Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Amos Elon, Olmert & Israel: The Change - The New York Review of Books, February 14, 2008

Lords of the Land: The War Over Israel’s Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967–2007
by Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar, translated from the Hebrew by Vivian Eden. Nation Books, 531 pp., $29.95

Walled: Israeli Society at an Impasse
by Sylvain Cypel. Other Press, 574 pp., $17.95 (paper)

Son of the Cypresses: Memories, Reflections, and Regrets from a Political Life
by Meron Benvenisti, translated from the Hebrew by Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta, in consultation with Michael Kaufman-Lacusta. University of California Press, 253 pp., $27.50.

1.

Israel under Ehud Olmert is not what it was under Ariel Sharon, at least in tone. Sharon was a soldier who spent much of his life fighting the Arabs. Olmert is a suave corporate lawyer, a deal maker, a political operator. Sharon supported the “Greater Israel” movement. Olmert’s idea of Israel is not the replay of a biblical vision but a secular modern state with a booming economy, integrated into global commerce and closely linked to Europe. This does not mesh well with what God and Abraham discussed in the Bronze Age. Sharon spoke of a long and difficult struggle. Olmert says Israelis are “tired of war, tired of being victors.”[1] When he speaks, as he often does, of two states, Palestine and Israel, the hard-liners are full of rage.

Olmert may be the most pragmatic Israeli leader since 1967. One hopes he does not come too late. According to Haaretz, he told an American delegation recently that in “Israel there are perhaps 400,000 people who maintain the state, leaders in the economy, in science and in culture. I want to make sure they have hope, that they’ll stay here.” His own two sons, it is well known, live in New York. He is the first Israeli premier who has expressed some empathy for the Palestinian tragedy. In his speech in Annapolis in late November, he said, “We are not indifferent to [the Palestinians’] suffering.” It is true that the next morning eight Palestinians were killed by the Israeli army but it is impossible to overlook what seems, at least, the beginning of a change. The leftist Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy was uncharacteristically optimistic, wondering whether perhaps an Israeli de Klerk was emerging here.