Cynical power game: protesters, police square off
Photo: Tsafrir Abayov
A limit to sympathy
Cynical, anti-democratic protests by right-wingers have pushed Orna Engel into supporting disengagement
I tried. God knows, I tried.
It was important to me to voice my sympathy for the pain and anger of the settlers. Unlike many of my fellow Labor Party members and left-wingers, I don't assume that any plan to uproot settlers must be a good thing or that any proposal called "disengagement" will necessarily lead to the long-awaited end of the occupation.
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Dozens of youngsters prevent IDF vehicles from entering Gaza’s Kissufim road Sunday evening. Earlier, pullout objectors dispersed by police after attempting to prevent cement barriers from being placed in area
I had – and still have – real questions about Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's intentions and about the way he has administered his government with regard to the disengagement plan.
But there is a limit to the empathy I can show for the settler community and disengagement opponents. In recent weeks, their behavior has pushed me to the limit.
Reasonable doubt
To tell the truth, from the time Sharon started pushing for unilateral disengagement from Gaza until very recently, anti-pullout activists have presented arguments no less reasonable and moral than those made by my colleagues in the Labor Party.
I agreed with them, for example, about the fog Sharon is spreading about the day after disengagement. The next stage, which I believe in, is not a stage the West Bank settlers are looking forward to, but both they and I must know where the prime minister is taking us before we can decide whether or not the current move is worthy of support.
In order to fully support the disengagement program, I must be convinced that the goal is to bring the occupation to an end once-and-for-all, to resettle the settlers in large settlement blocs and to separate Israel reasonably and fairly from the Palestinians.
At the same time, it is reasonable to assume that there are many people who would support the plan if they believed Sharon's bureau chief, Dov Weisglass, when he told reporters in 2004 that the pullout is meant to freeze the diplomatic process.
In either event, we as citizens have a right to know the truth.
Bad for non-Jews, good for settlers
I was similarly unimpressed by the apathy (and occasional open happiness) displayed by many left-wingers towards administrative detentions, jailing of minors for weeks on end, threats to remove settler children from their homes, preventing students from taking high school matriculation exams, and other illegitimate measures.
All of a sudden, the principles the leftists correctly fought for when the government took such illegitimate steps against foreign workers or Palestinians went straight out the window when the violated rights in question belonged to the settlers.
The same leftists, who just yesterday refused to accept administrative detentions for Palestinian "ticking bombs," now defend the detention of minors without trial, who are detained just because they refuse to identify themselves or cooperate with police investigators.
One justice for all
The issue of support or opposition to disengagement is irrelevant – if these measures are out-of-bounds, then they are always out-of-bounds, and left-wingers should have demanded the same justice they always have.
Of course, it would have been appropriate for the settlers, who now enraged bout their treatment, to recognize it's inappropriateness with regard to non-Jews and their political opponents.
But there are democratic principles above any political or diplomatic programs, and there is no reason they should be subject to right-left tension.
No more sympathy
But still, although I am not crazy about the "left-wing" disengagement plan, I am not prepared for the radical right to use my sympathy for Gaza evacuees in order to paralyze the workings of government in this country.
My sympathy ended when I saw people who managed to arouse my feelings of sympathy use those feelings to undermine police and IDF soldiers, to incite and discourage people from fulfilling their duties.
The extremists in the anti-pullout camp claim the methods the prime minister used while gaining approval for the disengagement plan were inconsistent with democratic values.
But even if there is a kernel of truth in this claim, the way to fight it is not to apply mental pressure on individuals duty-bound to carry out the orders of the army and government.
Someone who would twist this humane (and occasional ideological) sympathy with their cause by those in uniform does not deserve such sympathy.
Power game
Encouraging IDF soldiers to act against other soldiers trying to implement government decisions is not part of a legitimate protest and has little to do with the pain of being uprooted. It is simply a cynical, anti-democratic power game.
If, God forbid, the pressure works on a critical mass of soldiers, who in any event find themselves in a moral and ideological bind, the entire structure that is today called Israel will crumble.
It really won't matter then if the disengagement plan is carried out or not.
