New Zionist : News and Discussion on the Future of Zionism, Israel, and the Jewish People

Bradley Burston had a fantastic little piece recently in Haaretz that I wanted to echo and add on to briefly. His article talks about the threat of a Palestinian 5th Column, and how Israel has no way to really deal with a threat that big. What he was referring to specifically is not the threat of increased violence, but rather the threat of non-violence, in the vein of the 1963 March on Washington, or the Salt March of 1930.

Imagine what would happen if one million Palestinians from the West Bank just got up and marched to the Knesset instead of sending suicide bombers. Imagine if half a million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip walked up to the security fence and camped out there indefinitely instead of firing rockets on Sderot. Not only would they receive massive international and media support, but they would also put Israel in a position where they truly would have to come up with a solution, instead of delaying a solution under layers of bureaucracy and futile negotiations.

Why doesn’t this happen? The answer is that the Palestinians are too fractionalized internally to ever join arms together in acts of non-violent resistance. As Burston reports, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip attempted such an act recently, in the hopes of getting 40,000 participants to march toward the security fence. Instead they got a few hundred, and those hundred were overshadowed by the continuous barrage of rocket fire into Israel going overhead.

The irony of this is that Israel is the exact same. The 5th column of Israel, whatever that may be, will never truly be able to make drastic policy changes because the 5th column is too busy drinking coffee at Saturday brunch in Tel Aviv. Imagine if two million Israel’s marched up the hill toward the Knesset and demanded change. Back in 2003 Viki Knafo walked 200 kilometers to Jerusalem by herself to demand for support for single mothers and made national headlines.

I think the saddest part of the whole situation is that the 5th columns of both Palestine and Israel pretty much want the same thing: some sense of normalcy, and some sense of real progress toward a two state solution. I also think that both 5th columns are disenfranchised, and becoming more so, with the whole process. After years of stagnation, it is easier to stop fighting and just let the status quo prevail. Unfortunately, the status quo on both sides is determined not by the moderate members of the 5th column, but by extremists like Hamas. So while fighting in Gaza quickly escalates, and threats from both sides fill the airwaves, the real people who get screwed are the majority in the middle that choose to opt out and pray it will pass over.