Everybody in Israel is talking about the Next War. The most popular TV channel is running a whole series about it.
Not another war with the Arabs. Not the nuclear threat from Iran. Not the ongoing bloody confrontation with the Palestinians.
The talk is about the coming civil war.
Only a few months ago, that would have sounded preposterous. Now, suddenly, is has become a possibility, and a very real one. Not another blown-up media sensation.
Not yet another of Sharon’s political manipulations. Not just a new blackmail attempt by the settlers. But the real thing on the ground.
They talk about it at Cabinet meetings and in the Knesset, on TV talk-shows, in editorials and the news pages. The chief-of-staff has publicly warned that the army may fall apart. One of the ministers says that the very existence of the State of Israel is in danger. Another minister prophesies a bloodbath like the Spanish civil war.
Quietly and not so quietly, the Shin Bet is taking precautions. The prison service has been ordered to prepare facilities for mass detentions. The army leadership is planning the call-up of 10 thousand reserve soldiers and starting to think about the steps they must take in the case of...
No, it’s a very real threat.
On the face of it, it may seem to have appeared from nowhere. But whoever has eyes to see knew that it is going to happen, sooner or later.
The seeds of the civil war were sown when the first settlement was put up in the occupied territories.
Since the then Minister of Defense Shimon Peres implanted the first settlement, Kedumim, in the middle of the Palestinian population on the West Bank, the settlements have spread like locusts.
This is continuing at this very moment. After Sharon solemnly promised President Bush to dismantle some of the “outposts”, dozens of new one have sprung up. When we warned of the danger, we were told to relax. Only a small minority of the settlers, we were comforted, are fanatical freaks.
Most of the settlers, we were told, went there because the government presented them with expensive villas, when the government tells them to move, they will take the compensation and move on.
That is, of course, a dangerous delusion. What had been hidden all the time is now becoming clear: the settlers don’t give a damn for democracy and the institutions of the state. Their hard core spells it out: When the resolutions of the Knesset contradict the Halakha (Jewish religious law), the Halakha has priority.
They declare openly that their aim is to overthrow the State of Law and put in its place the State of the Halakha. Can there be a more perfect ideological basis for civil war?
As the settlers see it, even the idea of removing one single settlement is a casus belli.
In preparation for the Great Rebellion, the settlers have unveiled their potential. The most eminent rabbis of the “Religious Zionist movement” have declared that the evacuation of a settlement is a sin against God and have called upon the soldiers to refuse orders. Hundreds of rabbis, including the rabbis of the settlements and the rabbis of the religious units in the army have joined the call.
The voice of the few opponents is being drowned out. They quote the Talmudic saying “the law of the kingdom is law”, meaning that every government has to be obeyed, much as Christians are required to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, etc. But who listens to these “moderate rabbis” now?
The conquest of the army from the inside began long ago. The “arrangement” with the yeshivot (religious schools) that serve in the army as separate units has allowed the entry of a huge Trojan horse. In any confrontation between their rabbis and their army commanders, the soldiers of the “arrangement yeshivot” will obey the rabbis. Worse: For years now, the settlers have systematically penetrated the ranks of the officers’ corps, where they now constitute an even more dangerous Trojan horse.
The right-wing refusal to obey orders is unlike the left-wing conscientious objection. The leftist refusal is a personal stand, the rightist refusal a collective mutiny. On the left, a few hundred refused to serve the occupation, on the right, many thousands, even tens of thousands, will obey their rabbis’ orders to refuse. As the chief-of-staff has warned, the army may disintegrate.
Altogether, the settlers, together with their close allies in Israel including the yeshivot students, may amount to something like half a million people — a mighty phalanx for rebellion.
As of now, the settlers are only using this threat as an instrument for blackmail and deterrence, in order to choke off any thought of evacuating settlements and territories. But if the blackmail does not do the job, the Great Rebellion is just a matter of time.
— Uri Avnery is an Israeli peace activist and a former member of the Knesset.
