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Hirsh Goodman: Civil War, Uncivil Behavior
Hirsh Goodman

If Lieberman was making a threat, Sharon should fire him and the attorney general should charge him with sedition

Several weeks ago, Transport Minister Avigdor Lieberman said in a radio interview that there will be a civil war if settlements are removed. Lieberman�s words could have been interpreted as a warning, or as a threat: If it�s the latter, a serving minister threatening his own government with war is simply unconscionable.

Then there are the yellow posters all over the country, pronouncing that dismantling settlements means civil war. In what other civil society would this be tolerated? In which society would a group openly threaten bloodshed and mayhem against a democratically elected government and be tolerated with equanimity?

The source of these pronouncements is the settler movement, which with much skill, has been dictating the national agenda for over three decades. Politicians from both sides of the spectrum have, for their own reasons, catered to it and, in a certain sense, used it. The prime motivating force for this support was security issues.

In 1971 Israel Galili, then the �minence grise of Golda Meir�s Labor party government, said that Gaza was critical for Israel�s security and could never be given up. He then declared that 14 settlements would be built there, the first of which was Kfar Darom. The reason for building a belt of settlements at the southern end of the Strip was to assure that there should be no territorial contiguity between Gaza, with its Palestinian population, and then-hostile Egypt.

We have now been at peace with Egypt for almost a quarter of a century; Kfar Darom and its sister settlements are still there.

On the West Bank another top Labor politician, Yigal Allon, similarly developed his settlement plan to meet any future threat from the then-hostile eastern front. Shimon Peres and others in Labor supported the effort, expanded the Allon Plan and forged an alliance with the emerging Gush Emunim settlement movement with the goal of securing the Jordan Valley and the high ground of the West Bank to ward off the perceived threat from the east.

Well, now there is no more threat from the east. Iraq is gone. We are at peace with Jordan, and Syria has not seen a new plane or weapons system in 20 years.

The threat to Israel is now demography and that is what caused Prime Minister Sharon to accept the road map; the settlements in Gaza and most of the West Bank are now irrelevant, from a security perspective. They are also counterproductive from an economic point of view, with the government spending an average of eight times as much on a settler than it does on an Israeli who lives inside the Green Line.

Whatever the reason, Sharon is now considering a cautious approach to resolution of the conflict with the Palestinians, and has tacitly agreed to remove some isolated settlements. And because of this, we are now hearing talk of civil war from a group including some of those who continue to serve around the cabinet table.

The scenes from the hilltops these past few weeks have not been pleasant, pitting brother against brother. Some 1,000 soldiers were deployed to remove 1,000 settlers who had gathered at Mitzpeh Yitzhar, actually a non-settlement comprised of a few huts and tents. It�s outrageous that Israel should have to deploy a battalion of troops who should be fighting terror to take down tents on a hill.

The prime minister would do well to draw red lines now. If Lieberman was making a threat, Sharon should fire him and the attorney general should charge him with sedition. The settlers beating up the soldiers should be arrested and tried -- and ditto for those inciting them.

If red lines are not drawn now, the country risks consuming itself from within. If a country tolerates such talk of civil war, perhaps it deserves the consequences which, in the ultimate analysis, spell the end of civil society in a country that prides itself on being civil.