The Other Israel

When the new intifada erupted, the mainstream Israeli peace movement was deeply shaken. Peace Now is close to the Labor and Meretz party leaderships and was thus inclined to accept Ehud Barak's spurious claim that at Camp David he had made reasonable settlement proposals. The group went into hibernation as the violence escalated, leaving the peace movement to small progressive groups thoroughly outside the mainstream, which shifted rapidly to the right (though Peace Now has reawakened of late, joining several dozen opposition organizations in protesting the recent attacks on Arab Knesset members as a threat to democracy).

One year ago, this rightward trend was interrupted when a group of Israeli army reservists--from the patriotic, Zionist mainstream, no less--made headlines by announcing their refusal to serve in the occupied territories. They would no longer, they said, "dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people." The military and political establishment, fearful of the potential influence of these young refuseniks, first responded with denunciations and threats.

Within a couple of months, several hundred had joined the original eight, increasing the confidence of Courage to Refuse, as the group is called; indeed, they often invoked the prognostication of famed Rabbi Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who said, soon after Israel conquered the territories in 1967, that if only 500 soldiers would refuse to serve, the occupation would crumble.

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