I asked Avraham Burg what he feels is the greatest misconception American Jews have about Israel. The Knesset speaker and Labor Party leader was sitting still for a moment in a Beverly Hills hotel. Too many of them, he said, harbor some nostalgic vision of Israel as a land of milk, honey and heroes, and are uninformed of the complex challenges it faces. "And," he added with a wink, "you know the old saying: nostalgia ain’t what it used to be."
The challenges Israel faces become more urgent as each day seems to bring fresh tragedies. This week, it was a Palestinian terrorist who opened fire with an automatic weapon in downtown Jerusalem, killing two people, wounding 40.
More ominous, of course, was Israel’s Jan. 6 seizure of the Karine A, which was smuggling 50 tons of Iranian-supplied arms bound for the Palestinian Authority.
On Wednesday, Burg, over the protest of many of his fellow MKs, met in Paris with his Palestinian counterpart, Ahmed Qorei. Qorei invited Burg to visit the parliament in Ramallah at the head of a Knesset delegation.
What, any rational person might wonder, is there left to talk about?
"There is no military solution to this conflict," Burg tells me. "In two and a half years, we’ll be right back where we left off when Oslo failed. Even if there is a war between now and then, a regional conflict, we’ll have to go back and start from there."
It’s unlikely that the actions of either Burg or Qorei will move the heads of their governments, Ariel Sharon or Yasser Arafat. Sharon has articulated no solution to the crisis, and his promise of security has been undermined by some of the bloodiest months of terror Israelis have ever lived through.
Arafat, the virtual skipper of Karine A, is too clever by half in pursuing American-brokered negotiations and Iranian arms shipments simultaneously.
Burg, 47, an observant Jew and a former army commander, says he isn’t fooled. But it is in Israel’s interest, not just the Palestinians’, to implement the recommendations of the Mitchell Commission report calling for an immediate end to violence and for Israel to cease construction of settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, then to head back to the negotiating table.
The alternative Burg’s political opponents have to offer at the moment is a further crackdown. But it’s hard to imagine what more Sharon, hardly a man known to pull punches, can do. He has used tanks to imprison Arafat in his compound, sent Israeli forces on regular missions to liquidate Palestinian militants and sealed borders. Given time, Sharon’s supporters argue, these measures might work. So far, they concede, things have only gotten worse.
And time is not on Israel’s side. The economy is at its worst level since 1953. Per capita growth has fallen by 2.9 percent. Israelis spent $600 million more abroad in the first 10 months of 2001 than the Israeli economy earned from visitors — its first "tourism deficit" since 1991. "Anyone who thinks that security does not have a major influence on the economy simply does not understand," David Brodet, former director general of Israel’s Finance Ministry, told The Jerusalem Report. Israel, said Brodet, will end up having to "go schnorring, from foreign Jews’ donations and U.S. aid."
That aid will be harder to get out of an America whose ongoing efforts to fight terror and appear "fair" in the eyes of the Muslim world depend on the cooperation of Arab states.
Which leaves us, the second largest urban concentration of Jewry outside Israel, to decide how much and when and to whom to give when Israel asks. The simple answer is "yes, how much?" But as Burg came to remind us, the simple days are gone, if they ever existed in the first place.
