The Levantine Crescent:    Israel | Jordan | Lebanon | Palestine | Syria

Conventional wisdom fears Israel is becoming involved in a two-front war, against Palestinians on the West Bank and against Hezbollah guerrillas to the north. In fact, it is already fighting a three-front war… and the third front is among its own people. The stress of the occupation has torn families apart, pitting peacenik brother against pro-settler sister and right-wing father against left-wing daughter. Other Israelis are abandoning the Zionist dream altogether, as a growing number emigrate to escape the bloodshed. Cobbled together on short notice and faced with continual warfare since its inception, the Jewish State is showing increasing fault lines as this latest round of carnage continues.

Some of the harshest criticism of Israel’s human rights record has come from Israelis. The architect of modern Israel, David Ben-Gurion, came out of retirement in 1967 to say “To get peace, we must return to the pre-1967 borders. Peace is more important than real estate.” Hundreds of soldiers have signed petitions refusing to serve in the Occupied Territories; a number have gone to jail rather than serve on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. Others have acted as observers in the Occupied Territories, reporting on IDF and settler abuses. In response, right-wing Israelis have called them “Kapos” (Jews who worked with the Nazis in exchange for personal privileges), “traitors,” and “anti-Semites.” After the 1993 Oslo Accords, one body of ultra-Orthodox rabbis stated that observant Jews should kill those who had “betrayed the Jewish people” by signing away the West Bank and Gaza Strip; not long afterwards Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated.

This is not to say that Israel’s left hasn’t done its share of stereotyping. Many have accused the settlers – the Israelis who have settled in the Occupied Territories – of being “religious fanatics,” “racists” and “fascists.” There are indeed Orthodox, ultra-Orthodox, and ardently Zionist settlers, some of whom have made regrettable remarks and who have been guilty of provocative behavior toward Palestinians. There are also large numbers of settlers who came merely because they couldn’t afford housing in pre-1967 Israel. In a country where an average teacher makes less than US$15,000 a year the cost of housing is comparable to New York or Washington, D.C. … and an average mortgage requires a 40% down payment and a guarantor. The subsidized settlements offer an affordable alternative to growing Jewish families: condos in an Israeli settlement typically cost less than half what comparable space runs in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. Israel’s economy has taken a beating over the past few years, as the Intefada wreaked havoc on tourism while the Dot collapse battered its tech industry. Unemployment is at an all-time high and the New Israeli Shekel at an all-time low. As Israel’s population grows, the price of available real estate will only rise – especially if Israel is suddenly forced to deal with an influx of 200,000+ now-homeless settlers.

Israel’s Jews are loosely divided between the Ashkenazim (those of European origin) and Sephardim (Jews from North Africa and the Middle East, largely Spanish and Portuguese Jews who fled the Inquisition). The Ashkenazim tend to be wealthier and more politically influential than the Sephardim. The Sephardim tend to be more conservative and religious; they also have larger families. At present, Sephardim make up approximately 50% of Israel’s Jewish population, but that percentage is increasing even after the influx of Ashkenazic Russian Jews in the 1990s. There has never been a Sephardic Prime Minister, but there are a number of Sephardic Ministers in the Cabinet and in Knesset. Shas, an Orthodox Moroccan party, is an important part of the Labor/Likud confederation currently ruling Israel. Should they withdraw their support, the Peres and Sharon government would crumble.

Over 1 million of Israel’s 6.5 million citizens are Israeli Arabs. Descendents of the Palestinians who stayed in Israel after 1948, they have many of the same rights and privileges as any other Israeli citizen, including the vote. A good number of them belong to religious minorities; Israel has over 100,000 Druze, followers of a sect which combines elements of Zoroastrian, Mithraism, Gnostic Christianity and Canaanite paganism with Shi’a Islam. The Druze are considered heretics by most Moslems and have generally received better treatment from the Jews. Still, there is growing discontentment among Israel’s Druze, many of whom still live in small agricultural villages amidst widespread poverty and unemployment. While Islamic fundamentalism holds little appeal for them, many are becoming increasingly fond of a secular pan-Arabic vision in which the Druze are Arabs who practice their own religion and who work as part of a Greater Arabia stretching throughout the Middle East and into the Persian Gulf.

There was a Christian community in this region centuries before the first Moslems arrived; today, many of the Arabs in Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem are Christians. They would fare far worse under a Palestine ruled by Islamic fundamentalists than under a Jewish state which protects their holy sites and their freedom of religion. Even so, they have grown increasingly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause as the war continues, the death toll mounts, and they are subjected to more daily humiliations in the name of national security.

Golda Meir once said “I only blame the Arabs for one thing: forcing our sons to kill their sons.” Many Jewish ethicists, in Israel and in the Diaspora, have shuddered at the ways in which the Occupation has brought out the worst in the Jewish people. Others point out that Israel has responded less brutally to Palestinian unrest than Syria or Jordan. Still, no one disputes the Occupation’s profound sociological, economic and psychological effects on the Israelis. Devastating as the short-term effects have been, the long-term scars may be far worse.