Danny Gordis, Director of the Mandel Jerusalem Fellows, and the author, most recently, of If a Place Can Make You Cry: Dispatches from an Anxious State (Crown)," has a new Dispatch from Israel, always worth reading in its entirety.
Returning to Israel after a quick trip to the States, he finds opposition to the disengagement growing:
I looked out the window of the car, and sure enough, there were many more cars sporting orange ribbons tied to their antennas or roof racks than there had been when I’d left just days earlier. The more I looked around, the more it seemed cars were sporting orange everywhere.
A few nights later, Gordis is driving to his son’s elementary school graduation, and he sees even more orange:
The police were out in force, helicopters chopping up above, water-cannons positioned at critical junctions (and used, later in the evening). Orange t-shirts everywhere, and on a few street corners, a few kids timidly handling out blue ribbons, too, representing those in favor of the disengagement . . . . Cars here honking, people were shouting. The vitriol on the radio was poisonous as we made our way to Gilo, where the ceremony was held. Sharon was being vilified.
Israeli radio seems to be debating some existential issues:
As the radio interviewed leaders of both sides, they agreed about one thing. Make the wrong move here, and we’re finished. The right said that this disengagement is only going to lead to a renewed Intifada in the fall, for we’ll have shown them that firing on us does pay. And the left says that if we don’t pull out, the conflict will never end, and very quickly, the world will dismember us, and we ourselves will collapse under the weight of never ending conflict. . . . Complete disagreement, and both sides are talking about the end of the country.
Gordis puts both orange and blue ribbons on his car, reflecting the division of opinion within his own family, and his uncertainty regarding his own position:
A bit bizarre, I’ll grant, but what can I do? We only need one car, and we don’t agree. And besides, though I’ve got my position, I’m not sure it’s right. I see the other side’s point. And with each passing day, as the Day of Judgment gets closer, I know that they, too, might be right.
Shouldn’t there be a referendum? Isn’t that the way a democracy handles a Day of Judgment issue?
A part of 30 meters (98 feet) long orange ribbon, the color of the anti-disengagement movement, hangs on a building under construction in the central city of Rishon Letzion near Tel Aviv Monday July 4, 2005. Settler leaders on Monday drew up a code of conduct to deter followers from violence during protests against the upcoming Gaza pullout, and Israel’s president warned that the increasingly charged climate could lead to political killings. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)