Collateral Damage of the Disengagement

Norman Podhoretz’s important article in COMMENTARY (Israel and the Palestinians:  Has Bush Reneged?) identifies one of the most remarkable aspects of the Gaza disengagement — the post-disengagement non-response by the Israeli government to repeated acts of war, and the non-response by the Israeli public as well: 

Nor in any of the wildest worst-case scenarios I could conjure up did it ever occur to me that, in the aftermath of disengagement, an Israeli government — any Israeli government — would sit by passively while missiles were being fired day after day from Gaza into Sderot or any other patch of Israeli territory. . . .

. . . I cannot for the life of me imagine Sharon behaving as Olmert has done.  More likely, with no Jews left to protect in Gaza, he would have felt free — and totally justified from both a military and a moral point of view — to hit back with overwhelming force the minute the Kassams started flying. . . .

I find it incredible that the Olmert government has for so long been incapable of discharging the most elementary responsibility any government has of protecting its people against attack, and even more incredible that, in spite of this dereliction, Olmert remains in office. 

Podhoretz’s observation reflects the fact that the disaster of the disengagement is not simply military or strategic.  The collateral damage has included the impact on the Israeli spirit. 

The disengagement was implemented by the Israeli elites, not only without a general referendum, but in direct violation of (1) the Likud referendum that Sharon called and then disregarded (when it went decisively against him), and (2) the campaign promise Sharon had made during his election campaign, when he ridiculed the Gaza withdrawal on which his opponent had based his campaign.

The excuse for not holding a public referendum was it was unnecessary, since public opinion polls showed a majority of Israelis supported it.  But if that were true, there was no reason not to hold the referendum, to obtain the formal public approval such a divisive and decisive step required.  

In early 2005, a prominent Israeli political scientist wrote an article listing various reasons for dispensing with a referendum (there was no established procedure for one; it was a bad precedent; it would be difficult to frame the question; it would take time, etc.).  The reasons seemed unconvincing to me, and when I made that comment to him, he told me the "real reason" for foregoing a referendum — the reason he said he could not put in print. 

The referendum, he said, would pass — but only with the votes of the Arab population of Israel.  What the referendum would make clear was that a majority of Jews in Israel opposed the disengagement, and after that it would no longer be politically possible to effectuate it. 

In other words, the policy was too important to let the Jews vote.

Back in 2005, there were large demonstrations against the disengagement, with orange-colored banners everywhere.  The protests continued up until the disengagement itself.  But today — with a government conducting a premature Phase III, with a Palestinian "Authority" that could not even hold onto Gaza when it was handed to it, a "peace partner" that refuses to recognize a Jewish state, and has failed to dismantle even its own "military wing" — there is nothing from the Israeli public.  No demonstrations, no protests, no banners or colors — just resignation.

Begun with a broken campaign promise, then a disregarded referendum of the governing party, then a refusal to hold a public referendum, the disengagement was followed by serial acts of war, to which the government made no effective response, followed by a failed war in Lebanon by a leader who took "full responsibility" for the fiasco but remained in office, followed by an "acceleration" of the "peace process" by discredited leaders, acting without public support, conducting final status negotiations in secret, under fire.

No wonder the spirit of Israel seems broken.  Here is how Daniel Gordis, in a March 7, 2008 Dispatch entitled "The Shame of It All, described what Israelis have chosen to ignore:

[Y]ou don’t allow yourself to be horrified by the fact that almost 8,000 rockets have been fired at Sederot, that life there has been transformed into hell. . . . elementary school kids have been wetting their beds, half the businesses are vacated, more than half the town is empty, the economy doesn’t exist and everyone is scared to death, all the time. . . .

Our Prime Minister doesn’t want to defend Sederot.  Or Ashkelon.  He doesn’t want to tell Bush that the charade with Abu Mazen is bound to explode, and that when it does, more of us will die.

Read the rest of Gordis’s dispatch here, and read the remarkable Yael’s impassioned letter to her brothers and sisters in Israel (If you’re going to go down, must you go this quietly?").

Perhaps the issue is not whether Bush has reneged on Israel, but whether Israel has reneged on itself.