ROBERT WISTRICH
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that the Likud relies essentially on terrorist incidents to throw the Israeli
public into a state of panic. When, as recently, these incidents occur, they
boost the Likud's arguments about terror and the peace process. Once
terrorist attacks are reduced to an "acceptable" rate, whatever that may
be, then it seems the Israeli public is prepared to give the present gov–
ernment the benefit of the doubt. Neither the Likud nor the more
extreme parties on the right have, however, been able to convince a ma–
jority of Israeli opinion that they have the answer. But on the Golan
issue, I believe that a referendum would still show a majority of Israelis to
be against withdrawal. Of course, it may depend on the way that question
is formulated and the actual terms. The Likud has a major problem with
formulating a coherent alternative, and to that extent it has contributed to
its own current problems.
Question:
I wonder whether you could address more directly something
to which you have been alluding. There have always been two Israels: the
myth and the dream, and a country that has bread-and-butter issues and
social problems. And you seem to be saying that what's happening is that
Israel is more and more becoming just another country. If you look at it
in the long term, is this so? And if it is, how do Israelis feel about that?
Robert Wistrich:
I feel that there is a very strong wish among a section of
the Israeli public for normalization, even if it is a mirage. It seems to me
to be stronger among Sabras and very potent in the academy among the
people I know best. What they mean by normalization is not so much
what it used to mean. The ideological vision once held by secular Zion–
ism had as its main objective the creation in Israel of a nation among
nations, a state among the states of the world. The idea was that Israel
would be just like other countries, except that it would be a state of the
Jewish people, a refuge for persecuted Jews, with a clear Jewish majority.
That idea of normalization is still quite meaningful for many secular Is–
raelis. But certain elements have been added to it in more recent years: a
growing weariness with war, a strong desire to finish with having been
besieged for so long. The siege mentality appears to be slowly dissipating.
The hope is that perhaps we now really have an opportunity at hand that
might finally lead to an integration of Israel in the region; where it can
have something resembling normal relations with all of its neighbors,
something along the lines of what it now already has with Jordan.
Israel's current relations with Jordan represent the first fairly warm
peace that Israel has enjoyed with any of its Arab neighbors. The peace
with Egypt, on the other hand, has always been a cold one, and this con–
tinues to be quite a worrying relationship. If the rest of the Arab world
