Cover Story

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Israelis struggle to go on amid the carnage
of terrorism and scant hopes for peace.

End Of The Tunnel

As deaths mount on both sides, many Israelis feel
they have passed a point of no return.

ERIC SILVER
Jewish Renaissance Media

Jerusalem

y

asser Arafat costumes, once a favorite of
Israeli kids, were conspicuously missing
from the street parades this Purim. There
were lots of tiny paratroopers or police
officers, even a few Osama bin Laden masks. But
Arafat was too near home, too much of a clear and
present danger, to be a figure even of morbid fun.
Although Israelis still enjoy far more options —
to go to a concert or a soccer game, to dine out,
dance at a disco, go to the beach — than the
Palestinians, they feel under siege after a year and
a half of blood and cordite on both sides of the
old Green Line border.
"You're afraid to walk in the city," Dr. Channy
Maayan, a 55-year-old Jerusalem pediatrician, con-:
Tided. "You don't know what can happen from
minute to minute."
The fear and despair deepened last weekend
when a suicide bomber killed himself and nine
Israelis just after the Sabbath in the Orthodox
neighborhood of Beit Israel, near Mea Shearim,
and when a Palestinian sniper killed seven soldiers
and three civilians at an Israel Defense Forces
roadblock near the West Bank settlements of
Ateret and Ofra outside Ramallah. The Beit Israel
attack was a reminder of how vulnerable civilians
are to terrorists, while the roadblock deaths
seemed to mock Israel's military.
It used to be said that what distinguished the
Israeli left from the right was that the left were opti-

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2002

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mists, the right pessimists. The doves believed it was
possible to make peace with the Palestinians, the
hawks never did. Now you find only degrees of pes-
simism, the fuzzy line between depression and
despair.
"I still hope the Rabin days will come back," said
the Israeli-born Maayan, a mother _of two grown-up
sons. "But I have a feeling we've passed the point of
no return. There is so much hatred on both sides.
It's like a snowball, going faster and faster and gath-
ering more snow. Not only do they have to stop it,
they have to reverse the whole thing."
The hospital where Maayan works prides itself on
being "a game reserve of peace," with Jewish and
Arab doctors and nurses treating Jewish and Arab
patients. But the strains are being felt there, too.
"We used to have a very good atmosphere, very
good relations," she recalled. "But now there's a lot
of tension, not with the staff, but with the patients."
An Arab family came to the pediatric clinic with a
little boy dressed in a Hamas uniform, complete with
the green headband sported by suicide bombers.
Another time, a Muslim boy made nasty faces at an
elderly Jewish woman visiting her grandson. "We
never saw things like that before," Maayan said. "They
aroused a lot of bad feeling among patients and staff"
In Tel Aviv, Rachel Kirschen, a 38-year-old film
editor, said, "I don't see any chance for peace negoti-
ations. No war is all I can hope for now."
Others refuse to give up. Tamar Wolfin, the prin-
cipal of a kibbutz high school in Upper Galilee,
insisted, "You have to be optimistic. Otherwise, you
can't work with young people. There must be hope
that peace will come eventually. Right now, it's

tough, it's hard. But we've got nowhere else to go,
the Palestinians have nowhere else to go. So I guess
we'll have to live together."
Yet Wolfin admitted, "Till then, it might get even
harder."
In her school, they're trying business as usual.
Wolfin is going ahead with plans for the annual field
trip. "The test," she acknowledged, "is whether the
parents will agree."
Israelis are showing signs of battle fatigue. "People
have become worn down by the situation," said
Kirschen, whose family immigrated from New York
when she was a child.
"Many of my friends are left-wing. They went on
peace demonstrations, they criticized government
actions. Now they're just tired of it. If only we saw
one Palestinian woman on TV saying it's wrong to
blow up teenager§: We're tired of trying to be fair."
Daniel, the eldest of Kirschen's four children,
expects to be drafted later this year.
Ariel Sharon was elected prime minister a year ago
because he promised to bring back security. For
most of his reign, Israelis still hoped he would deliv-
er. Since the turn of the year, however, they-are rap-
idly losing faith in the portly warrior, who celebrat-
ed his 74th birthday last week.
"The last wave of attacks,•" political commentator
Hemi Shalev wrote in Ma'ariv on March 1, "strength-
ened the feeling among many people that Sharon
does not have an answer to terrorism right now."
Shalev added that the prime minister's Feb. 21 tele-
vised address to the nation "persuaded others that he
will not have a plan in the foreseeable futuie either."
A Ma'ariv poll found 61 percent of Israelis judging
Sharon's performance on the security front "less
good than expected." Asked whether he had fulfilled
his promises to the voters, 73 percent answered with
a resounding "No." Almost as many (68 percent)
thought the situation of the state was worse than it
was when the Likud leader took office. Only 27 per-
cent thought things would be better a year from
now; 30 percent thought it would be worse.
The - leadership is seen as impotent on both sides.
"I don't think," Rachel Kirschen said, "Arafat wants