ISRAEL At 40: the Dream Confronts Palestinian Fury

(13 of 15)
eventually require sharing political power with Arabs -- and its other profound ambition, to offer to Jews around the world a land they can always call their own. The Palestinian problem cannot be brushed aside by rhetoric or obliterated by military force. Eventually, Israelis probably must bring themselves to face the same difficult, dangerous course that has always suggested itself: partition. ''We must divide the apartment and conduct a decent divorce,'' says Amos Oz. Israelis and Palestinians must give up their absolutist demands and compromise on coexistence. Israel will have to accept a Palestinian state alongside Israel, not instead of Israel. And that means it must be safe. The Palestinians will have to compromise even more. Their state can be only a truncated version of their former domain -- they must give up their sustaining ^ dreams of returning to their homes in Haifa and Jaffa and Lydda. Further, their home must be a rigorously demilitarized state. Either confederation with Jordan or guarantees by the superpowers could assure that, once allowed their independence and self-determination, the Palestinians would not change their minds. Says Philosopher David Hartman: ''They can run their own lives, but they must do it without military power. This is what Israelis need to sleep at night.'' Yet in Israel many persist in a different dream. They have married nationalism to religion, and advocate annexing the territories into Israel forever. It is, they say, Eretz Yisrael (land of Israel), the land God granted to the Jews. Some Israelis want to transfer the Arabs out of Eretz Yisrael. They use a hard logic. Wars always have consequences. Wars create refugees. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were driven out of Morocco, Tunisia and other North African states. Why should not the Arabs of the camps and territories be resettled in Jordan (where Palestinians already make up at least 60% of the population anyway) or some other place in the vast Arab land holdings? But there is a harder logic still. If it becomes legitimate to tell Arabs they must depart because they lost wars, then it becomes both legitimate and tempting for Arabs to fight more wars in the hope of making the Jews leave the Middle East forever. It is a formula for apocalypse. Taking the necessary steps will require political courage, a virtue scarce on both sides. P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat's genius for survival is not matched by a larger sense of the constructive. Israel was created by visions, by an astonishing force of ideas and by great figures. In the late '70s, Menachem Begin, Anwar Sadat and Jimmy Carter rose to the occasion at Camp David. Their accords included a formula for negotiations on the territories, but Israel's political leaders now seem dispiritingly small -- visionless and timid, working the world from a defensive crouch. They show no signs that they have the imagination to lead Israel out of the dangerous historical territory it now inhabits. Israel's peculiar political system -- a queer mix of party control over candidates and proportional representation in voting -- has bred this political weakness and cowardice. After every election, more than a dozen parties hold seats in the Knesset. No major group has ever been able to rule without a coalition of partners. The founding Zionists designed the system in * order to give maximum representation to fragmented Jewry, but as President Herzog says, ''It is not suited to a modern state.'' Today the