HARDER LINE
Yet another, a well-established veteran
Soviet immigrant, trembled with rage as
she spoke of the Palestinian who recently
stabbed a woman soldier and a police-
man.
"He worked for a neighbor of mine, a
building contractor who said he would
have trusted this man with his own chil-
dren," she said. "They smile, but inside
they hate us. Liberal Americans don't
like to hear this, but we must stop the
Arabs coming here to work."
None of these people can be dismissed
— Dr. D. Carmil as right-wing fanatics. All, to varying de-
grees, would have been described as lib-
eral in the not-so-distant past. But, per-
haps without being aware of it them-
selves, their thinking has changed to a
remarkable degree.
As one who had previously attended
Peace Now demonstrations put it: "Don't
talk to me about coexistence."
Photo By Jack Eisenbe rg
"We are
seeing the
impact on a
new
generation
which has
grown up with
hatred and
fen"
Politics of Loss
Dr. Devora Carmil, a sociologist at the
Center for the Study of Psychological
Stress at Haifa University, is not sur-
prised by this grass-roots change in the
way Israelis see the Palestinian problem.
She recently completed a study on
changes in political viewpoint that follow
the loss of a relative or close friend
through war or terrorism, and how they
compared to the reactions of Holocaust
survivors and their descendants.
Her results showed clearly that Holo-
caust survivors — primarily Western-
oriented Europeans — continued to solid-
ly support centrist parties. Israelis who
suffered loss through war or terrorism, on
the other hand, became more extreme —
either on the Left or Right, according to
their ethnic origins.
"Politicians don't like to talk about
ethnic origins, but in fact it is a crucial
factor. Europeans swing to the left, while
Sephardic Jews move to the extreme
right. And the younger they are, the more
extreme they become politically," she
said.
"You can see this growing. When
Kahane first stood for the Knesset, no-
body believed anyone would vote for him.
Now you have people talking about
transfer quite openly. You have people
shouting 'death to the Arabs.' You have
growing support for a party like Moledet,
which represents Kahanist views in cam-
ouflage.
"People under stress need clear-cut so-
lutions. We are seeing the impact on a
new generation which has grown up with
hatred and fear — and the government
seems to be helpless, paralyzed in the face
of so many problems," Dr. Carmil said.
Prof. Milgram, who teaches psychology
at Tel Aviv University, predicted that if
an election were held in Israel now, 30
percent of the vote would go to the Left
and more than 50 percent to the Right,
26
FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 1991
Sign of the times: The No. 65 bus to Tekoah, on the West Bank, proceeds with a military escort.
The cracked windshield was broken by a stoning several hours earlier.
giving Likud and its allies a clear man-
date.
Still, he believes that a state policy of
transferring Palestinians remains unac-
ceptable to the majority of Israelis
"unless all kinds of bizarre things were
taking place, and there was enormous
loss of Israeli life through, say, a poison
gas attack and a massive Palestinian up-
rising."
In other words, while more and more
Israelis might openly support the idea of
transfer and vote for parties that share
this conviction, converting the idea into
deed is such a radical step that it could
not be undertaken without threatening
the very fabric of the society.
"There are too many built-in restraints.
Israelis are too respectful of due process
— and here I include both the army and
the bureaucracy," Prof. Milgram said.
"There would be tremendous, internal
opposition to such a policy, so much so
that even a strong man would not have a
free hand to do as he pleased."
Changing Debate
Jewish vigilantism is another blight
that has come to haunt Israel ever since
the Jewish Underground blasted its way
into the nation's consciousness in the ear-
ly 1980s. Since the start of the intifada,
the threat of Jewish extremist groups
taking the law into their own hands has
been very real.
Nonetheless, Prof. Milgram believes
that an increase in vigilantism at this
time would produce a rapid and powerful
counter-reaction.
"Israeli society has strong correcting
mechanisms," he said. "The idea of kill-
ing Arabs for revenge just doesn't exist
in the broader political and social culture
of this country."
Prof. Milgram's vision of Israel as a
strong, dynamic society, deeply wedded
to democratic process and political sani-
ty, is comforting. But it is also certain
that Israelis, facing acute political, eco-
nomic, social and military pressures, are
reacting in ways that point toward radi-
cal action and away from dialogue and
conciliation.
Whatever the outcome of the current
crisis in the Middle East, the terms of the
Israel-Palestinian debate have been
changed irrevocably. The chasm of mu-
tual distrust and hatred that separates
the two people is growing larger and more
extreme with every passing day.
Four years ago, six months before the
outbreak of the intifada, Matti Steinberg,
a senior Israeli specialist on Palestinian
affairs at the Hebrew University of Jeru-
salem and a man who advocated negotia-
tions with the PLO, predicted that within
10 years, "the majority of Israelis will
demand an expulsion of the Palestinians
from the West Bank and Gaza in order to
save their state."
In retrospect, those halcyon, pre-
intifada, pre-Saddam Hussein days seem
filled with hope and the possibility of
rapprochement between Israel and her
immediate neighbors. Four years ago,
that prediction seemed an unnecessarily
gloomy prophecy of doom. Today it ap-
pears a virtual certainty.
Perhaps the only error in Prof.
Steinberg's analysis was his timetable.
Like everything else in this troubled land,
the process has radically accelerated be-
yond anything he could have imagined. CI