kibbutz mabarot, israel | Opinions on Israel’s planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip pile up even higher than the helpings of Dorit Daniel’s stuffed zucchinis at a family dinner.
“I feel terrible things are about to happen,” says Daniel, 57. Though she is adamantly in favor of the withdrawal scheduled to begin in mid-August, Daniel fears the internal fallout could be disastrous.
“I’m most fearful about someone from one side or another getting shot — that could lead to civil war,” she says, cradling her head in her hands as she sits at the table of her home in Kibbutz Mabarot, located in the center of the country, near Netanya.
Across Israel, tensions are rising along with the soaring summer heat as the country barrels toward the unknown.
Israelis — young and old, religious and secular, left and right — anxiously wait to see where the planned Aug. 15 withdrawal will lead. The debate over possible scenarios rages everywhere from Shabbat dinners to cafes to supermarket checkout lines.
Will Israel see a traumatic face-off between fellow citizens? Will there be increased Palestinian mortar attacks or other forms of terrorism? Or will they see a relatively smooth return of settlers to homes inside Israel’s 1967 borders and a Palestinian-ruled Gaza that develops and grows into a positive test case for statehood?
The national mood swung into heightened tension and uncertainty at the end of July when thousands of anti-withdrawal activists poured into the sleepy, southern village of Kfar Maimon in an effort to have their dissent heard by both the Israeli government and the country’s citizens.
The police quickly deemed the large gathering illegal, citing the group’s plans to march to Gaza — now declared a closed military zone ahead of the August withdrawal.
In a difficult three-day face-off among protesters, police and soldiers that eventually ended peacefully, the anti-withdrawal activists, many of them Orthodox Jewish settlers from the West Bank, showed their determination not to let the Gaza and northern West Bank withdrawal pass without a serious struggle.
Sarah Kronish, 36, her hair covered with an orange head scarf, went to Kfar Maimon from the West Bank settlement of Alon Shvut along with her husband and five children.
“We cannot sit at home and continue our normal lives,” said Kronish, her hands resting on a baby stroller full of provisions. “Today it is Gush Katif. Tomorrow it could be Gush Etzion, where I live,” she said, referring to a major West Bank settlement bloc near Jerusalem.
Michael Feige, a sociologist at the Ben-Gurion Research Institute who studies Israeli identity, says the country’s population can be divided into three distinct groups on the withdrawal issue: the national religious community, their supporters and the majority of Israelis — whose politics are to the center or left.
For the national religious, “this is a great tragedy and a dramatic event in Israeli history,” Feige says.
Their supporters — mostly people who live in development towns and other religious Israelis — are more passive in their protests, even though they agree that the Gaza pullout is a major event that should be halted, he says.
“The rest of Israeli society sees it as a dramatic reality show occurring in front of them,” he says.
At a sidewalk restaurant, two friends who work as taxi drivers argue over the issue.
“You know things are bad when you see Jews being forced to leave their homes. I want to see someone even try to evacuate an Arab from Jaffa,” says Avitan Bota, 29.
Not only is the situation leading to division in the country, he adds, but it is giving the Arabs “a gift for free” that will enable them to “strike us from even closer.”
His friend Gabriel Hadad, 44, counters: “I’m for disengagement if it means soldiers will stop being killed there. I hope the move will lead to better times and the tensions will dissipate as they did after we left Lebanon.”