The best decade of our lives
by Yossi Beilin
The
Six Day War, whose 38th anniversary was yesterday, divides my life
exactly as it divides the life of the state: A third before the war and
two-thirds after it. It would be correct to say that during nearly all
of the latter period I have tried to save myself, ourselves, from the
terrible mistake we made; instead of sticking to a war of defense and
then returning home, like after all the reprisal operations, we
remained in the territories. All I am trying to do is to enable my
grandchildren to live in this land as I lived during the quietest and
most beautiful decade of its life - 1957-1967.
It is true that
there was the Lavon Affair - a botched sabotage operation in Egypt in
1954 - and incidents in the north and even on Mount Scopus, and lots of
problems concerning the definition of "Who is Jew," and riots in Wadi
Salib and a recession. But during this entire period, only 20 people
were killed by hostile operations. The "austerity" regime was replaced
by rapid economic growth. Higher education, culture and science
flourished like never before. Military service was two and a half years
and was even shortened to two years and two months. Children traveled
on buses and parents did not fear for their lives.
Israel of the
1960s was a country that was flourishing and sure of itself, absorbing
aliyah, connected with East and West and a big sister for newly
independent African countries. The world saluted Israel's amazing
successes in the fields of agriculture, the military and the absorption
of new immigrants, and it seemed like nothing could stop it. Studies
published in the 1960s predicted that within 25 years, Israel would be
among the world's developed countries. These studies did not take into
consideration the war and the blindness that took hold of us in its
aftermath.
I
shared this blindness. I was a private and became a private first class
at the end of the war. While in the Golan and Sinai, I heard about the
conquest of Jerusalem and was ecstatically happiness. I experienced six
years of illusions before realizing the senselessness of Moshe Dayan's
declaration, "Better Sharm el-Sheikh than peace;" the mistake of not
returning the West Bank to King Hussein in exchange for peace, because
of the Allon Plan's demand to annex about 20 percent of it; and the
crazy nonsense of Abba Eban's "Auschwitz borders."
There was the
bitter mistake of Golda Meir, Yisrael Galili and their colleagues, who
rejected Gunnar Jarring's proposal for an accord with Egypt along the
lines of the Camp David agreement, in February 1971. They rejected this
proposal despite the fact that Sadat had agreed to it. There was also
the terrible mistake of building settlements in Sinai, the West Bank
and the Golan Heights, as if we were still living in the 1920s and
1930s and these settlements would protect Tel Aviv.
It was only
when we hysterically had to evacuate children's houses in the Golan
Heights kibbutzim that I realized how outdated it was to think that the
settlements constitute a defensive shield. It was only then that I
began to realize how much the occupied territories endangered us rather
than protecting us.
Those six days, on the eve of my 19th
birthday, were the most heroic days of my life. Those were days when
existential fears gave way to victory albums, veneration of generals
and the belief that we were invincible. Thus, we waited for a telephone
call from Hussein, as if we had no obligation to even dial.
Those
days, which made us a subject of such admiration for Jews in the
Diaspora and many others in the world, turned out to be the greatest
curse of our personal and collective lives. It was battle shock of
victors who had no idea what to do with the territorial assets that
fell into their hands. Between Alterman and Agnon calling to remain in
the Greater Land of Israel, and Lavon and Leibowitz calling for a
unilateral exit, the victors did what people do when they are in shock:
They continued as they had done previously.
The military
government, which had only been canceled in December 1966, was renewed
in the territories six months later. And the building of kibbutzim and
moshavim in the occupied territories was the direct continuation of the
(erroneous) assessment from the pre-state period - that the future
border would be determined by the settlements we build.
For two
thirds of my life, I have been trying to return to the Israel that was
stolen from me in June 1967. I do not plan to give up, and not because
of nostalgia. We have less than a decade left to cut the Gordian knot
between the territories and ourselves.
Many have already emerged
from the period of collective blindness and understand what a terrible
moral, Jewish, economic and international price we are paying because
of this knot. The only question is whether the minority that remains in
the darkness will sit at the helm or move to the stern of the ship and
let those whose eyes are open navigate. |
