more problems – in addition to Iran and Iraq.

"Israel's role now," Shavit declared, "is to keep a low profile, stick to the road map, deal with the illegal outposts and not draw any unusual attention to itself. It must help Western public opinion to understand the inevitable and also prepare Israeli public opinion for the unavoidable. Only after the hum of the Iranian uranium-enriching centrifuges is silenced will it be possible to seriously deal with the systematic uprooting of settlements."

Nechemia Meyers is a freelance writer living in Rehovot, Israel.

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