BACKGROUND
Foreign Correspondent
W
ithout warning, a
small, black pistol
materializes in the
hand of Israel's most con-
troversial cabinet minister.
It rests naturally in his
palm, a finger curled comfor-
tably around the trigger.
"No," he says, with just
the suggestion of a smile
touching his lips, "I am not
concerned about my per-
sonal safety. I am always
prepared."
Perhaps, but Rehavam
Ze'evi is no Boy Scout. He is
leader of the Moledet
(Homeland) Party and a fer-
vent advocate of transferr-
ing the entire 1.8 million Pa-
lestinian population out of
the Israeli-occupied West
Bank and Gaza Strip.
Not surprisingly, his ap-
pointment to the cabinet of
Prime Minister Yitzhak
Shamir last month was
greeted with a howl of inter-
national outrage.
Mr. Ze'evi's impassive,
granite appearance is an
eloquent reflection of his un-
compromising political
disposition. It also matches
his surroundings: the grim,
Kremlinesque Prime Min-
ister's Office, where the .new
minister, his aide and secre-
tary occupy a spartan, no-
frills suite.
In a rare interview,
Rehavam Ze'evi, who feels
he has been burnt by the
international media, immed-
iately bristles at the sugges-
tion that he has inherited
the mantle of the late Rabbi
Meir Kahane, who sought
the total expulsion of all
Arabs from all areas under
Israeli control and whose
Kach Party was deemed
racist by Israel's High
Court.
Mr. Ze'evi says his sup-
porters are drawn from
across the entire socio-
economic spectrum, and that
if elections were held now,
he would win between 12
and 15 seats in the Knesset.
In a system where political
power is finely balanced
between the two major
power blocs, this would en-
sure the continuation of
Israel's right-wing trend and
would place Rehavam Ze'evi
and his philosophy of
The Minister
Of Transfer
Unlike Kahane, Rehavam Ze'evi has broad
appeal. Israel's new cabinet minister says his
policy is based on reality and compassion.
"transfer" in the box seat of
any new coalition.
There are, indeed, impor-
tant differences between Mr.
Ze'evi and Rabbi Kahane:
While Rabbi Kahane was in
his element whipping up
fears and hatreds in blue-
collar Israel, Mr. Ze'evi
speaks with dry, careful
deliberation, drawing on
history and military science
to expound his political
philosophy.
And he is a fifth-
generation folk hero, whose
roots are firmly planted in
Israel's founding Labor
movement and whose 30-
year military career carried
him to the highest levels in
that most revered institu-
tion.
"Everything I know, I
learned in the Labor move-
ment," says Mr. Ze'evi, who
cut his military teeth in the
elite, pre-independence
Palmach strike force of the
Jewish underground.
If Meir Kahane appealed
to a radical fringe, Mr.
Ze'evi speaks to the main-
stream. And he is now being
embraced by the heart of the
ruling establishment.
After leaving the army in
1974 with the rank of major-
general and command of the
central region, which in-
cluded the recently con-
quered West Bank, Mr.
Ze'evi served as adviser on
anti-terrorism and intel-
ligence to Labor Prime Min-
ister Yitzhak Rabin.
He says he abhors politi-
cians and turned down plum
Mr. Ze'evi claims
that more than 80
percent of the
Israeli adult
population
supports his views.
jobs by both major political
parties in order to become
director of the Ha'aretz Mu-
seum in Tel Aviv. He threw
his hat into the political ring
unwillingly only because he
believed his message had
become an urgent necessity.
Now aged 65, he still ex-
udes the intellectual and
physical toughness one asso-
ciates with a general in the
most persistently belligerent
corner of the world.
Mr. Ze'evi expresses sur-
prise at the suggestion that
transferring a population
from one country to another
is somehow inconsistent
with the values of a liberal,
Western democracy.
The bottom line, he says, is
that two people cannot live
together in one country.
In this century alone, he
says, 124 million people
have been transferred — "11
million between India and
Pakistan, 11 million Ger-
mans in Eastern Europe
. . .
Rehavam Ze'evi has clear-
ly studied the subject. Two
years after the end of World
War II, he says, President
Eduard Benes of
Czechoslovakia ordered
750,000 Germans to be
transferred from the
Sudetenland back to Ger-
many in one week — "like
11
animals, without even suit-
cases."
Shortly afterwards, a
Western politician met Mr.
Benes and asked how, as a
humanist, a socialist, a lib-
eral, he could have done
such a thing.
"Benes, who really was a
great humanist, told him:
`You don't understand be-
cause you faced the Germans
only in the front lines. We
faced the enemy in our home
— and if Czechoslovakia
fights another war, we don't
want to repeat the experi-
ience.' "
Mr. Ze'evi relates this
historical episode not only to
offer a precedent for the idea
of transfer but, more
specifically, to justify his
demand for transferring the
Palestinian population — "a
fifth column" — out of the
West Bank and Gaza.
Has Israel exhausted all
possibilities for peaceful
coexistence?
"We have tried all
methods of living together,"
he says. "As neighbors we
will cooperate, but not in one
home. If we stay together it
will mean that our children
will continue to fight.
"Since the start of the Jew-
ish state we have paid with
the lives of 17,000 of our
people. It's enough. We want
to live like a normal state —
to develop our culture, our
agriculture, our industry
and society. We don't have to
live like Sparta forever. I
want my children and
grandchildren to live nor-
mally. Why do we have to
fight all our lives?"
In Mr. Ze'evi's book,
transfer can be achieved in
three ways —by free will, by
agreement between
governments or by compul-
sion. His Moledet Party ad-
vocates the first two of these
options.
Transfer by agreement, he
says, is achieved when two
or more governments agree
to shift a population group
from one country to another
in order to ensure peace.
Then, with something ap-
proaching a flourish he pro-
duces a couple of examples:
The first was the conflict
between Turkey and Greece
in the Twenties when the
League of Nations was con-
cerned that the conflict
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
31
O
fMMIORSH
HELEN DAVIS