Abstract

Letter From Israel

The author reports on developments in Israel, including the court martial trial of conscientious objectors, fears among Israelis that Palestinians could come to form a majority in the country, prime minister Ariel Sharon's new policy of disengagement from the West Bank and the effect of the Green Line on Palestinians. These five--along with a young pacifist, Yoni Ben-Artzi, who was tried separately--are the first to be court-martialed in more than twenty years. It is not their evasion of duty that is at issue so much as their political activities; all were involved in authoring a public letter of refusal that has now been signed by about 350 conscripts, and the state clearly sees a developing tide of public resistance. The deepest roots of this sudden outbreak of straight talk lay elsewhere, in what Israelis quaintly call the "demographic problem." Nothing is more feared than being overwhelmed by the antagonistic population among whom they have so aggressively intermingled their own people for the past few decades. In his much-hyped speech on the matter in mid-December, Sharon presented little more than a clever term --"disengagement"--for what his generals call redeployment. The intellectual ferment in Israel has not escaped notice on the other side of the Green Line, but for the time being, there is rather less cause for hope there.