Why has the Sharon-Ben-Eliezer-Peres government collapsed? Because of a small olive.
It started like a children’s tale: Once upon a time there was a small olive in a Palestinianvillage. It grew and ripened on a branch of an old tree in a grove on the top of a hill. “Pick me! Iwant to give my oil!” the little olive pleaded.
But it went on ripening, and the pickers did not come. They could not reach it, because thesettlers had set up two mobile homes on the hill, and the whole area became a “security region”of this outpost. When the owners of the grove approached, the settlers cursed them, beat themup and started shooting. This happened at dozens of locations all over the West Bank.
The villagers called the IDF, which now controls all the Palestinian territories. But thearmy did not come to protect them. Many of the army officers are themselves settlers. The armyconsiders that its job is to defend the settlers, and does not like the idea of confrontingthem. When the army did interfere, it was to drive the villagers out of their groves near theoutposts.
In their plight, the villagers called on the Israeli peace organizations. They found themwilling.
The Israeli “peace camp” consists of two parts. One, centered around “Peace Now”, isconnected with the Labor party, which was a pillar of the government. The party chief served asMinister if Defense and was, therefore, responsible for all the iniquities committed in thePalestinian territories.
The other part of the peace camp consists of many radical groups, each active in its chosensector. “Gush Shalom” is a political and ideological center. “Taayush”, an Arab-JewishIsraeli group, is aiding the besieged Palestinian population. “B’Tselem” collects andpublishes data, as does the “Alternative Information Center”. “Physicians for HumanRights” does a wonderful job in the medical field, while the Women’s Coalition for Peace andBat-Shalom combine human rights activities with a feminist agenda. “The Committee againstHouse Demolition” initiates the rebuilding of homes destroyed by the army, and “Rabbis forHuman Rights” is acting on behalf of the (unfortunately, tiny) religious community that doesnot follow the fanatical nationalist banner. “Machsom Watch” reports and tries to preventabuses at the checkpoints. “Yesh Gvul” helps soldiers who refuse to serve in the occupiedterritories. “New Profile” is active in the same area. The list is long. Activists ofdifferent groups frequently cooperate, and many belong to more than one.
The activists of these organizations volunteered to help the villagers. They went out to pickolives and to defend the villagers as a “human shield”. They were joined by European peaceactivists, who comw in shifts to help the occupied Palestinian population. On some days therewere dozens of Israeli and international activists in the groves, on Saturdays there werehundreds. They were dispersed in different villages, went up the hills and were attacked bythe settlers. In dozens of incidents, the settlers started shooting into the air and at theground around the olive pickers.
During long weeks, the public did not hear anything about these events. There is a conspiracyof silence in the media concerning the very existence of a radical peace camp. “Peace Now” isconsidered somehow as belonging to the national consensus, and therefore its actions are(scantily) reported. The actions of the more principled and energetic forces (“The DeepLeft” in the words of former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who abhors them) were not reported atall, unless there was bloodshed.
But slowly, reports about the War of the Olives began to infiltrate the media: about thesettlers driving the Palestinians away and robbing them of the olives they had picked; aboutsettlers who picked the olives in the groves themselves after driving the owners away; aboutsettlers setting fire to groves; about the former Chief Rabbi, who announced that Jews arejustified in taking away the fruits for which the Arab villagers had toiled, because God hasgiven the fruit of the Land to the Jews.
The conspiracy of silence was finally broken when a group of famous writers organized a tokenolive picking. The media, which had ignored the devoted work of the hundreds of anonymousactivists, were happy to join celebrities like Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua, David Grossman andMe’ir Shalev. The olive picking became part of the consensus.
The settlers have never been popular with great parts of the public. The anger grew when itbecame known that the poor in Israel were deprived of large sums of money in order to fatten thesettlements. The anger was mixed with anxiety for the soldiers, who were frequently beaten bythe settlers, while risking their lives to protect remote, half-empty settlements. Thestories about the cruel harassment of defenseless olive pickers were just too much. Theyevoked repulsion and loathing even in the Silent Majority.
This had an indirect impact on Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, too. He noticed the changing public moodand decided that it is now in his and the party’s interest to leave the government. He wasfeverishly looking for a pretext. Public opinion polls indicated that the settlers are nowthe most unpopular group in the country. He decided, therefore, to break up the government onthe point. He suddenly demanded that the government take away money from the settlements andgive it to the pensioners.
This was only a pretext, but it shows that a great part of the public is fed up with thesettlements. At long last, the settlements have become the central object of controversy.While Ariel Sharon is trying to set up a government based on the settlers and their allies on theextreme right, the Labor Party, now in opposition, will be compelled to present ananti-settlements program. Thus, the slogan of a small, “marginal” minority is becoming theprogram of a large camp.
This is an example of the working of the “small wheel” doctrine formulated by us decades ago: asmall wheel with a strong independent drive turns a bigger wheel, which turns an even biggerwheel, and so on, until the whole big machine starts operating. That’s how a small politicalgroup, with an independent and determined agenda, can drive decisive political processeswhen the timing is right.
We still have a long way to go. The danger of fascism is still hovering over this country.However, it has now been proven that things can be moved in the opposite direction.
Perhaps the small olive on the hill is mightier than a one-ton bomb.