Rosner’s Domain | Ceasefire or Peace?

Let’s imagine that there is a real desire to end the crisis in Israel. The question about the details remains — that is, the question of how to end it. What kind of arrangement can move Israel from a state of storm to a state of calm?

This question has two types of answers. The first — no detail is necessary. Just halt everything, legislation and protest, and this ends the crisis. The second approach: A lot must happen. The end of the crisis is an opportunity for a vast change in the Israeli social contract. Using past analogies, the first answer corresponds to what Chief of the IDF Moshe Ya’alon once famously said about Hezbollah’s rockets in Lebanon: “Let them rust.” The second answer corresponds to what U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower once said: “If you can’t solve a problem, enlarge it.”

The first answer — to do nothing except calm the stormy waters — is an answer that has an optimistic assumption behind it: Israel accidentally stumbled upon a crisis that no one intended. Therefore, if we only calm down, let the crisis “rust,” let the rage subside, get life back on track, the whole thing will just go away as abruptly as it materialized. 

The second answer — to do a lot — is based on an opposite assumption. That this isn’t an accident. It is a bug in the system, evidence of a fundamental problem that, if not addressed, will lead to more crises, as serious as this one, or maybe more. The second answer is based on the assumption that in order to prevent future crises a ceasefire would not be enough, and what Israel needs is an internal peace accord. Here, another well-known quote of an American politician, Rahm Emanuel, becomes handy: “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.” 

If there is already a crisis, let’s take advantage of it. How? Several roads diverge from here as well. It can be used for small yet important tweaks, such as the transfer of a Basic Law: Legislation, that would reestablish stability in the court-parliament relations. It can be used for a somewhat grander goal, such as an enactment of a “skeletal constitution” that clarifies the rules of the democratic game. Or it can be used as an opportunity to alter the “social contract” in more profound ways. 

Last week, when Israel celebrated a belated opening of a metro rail in Tel Aviv, demonstrators sent a message demanding ambitious change. They want, they said, for the train to operate on Shabbat. They want it so much, that some even chained themselves to the train, and quarreled with policemen. To be honest, it was a strange sight: What, up until six months ago, was a routine demand that was never a priority (the public at large supports public transportation on Shabbat), suddenly became urgent. It suddenly became an item on the long list of grievances aimed at the government.

Let’s be clear: All those who roll their eyes in mockery at the fact that the light rail in Tel Aviv does not operate on Shabbat are either Israelis with a very short memory, or Israelis who are not quite honest. It’s not that the train was planned to operate on Saturday and an evil government canceled it. At no time was the light rail supposed to operate on Shabbat. The train was built when the social context was clear: public transportation does not operate on Shabbat. 

So why the rage? It is an expression of the desire embodied in the second option I mentioned: to enlarge the crisis before it is solved, to make it about more things, to use it for making vast changes. 

The logic behind such ambition is clear: if we have already come this far, if we already are at war, we should not settle for a temporary, shaky, ceasefire; we should strive for real peace. Let us address the question of equal sharing of the burden, let us address the state-religion status quo, let us free schools from the curricula dictated by Jerusalem, let us open up for discussion the support for settlements, let us examine the financial aid for certain sectors, and much more. It will be, in the words of quite a few speakers, a “new contract.” Not an attempt to calm things down and return to the old contract; not an attempt to stop and return to the “status quo.” Not this time. 

Which of the two approaches has a better chance to succeed? Which of the two is more realistic? Those are good questions. There is something enticing about quieting things down and getting back to normal. But there’s also something tempting about seizing an opportunity to try to reframe fundamental arrangements. The first option leads to a lesser chance of worsening the tension but a better chance for a near future repeat; the second option leads to a greater risk of exacerbating the tension, but perhaps it could prevent future crises. 

So, which is it? This is a tough dilemma. One should have hoped that the country’s leaders would grapple with it. But at the moment, it doesn’t look like we have those kinds of leaders.

Something I wrote in Hebrew

When a minister wanted to separate men and women in parks for a few hours a week and a few incidents where female passengers were asked to sit at the back of buses infuriated the public – I wrote this:

One emotion connects the parks and the buses, and it’s not anger, and it’s not embarrassment. The emotion is anxiety. And everyone who sweetly propose to other Israelis to be more “considerate” — that is, to give the religious minority a few hours of gender separation, because they are also citizens — and everyone who advises to be more “pragmatic,” because why fight if you can have two types of buses — all these ignore the elephant in the room. They ignore the demographic anxiety.

A week’s numbers

Allowing the light rail to operate on Shabbat is not a matter of right-left divide but rather of a secular-religious divide. Of course, most religious Israelis are on the right, but secular rightists disagree with them on that specific matter:

A reader’s response:

Eva Kauffman asks: “Would you come to Israel as a tourist when things are so tense in society?” My response: Sure, Israel is as depressing as it ever been but also as interesting as it ever been.

Shmuel Rosner is senior political editor. For more analysis of Israeli and international politics, visit Rosner’s Domain at jewishjournal.com/rosnersdomain.