Building on Shifting Sands

Shifting Sands...

   The Sands of Gush Katif              

Growing in the sand in the greenhouses in Netzer Hazani

A Sand Lily, growing in Slav... 

Remnants of a child's toy, left behind and destroyed in Slav.

By: Paula R. Stern
January 2006

In every election, most parties claim that they speak for the majority of Israelis. Usually, they claim to be centrists…whatever that means. It is part of a basic assumption that the majority of the people will vote for the center. And so, to be successful and win the election, you must successfully convince the people that you represent that golden center.

In the last election, I backed the leading party contending for control of the government. We agreed that there would be no negotiation with terrorists, that we would fight for peace with security, that there would be no unilateral moves, no withdrawal under fire. The party was labeled center-right, but it was close enough to the center to get elected.

Our goals were simple, we would negotiate with peace partners, those who were interested not in our destruction but in building a new Middle East in which the inhabitants worked together towards peace. And if there were no partners, only those who continued to seek our destruction, well, our message was clear. Ariel Sharon said it brilliantly, “To an outstretched hand of peace we will respond with an olive branch, but expressions of terror will be met by fire more intense than ever."

At the time, we were a nation dealing with rockets and mortars, terror warnings and attacks, but as a society we were united and relatively strong in our resolve that we would not surrender to despair or desperation as others were urging us to do. We went to the polls, confident that the true path to peace would include assurances of our security.

This is what Israel was like before the last elections. Each person had his or her opinion and in the end, the majority spoke and elected a strong leader who wanted a peace that would not lead to our eventual destruction. Back then, I was not part of the radical right or the radical left. I was simply an Israeli who wanted the day to pass without a bomb going off somewhere. I wanted my children to go to school and come home safely.

I wanted to go out to dinner with my husband and not focus or worry about the guard screening all the other customers as they entered. I didn’t want to be scared when the light turned red and my car was next to a bus full of people. In short, I was typical of most Israelis, believing that whatever negotiations we might have to undertake in the future, whatever compromises or agreements we might reach would be based on a clear choice. Not land for peace, but peace for peace.

If you want to know your true significance in the scope of things, stand firmly where the sand meets the water. The beauty of the shorefront is the shifting sand, the power of the water. I can spend hours watching the waves. It’s a great place to visit, to gain perspective, but it is not a place to build a home, not a place to stay forever. No matter how strong the house, if you build it on shifting sand, nature will almost always eventually defeat it. This is Ariel Sharon’s legacy. He took our strength, our dreams for the future, our resolve, and he put it on the edge, on the shifting sands. And so, everything is unstable, all has shifted.

In the last few days, I have been referred to as “extreme right” and “radical Israel.” Longtime friends who meant no insult said it nicely, but it also made me focus on my politics and what I believe. I thought about what I believed the last time I went to the polls, what choices I made, what dreams I had for my family and for my country.

Back then, I was called center-right. I went to the polls with optimism, believing we would finally be rid of the apologists of the past, the losers of Labor, the hate-filled Shinui party, the corruption and the favor-seeking small parties. I was naïve enough to believe that Ariel Sharon wouldn’t, couldn’t betray those who voted for him and with a clear mandate and a secure direction, he would work hard to deliver on his promises of peace with security.

Despite all that has happened in the last few years, I know that I have not changed in the most fundamental of ways. I still believe that we should answer all genuine offers to negotiate a final peace settlement. I remain committed to the belief that we must answer aggression with a proper and strong defense and at all times deliver a message of determination, rather than meaningless threats and the useless targeting of empty fields.

What has changed, what has shifted, is the sand beneath our feet and the foundations upon which we united behind the last government. Somehow, with the shifting sand, my slightly-right-of-center views are now being labeled as radical-right. If Kadima or Labor is to be successful in calling themselves centrists, they must, by necessity, call me radical-right.

It’s a simple political formula. That which was left-wing must become center to win, and so that which was center must now be dismissed as right wing. Or even better, add “radical” in an attempt to discredit and marginalize our views. The irony here is that my label may have changed, but my views have not. I have always been against unilateral moves…just as the center-right Sharon, Olmert, Mofaz, HaNegbi team was in the last elections. I have stood my ground, but the sand has shifted.

It is a new Israel that goes to the polls on March 28, one in which a corrupt, left-wing government has successfully claimed itself to be the center, leaving its one-time supporters to be labeled “radical right.”

No matter what label they claim, the sand has moved others to the left, away from a commitment to a secure Israel. One can only hope that this time at least, those who will destroy Jewish communities and divide Jerusalem at least have the decency to divulge their plans before the election so that we can decide if we want to live in a house built on shifting sand, or pull back away from the dangerous shores and unite to build a more secure foundation in which to raise our children.

Copyright: Paula Stern 2006. All rights reserved.