Gush Emunim (the Bloc of the Faithful) burst upon the Israeli scene
during the deep political and moral crises that followed the
October 1973 war, though its ideas had been in gestation ever since
the Six-Day War of June 1967. Suddenly, Israelis were confronted
with the question of what to do with territories that were to many
Jews the cradle of their historical-spiritual identity, as well as
looking like a vital strategic boon. These territories were the
homeland of 1.5 million hostile Palestinians who were going through
their own process of national awakening. Israel's Orthodox had not
been ultra-nationalistic until then, but the Six-Day War victory
struck this community as miraculous, and in conformity with
messianic expectation. The newly occupied territories radicalized
them.
The impatient young offshoots of the National Religious Party (NRP)
adopted for their own ends Kook's1 theory of the cardinal
importance of the Land of Israel: only Jews have this special,
divinely ordained relationship with the land. There cannot be a
People of Israel without the "complete" or "whole" Land of Israel;
therefore, even the smallest withdrawal is to be opposed. The whole
Promised Land is needed as a territorial basis to serve God. Here
the program of territorialism and imposing Halacha (religious law)
as a political system come together. Since giving back any piece of
land is sinful, preemptively settling it became the highest
commandment, the preferred way to speed up the arrival of the
Messiah - if need be, even against the desires of the government of
Israel.
Not that secular Zionists opposed settlement - on the contrary,
pioneering had always been a Zionist value par excellence. However,
the Labor government of the 1970s saw the West Bank more in terms
of a diplomatic pawn than as Israel's eternal patrimony. It did not
want to foreclose peace with the Palestinians and the Arab states
by flooding the occupied territories with Jewish settlers. It
therefore limited settlements to specified, strategically important
sites.
For messianic fundamentalists, by contrast, the sanctity of the
land overrides that of the state. For them the State of Israel is
viewed primarily as an instrument for conquest and settlement and
loses its moral right if it fails in this primordial mission, even
if this clashes with the elected government.
Alone in a Hostile World
Gush Emunim (whose viewpoint can be taken as representative of the
whole messianistic current) assumes a permanent conflict between
the Jewish people and the nations of the world, and glorifies the
notion of a "people that dwells apart," whose uniqueness follows
from an irrevocable covenant with God. Zionist fundamentalists thus
reverse the classical Zionist endeavor to "normalize" the Jewish
condition; on the contrary, because of the Jews' particular
destiny, it is isolation itself that must appear "normal." In that
sense, the climate of the 1970s was propitious for Gush Emunim.
Israel's international position reached its nadir, and it seemed
that indeed "the whole world is against us." For Gush Emunim, Arab
hostility appears as just a special case of universal
anti-Semitism, the latest round in the eternal battle of good
against evil. Subsequently, with negotiations and the reciprocal
opening up of part of the Arab world to Israel, this isolationism
appeared progressively more bizarre and obsolete, coming into its
own again with the Palestinian uprising of September [2000].
Gush Emunim denies that the Palestinians have any rights whatsoever
to the Land of Israel. In his book For the Land and the Lord:
Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Ian Lustick has noted that for
Gush Emunim, the "Arab question" has to be solved by massive Jewish
immigration, preferably coupled with Arab emigration, i.e.,
transfer, and possibly disenfranchisement of the remainder. Some
Gush Emunim-associated rabbis advocate dhimmi-like status for
non-Jews; others have even expressed genocidal intent, equating the
Arab people with Amalek. While such opinions are far from being in
the majority, they illustrate the cultural milieu that could
engender a Baruch Goldstein.
The tension between the Jewish state and settler-fundamentalists
subsided temporarily in 1977 when Menachem Begin came to power on
the crest of an anti-Labor wave borne by a coalition of secular
Land of Israel zealots, messianic fundamentalists and
anti-Ashkenazi Oriental Jewish voters. The Likud was (and remains)
ideologically committed to retaining most or all the territories,
yet lacked the cadre and expertise to put settlements on the
ground. Gush Emunim lacked the resources and the prestige conferred
by official settler bodies. Hence a mutually exploitative
relationship evolved, and Gush Emunim was for a while central in
implementing the Likud's crash colonization program. In the 1980s,
as Gush Emunim ran out of steam and had exhausted its manpower
reservoir, the Likud started to foster mass colonization by
tempting less ideologically inflamed Israelis with economic
inducements to move into the West Bank - cheap housing, pure air,
quality of life.
Land for Peace
From the mid-1980s on, after the failed Lebanese adventure,
Israel's increasingly polarized society witnessed a prolonged
standoff between the "peace camp," which stands for a historical
compromise with the Palestinians based on the principle of "land
for peace," and the self-styled "national camp," which wanted to
prolong an advantageous status quo in the territories by slowly
incorporating the land without formally annexing its Palestinian
inhabitants. These two camps neutralized each other for
years.
Meanwhile, radical Jewish fundamentalists got increasingly
frustrated with what to them seemed an overly cautious reticence on
the part of the Israeli authorities. A "lunatic fringe" emerged:
the terrorist Jewish underground, groups preparing the construction
of the Third Temple on the site of the Muslim shrines Al-Aqsa and
the Dome of the Rock, and the openly racist and fascist Kach
movement of Rabbi Meir Kahane that advocates forcible expulsion of
all Palestinians, and imposition of a Jewish theocracy. Kahane was
assassinated in 1990 by an Arab. To revenge his death, his disciple
Goldstein massacred 29 Palestinians in Hebron (1994). This tragedy
has awakened the public to the dangers inherent in Jewish
fundamentalism.
The Social Base of Gush Emunim
The portrait of the nationalistic modern Orthodox, the "kipot
srugot" (knitted skullcaps), is that of educated youth from
conservative Ashkenazi middle-class backgrounds, not at ease in -
and, at least until they started their mass activities, "not taken
seriously" by - the modern world. Socialization into the national
religious mold takes place in the state-religious schools (attended
by 25 to 30 percent of all pupils) and in the youth movement Bnei
Akiva. Over the past few generations, these networks have created a
complete subculture from which most activists and settlers are
recruited. Besides, settlers themselves increasingly form Jewish
fundamentalism's mainstay. For a marginal, non-establishment
extra-parliamentary movement, Gush Emunim has been extraordinarily
successful.
As regards social origin, there are striking parallels as well as
differences between Jewish and Islamic fundamentalist activists.
Both seem to be concentrated among university students from lower
middle-class backgrounds. But while there may be some similarities
between their core activists, they differ in their mass following.
For radical Islamic movements, attaining political power is
conditional on recruiting a clientèle amongst the "downtrodden
of the earth," the urban underclass. They do so on the basis of
their revolutionary-conservative social and cultural program, but
even more on the basis of their provision of free services where
the state defaults. In a typically Third-World pattern, recent
arrivals from the countryside react against deteriorating social
and economic conditions and betrayed expectations of modernity by
turning to religion.
By contrast, Jewish messianism seems to lack a social program. It
is not primarily a social-economic phenomenon, but thrives on
feelings of insecurity and survival anxiety. Israel, for all its
economic problems, is a modern and (at least for its Jewish
population) relatively affluent society - even though its renowned
egalitarianism is fast fading away. Many conservative Oriental Jews
do feel socially deprived, economically discriminated against,
politically frustrated and culturally alienated by the successes
and hegemony of their more worldly Ashkenazi neighbors. Hence they
tend to the ultra-Orthodox Sephardi Shas Party.
The equivalent in Israel of the Egyptian or Algerian situation of
today would be a very dangerous amalgam of the Likud with Gush
Emunim plus Shas. But fusion of the Oriental Shas with the
Ashkenazi Gush Emunim has not taken place. Ethnic and social
fragmentation appears to constrain what Jewish fundamentalism has
been able to achieve, but its alliance with political extremism can
be highly effective.
Messianic Fundamentalism in Israeli Politics
In a formal sense, the religious parties, including the NRP that is
settler-oriented, are integrated into Israel's parliamentary
democracy. Since the 1980s, the religious lists have emerged as key
players. They have held the balance between the blocs of Labor and
the Likud, and have been able to extort concessions in return for
support for one of the secular parties. The settlers were among
those benefiting from such deals.
Actively anti-democratic fundamentalist forces are not entrenched
in any of Israel's elites, with the possible exception of the
rabbinical establishment, whose power is limited. On the surface,
there seems little danger of a symbiosis of the state with Jewish
fundamentalism, even if those sectors attracted to the ideal of a
theocratic commonwealth may not be enamored with democratic values.
While opposed to fundamentalism, Israel's secular leadership (Labor
no less than the Likud) may harbor some residual pro-pioneering
sentiments that at one point benefited Gush Emunim.
In any case, Jewish fundamentalists of all stripes form a minority
(though not an insubstantial one). Recent research among Israeli
Jews shows there is widespread (ca. 50 percent) observance of some
religious rules, but this is a far cry from the politicized
religion and the anti-pluralist concepts cherished by Gush Emunim,
which is probably supported by no more than 15 percent of the
population.
However, the political danger posed by Jewish fundamentalists is
increased where locally they constitute majorities. This occurs
precisely in the most sensitive places: Jerusalem and the West
Bank. There are some 200,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank.
Admittedly, only a minority of them can be considered hard-core
Gush Emunim. Yet a combination of betrayed expectations (fears
stemming from a deteriorating security situation and the prospect
of Palestinian autonomy and of being "swamped" by Palestinian
returnees), may drive this population into the arms of its most
radical segments.
About 200,000 Jews in East Jerusalem are seen by most of the
international community as "settlers," a concept ridiculed in
Jewish Jerusalem, the stronghold of the modern Orthodox, the
knitted skullcaps. Socially conservative, politically far to the
right, and not seldom blatantly anti-Arab, Haredim and the National
Religious combine to form a solid religious-rightist majority. To
them should be added the large concentration of Oriental Jews who,
in their different style, combine traditional religiosity with
Likud or Shas political allegiances.
Future Scenarios: Fundamentalist Settler Terrorism?
After the massacre in 1994 of scores of Muslim worshippers in the
Haram al-Ibrahimi in Hebron, and the assassination in 1995 of prime
minister Rabin, the destabilizing capabilities inherent in
terrorist operations from Jewish fundamentalism's lunatic fringe
can no longer be disregarded. The danger of "Belfastization" or
Beirutization" of Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem, or Israel as a
whole may come from more than one direction. However, the most
obvious candidates for trouble are undoubtedly the West Bank and
Gaza Strip settlers.
The settlements have been highlighted as the single most serious
obstacle to peace with the Palestinians. The creation of about 200
settlements in the occupied territories was a replay of the "heroic
age" of Zionism; it was also the willful, intentional creation
since the 1970s of an obstacle to peace fostered both by Likud and
Labor governments up to our day.
Armed settlers have long been involved in anti-Palestinian
harassment, shootings, and massacres, with little police
intervention. Conversely, disarming the settlers can turn them into
sitting ducks. After over 30 years of enforced inequality and
humiliations, Palestinian vengeance will not be long in coming.
Jewish settlements enjoy zero legitimacy in Palestinian eyes, and
their total uprooting is unanimously demanded by all Palestinian
factions. While not all settlers were Jewish fundamentalists to
begin with, in such a no-exit situation, more and more of them have
begun "understanding" the need for violent reaction to Palestinian
"provocations." Even without considering their own security
predicament, Jewish fundamentalists can be counted upon to
constitute the shock battalions working against a peace agreement
with the Palestinians. Every once in a while, somebody will hear
God's voice commanding him to draw blood and take a few lives from
the other side. Some Jewish fundamentalists may take up arms not
just for security reasons, but for more expressly
political-messianic motives to accelerate the advent of redemption,
to force the government to retrace its steps, to destroy germs of
Jewish-Arab accommodation and reconciliation in a sea of blood, and
to topple an illegitimate "no-longer-Zionist" regime.
Fundamentalist terror is not dependent on massive support at the
ballot, although this combination does occur, e.g., in Algeria. The
small combined active membership of the IRA and Loyalist
underground has sufficed to keep three million Northern Irish in a
state of siege for 20 years.
A few hundred committed, hard-core Kahanist settlers may pose an
intractable challenge to Israel's security forces. In certain
circumstances, a combination of religious fundamentalism and
political extremism could turn the philosophy of "the whole world
is against us" into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
From Baskin, Gershon and Al-Qaq, Zakaria. The Future of the Israeli
Settlements in Final Status Negotiations. Jerusalem: IPCRI,
1997.
1. Rabbi Zvi Yehudah Kook (1891-1982) was a chief Ashkenazi
rabbi and founder of Meretz Harav Yeshiva, a religious center from
which the rabbi became the spiritual mentor of Gush Emunim.
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