THE SIX DAY WAR, 20 YEARS LATER

the stand of those who believe in
Jewish sovereignty over — and set-
tlement in — all of biblical Israel.
Indeed, he regards the settlement
of 70,000 Jews in Judea, Samaria and
Gaza — and 100,000 Jews in east Je-
rusalem — as the great achievement
of the past two decades.
Medad, however, is dismayed by the
failure of successive Israeli govern-
ments to extend Jewish sovereign-
ty — "I don't call it annexation" —
over the territories, a failure which he
attributes to a lack of courage and
resolve.
It has, he says, left a vacuum which
has been filled with the ambitions of
Palestinian nationalism and the am-
bitions of King Hussein that he
might one day restore territories to
Jordan.
The prospect of absorbing 1.3
million hostile West Bank and Gaza
Palestinians into Israel does not
bother him. The "demographic
threat," he says, is vastly overrated
and a stick that Israeli liberals and
"concessionists" use to beat
themselves.
Israel Medad exudes confidence
that the tide of Jewish history — and

"No way!" says Medad. "There
would be street demonstrations,
massive rallies, petitions, lobbying to
stop such a settlement.
"If land was handed over to the
Arabs, and if — as Shimon Peres
claims — Jewish settlements were
allowed to remain on that land, I
believe there would be many settlers,
perhaps a majority, who would take
up arms [against the Arabs] to wrest
back control.
"We will never accept such a securi-
ty risk," he says, "such a corruption
of basic Zionist values. We will never
divorce ourselves from Jewish
history."

.E.N ■••■■■I
'Our Only Hope
Is To Give Back
The Territories'

EHOSHAFAT HARKAB I'S
nightmares are woven from
the stuff • of Israel
Medad's dreams.
Like Professor Yuval Ne'eman, the
leader of the lehiya Party, Professor

y

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the realities of Israeli society — are
running with him.
The rIbhiya Party, born out of the
anger over Israel's evacuation of set-
tlements in the Sinai, is gaining in
popularity, particularly among young
voters.
Polls consistently show the party
winning between 8 and 10 seats in
the next election, placing it in a
pivotal position if the votes are once
again fairly evenly divided between
the major parties.
If, against all the odds, an Israeli
government does reach a settlement
with Jordan and the Palestinians
based on a territorial compromise,
what would be the reaction of the
nationalist camp?

28

Friday, June 5, 1987

Harbaki is a former director of Israeli
military intelligence.
Now a senior history professor at
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
Hakarbi's self-appointed mission is to
warn ordinary Israelis — not those he
terms "the bleeding heart leftists" —
of the grave perils awaiting them and
their children if Israel does not get
out of the occupied territories — and
fast.
He deliberately avoids addressing
the moral issues involved in ruling
over a subject people and the effect
of the occupation on Israeli society.
Instead, he hammers away at an
argument that he believes is "readi-
ly understood by everyone" — the
demographic predicament facing
Israel.
"Barring some divine interven-
tion," he says, "the Arabs will become
a majority in the not-so-distant
future. There is no possibility what-
soever that a Jewish state can exist

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

where the majority of its inhabitants
are Arabs.
"The Arabs will demand political
rights, and when they obtain them —
because there will be no choice —they
will have a majority in the Knesset
and demand equality with regard to
the Law of Return.
"This will spell the end of the
Jewish state. Jews are not coming
here. Arabs will. And lots of them,
too.
"If we refuse to grant them political
rights, the situation won't be any bet-
ter. Our rule in the West Bank will
become less and less tolerated.
"The Arab inhabitants of the ter-
ritories still consider the Israeli
occupation temporary, and they will
somehow put up with it as long as
they continue to view it as such.
"Once they realize that this is an
irrevocable situation, serious distur-
bances will break out. Terrorism will
intensify at an alarming rate and the
situation will become intolerable.
"We must bear in mind that the
Palestinians are making progress all
the time. Their intelligentsia is grow-
ing, and history has already shown
that the more developed a nation is,
the less it is willing to tolerate foreign
rule.
"The Arabs are not orphans. They
enjoy the concern of public opinion
both inside and outside Israel —
including, of course, the Arab coun-
tries. If no settlement is reached,
horrendous wars will break out. The
peace with Egypt will collapse.
Everything will collapse.
"Even if Israel emerges victorious
it will be at a catastrophic cost in
human life and the Arabs are far more
able than we to sustain losses.
"However you look at it, Israel as
good as commits suicide if it does not
reach a settlement over the ter-
ritories."
The only logical, if unrealistic, path
for Israel if it intends holding on to
the territories and retaining the
Jewish character of the state, says
Hakarbi, is that proposed by Rabbi
Meir Kahane and his openly racist
Kach movement, which advocates the
expulsion of all Arabs from Israel and
the territories.
"I don't believe we could do it," says
Hakarbi. "It is not only a moral ques-
tion, it's a question of the reactions
such a move will trigger throughout
the world.
"It is also, of course, a question of
Israel's staying power, which would
be vital in the violence that will reach
new heights if such a move is taken."
Hakarbi terms his own generation
"the generation that is betraying

their children."
"We are leaving such dreadful prob-
lems to our children that it is difficult
to believe they will ever manage to
cope with them," he says. "We are
throwing them to the wolves with our
own hands."

'We Are
Locked Together'

R

AJA SHEHADEH was 16
years old in 1967. He
remembers seeing women
from the Latrun area, carrying
bundles of possessions, passing his
family home in the West Bank town
of Ramallah. The women said that
the Jews had chased them from their
villages and had killed their menfolk.
"I was scared that I would be
killed, too," says Raja, scion of a
prominent Christian Arab family
that has produced generations of
lawyers and judges. "I recall discus-
sions at home about where it was
safest to sit to avoid the bullets."
There were of course, no bullets, on-
ly the arrival of Israeli officers who
sought the help and advice of Raja's
father in the task of restoring calm
and normal services to the newly-
conquered areas.
"The Israelis I met at home were
very impressive, very high-caliber,"
says Raja, himself now a lawyer and
active in the predominantly Palestin-
ian human rights organization called
Law in the Service of Man.
"The option of anger and hate," he
says, "was frustrated by my personal
encounters."
Raja has, in fact, become a leading
exponent of the concept of "sam-
mud" —steadfastness — which he
describes as "the third way between
the alternatives of mute submission
and blind hate."
Like many Palestinians of his
generation, he longs for an end to the
Israeli occupation; for a realization of
Palestinian self-determination.
But living cheek-by-jowl with Israel
for 20 years has had a profound im-
pact on his thinking. "Israelis and
Palestinians are locked together, for
better or for worse," he says.
"Both sides have yearnings, both
sides are fatigued. Both seem to
define themselves in terms of the
other, in terms of arrogance and fear."
He speaks sadly of a feeling "that
all three religions are being driven to
fanaticism, to tribalism," and he
speaks with anger of the militant
Jewish settlers "who plant their flags
at the tops of hills as if they were
discovering the moon where no one