Dear Settlers of Judea and Samaria: The time has come for us to turn to you with a most painful request: to give up the dream you have cultivated for years and come home.
Come home of your own free will, not because you are forced to. Come home, recognizing and accepting that this is what must be done. You will be welcomed with open arms.
In the 35 years since the occupation of the territories, you have known times of hope and prosperity, and times of trouble and affliction, but you have always set yourselves apart from the rest of the community. The act of settlement has been the source of rolling vistas turning into a life of bulletproof shields and flak jackets, it is hard to take any joy in the weakness of the left and the right-wing government's lack of inspiration. Your chief accomplishment is the contribution you have made to hog-tying our national leadership. It may be true that no one can force you into accepting anything against your will.
But the clock of history is ticking, and the State of Israel is wearing itself out in a senseless conflict. Now is the time for some soul-searching, the likes of which you have never known. The hackneyed debates over active versus passive resistance to evacuation, over accepting or rejecting the decision of the majority, are not enough any more. Now you are being asked for more: You must explain to yourselves where you are heading - and where you are taking the State of Israel in the process. You have been the locomotive pulling the political train since the days of Sebastiya.
The bitter truth is that we have no leader strong enough to stand up to you. The whole Israeli right takes its cue from you, and you are the first to disrupt any plan for political compromise. The two prime ministers who tried to bypass the obstacles you placed in their path paid the price for it - one with his life and the other by being driven out of public office. Your power paralyzes governments; they cannot act, even to cut losses and save lives. Fear of angering you has filled every Israeli prime minister, rendering one after another incapable of evacuating so much as a single caravan - even when the largest fleet of bulldozers in the Middle East is at their command.
Therefore, if there is to be any kind of turnabout, it depends on you, as an idealistic community, as a cadre of educated people, as the guardians of Zionism, as people who differentiate between perpetuity and living for the moment, as people who dislike return, the bleeding wound that has sapped the State of Israel of strength all these years will quickly heal.
An Israeli public reunited can make peace with its neighbors from a position of legitimacy, with a clear head and heart. Moral strength will follow: He who has freely given up his dream has the right to demand that the other side relinquish its unattainable dreams.
The key to peace for the State of Israel is in your hands. You are sitting on it. Get up and use it.
