Not a great picture

Despite reassurances, Israel still far from recovering from pullout

Andrew Friedman|Published: 10.16.05 , 13:16

The chorus began less than a week after the pullout from Gaza was completed: The Hebrew daily "Maariv" ran a front page editorial pronouncing the move a success and hailing Israeli society for "making it" through the traumatic move.

Commentators and politicians - who, notably, supported the move all along – breathed a sigh of relief that Gaza's Jewish residents refused to shed blood for their homes, proclaimed the move a success, and congratulated one another that IDF soldiers had enough Jewish feeling to cry at having to dismantle synagogues.

Pullout Days

The real tragedy

By Andrew Friedman

Politics aside, the fall of Gush Katif is a tragedy for all Israel, even the Tel Avivians sipping lattes on Shenkin Street: A response to Tali Tzin

The real tragedy

Sorry, folks, the truth is not at all that rosy.

First of all are the settlers themselves, the principal victims of disengagement. Two months after the pullout, people continue to pay for the privilege of having been forcibly evicted from their homes, in the form of mortgages on now-destroyed homes, storage costs for their belongings, hotel costs and many, many other expenses.

Much of this may be chalked up to state-run ineptness; a more cynical view – and one shared by many former Gaza residents and their supporters – is that, having destroyed their homes and communities, Prime Minister Sharon is now out to break any last semblance of community or social cohesion his political opponents might feel, possibly in advance of another pullout in the West Bank.

Legal maybe, but democratic?

Even more than the settlers, the main victim of the disengagement plan and its administration was the so-called Israeli "democracy."

Yes, it's true – the move was entirely legal. But democratic? The government approved the move only after Ariel Sharon fired the government ministers who threatened to vote against the plan, and stubbornly refused any and all suggestions, such as referendum or early elections, to actually test the well-worn claim that a majority supported the move. To paraphrase Interior Minister Ophir Pines-Paz, "who needs a referendum? We've got a majority."

(It bears mentioning that every concrete indicator in the past three years suggested the public would not have approved such a move. The most important of these indicators were the January 2003 elections in which disengagement was the major, perhaps the only, campaign issue. At that time, the biggest landslide in Israel's electoral history said "no" to unilateral pullout.)

Far worse, there is at least reason to suspect that the plan hatched in Sharon's head not because he suddenly came to realize the error of the last 30 years of his political life, but rather because he realized the move would likely get the judicial branch to close criminal proceedings against him for suspected corruption.

No, these allegations have never been proven, but the fact that such strong suspicions exist cast a very foul odor over the whole proceeding.

Regardless of Sharon's personal innocence or guilt, the fact that the legislative, executive and judicial (!) branches of the Israeli government failed to investigate the matter, or better still, to hire truly independent investigators, does not bode well for the health of "Israeli democracy."

So yes, the destruction of Gush Katif was technically legal. So were Jim Crow laws in the American south. But is this really what we want our democracy to be?

Alienated minority

In addition, now that disengagement has been so "successfully" carried out, the country is left with a large section of the country that feels not only that they and their communities are little more than so much dust on a windowsill, to be swept away to deflect attention from the next political crisis to threaten the ruling junta, but that a large section of Israelis feel the country would be better off without them.

How else to interpret the hate-filled diatribe by celebrated author Amos Oz, on this page even before the process was completed? In one breath, Oz promised to respect the settlers' mourning by remaining silent and claimed to write "with no hint of joy," but then continued to outline a stark kulturkampf in Israel, a battle between "us and them": "we", the enlightened left, fighting against the dark vision of the damn settlers and their ayatollah-rabbis looking to drag the country back to the dark ages.

Apathetic Tel Aviv

And even if Oz represents a small far-left constituency, at best the country is left a majority of Tel Avivians who filled trendy cafes as other communities were ripped apart.

Worse than their indifference, many were annoyed at those preachy settlers disturbing their lattes to ask for a bit of support. "Yes, it's terrible, I know. Could you pass the sugar?"

At the end of the day, Israeli "democracy" was used as a club with which to beat those people who dared object to the plan.

So, sorry, Shlomo Avineri, Maariv editor Dan Margalit, and others who hailed the wisdom of disengagement ahead of time and then jumped to crow on about how "strong" Israeli society is because the settlers actually turned out to be caring human beings.

Because your democracy and your society are "strong" only for those who support you and your ideals.

And there is a long way to go until we can accurately be said to have "come through" disengagement.

Andrew Friedman is an editor at Ynetnews.com and a resident of the West Bank town of Efrat