Israelis convinced themselves that this was to be the dull election, the one marked by record low turnout and apathy. A people who complain they live in a land with too much history seemed in no mood to make some more. But make it they have. On Tuesday they voted to reject once and for all the ideology that had dominated the state for more than three decades, the belief that somehow all the territories conquered in 1967 could be absorbed into a Greater Israel. That maximalist version of Zionism had been under assault since early 2004, when former prime minister Ariel Sharon announced his plan to withdraw from Gaza, but the Israeli public had never formally voiced its view.
On Tuesday they did. The Likud leader, Binyamin Netanyahu, who had campaigned as the keeper of the Greater Israel flame, said this election would be a referendum on the future of those conquered lands. In which case Israelis gave their verdict with a clear voice: It's time to let go of most of them.
For Likud was outpolled by the combination of Kadima and Labour, two parties committed, in different ways, to pulling out of most of the West Bank. Both ran on platforms once associated with the peace movement, arguing that Israel could not rule over another people, that the attempt to retain all of the West Bank would destroy the country from within. On Sunday I heard Haim Ramon, one of the key strategic brains behind Kadima, describe the occupation as a "cancer." Language once confined to leftist intellectuals is now the argot of Israel's rulers.
You can see how much has changed when you meet those who stand to lose most. On Monday I visited Psagot, a settlement in the heart of the West Bank that, from its hilltop perch, looms over Ramallah. It falls on the wrong side of Israel's security barrier, or wall, which most assume will mark the boundary between those bits of the West Bank the new government will seek to keep and those it will give back to the Palestinians. The word of the hour is hitkansut, a warm, rather cuddly term that translates as convergence or consolidation, but which has a sense of ingathering, even huddling together. Ehud Olmert uses it to describe what he wants to do with the Jewish presence on the West Bank: To consolidate it into a few large settlement blocs behind the new boundary, dismantling the rest of the settlements and evacuating their residents. That will be some 70,000 people, nearly 10 times the number Sharon removed from Gaza last August.
In Psagot I sat with Pinchas Wallerstein, mayor of a regional council that represents 40,000 settlers. His office wall was covered with a single giant map -- one that confirms Psagot's place on Olmert's list for removal. Wallerstein's words were bullish. Olmert will never be able to carry out his plan, he said; Kadima will soon break up; the Israeli electorate will not tolerate more scenes like those last month, when troops and settlers clashed violently during the forced evacuation of the West Bank outpost of Amona.
optimistic
Still, his mood belied those words. Was he optimistic that places like Psagot would survive?
"We're going to have to work very hard," he said.
Trying to sound upbeat, he insisted that, at a minimum, 40 percent of Israelis were on his side. But there's the rub. There was a time when the settlers would have claimed not only to speak for the Israeli majority, but to be heroes to the rest of the nation. Now they are regarded as wild-eyed extremists who stand between regular Israelis and a quiet life.
The acclaimed Israeli writer David Grossman marvels at the transformation: "The settlers used to be the pampered child; they were given everything," he told me. "Now they are the black sheep of the family."
Wallerstein seemed to know that, as one Israeli journalist puts it, Israel is disengaging from the settlers; he wore the expression of a man whose cause is doomed.
The key to this shift is unilateralism, originally Sharon's creed, now embodied by Olmert. It argues that Israel should get out of most of the occupied territories for its own reasons and on its own terms. It aims to define Israel's permanent borders, without waiting for an accord with the Palestinians. In the words of Haim Ramon: "I have cancer. Ruling the territories is cancer. And therefore I will not let my enemy decide whether or not I undergo the operation to remove the cancer."
There are enormous problems with this approach. First, it seeks to ignore the Palestinians completely; it aims to shove them out of sight, behind a high wall where Israelis won't have to see or even think about them. The psychology that underpins both the wall and unilateralism is ugly.
Second, the pullout promised by Olmert will mean letting go of some land, but also Israeli retention, if not annexation, of the rest. Now, few credible people on either side honestly reckon there will be a complete return to the 1967 borders: They acknowledge that some of the most built-up Jewish areas, close to the old 1967 boundary, will inevitably become part of Israel. But that should happen in negotiation, with Israel compensating for the land it takes by handing to the Palestinians some land of its own: The so-called land swap.
ridiculous
Third, the Olmert borders, as currently outlined, are ridiculous. A quick look at the map shows that if Olmert really intends to include the settlement of Ariel then Israel's new "permanent border" will include an eastward finger, poking deep into the Palestinian interior. If he goes ahead and builds in the so-called E-1 corridor, linking Jerusalem and Maale Adumim, then he will cut the West Bank in two, north and south, rendering it unviable as a Palestinian state.
So Olmert will have to be watched closely. But he should be supported too. Why? Because some withdrawal is better than none; because Israeli control of 10 percent of the occupied territories is better than Israeli control of 100 percent. And also because the left have to be humble and honest enough to acknowledge that their way did not succeed.
For nearly 40 years Israeli progressives argued for a land-for-peace deal with the Palestinians. For a thousand reasons, it did not happen. Yet now, through unilateralism, Olmert has found a method of territorial concession that, apparently, Israeli politics can tolerate. It is not ideal; we would all prefer a fair accommodation between the two nations, in which they engage with each other as equals. But that stayed out of reach for 40 years; Olmert says he will make these moves in the next four.
So the left should cheer every withdrawal, applaud every settlement that comes down. But they must not forget their original vision. Once Olmert has taken his unilateral steps, then Amir Peretz of Labour and his allies must press their demands: Negotiations with the Palestinians, leading to further withdrawals if necessary, until the two sides finally draw a fair border between their two states.
The course for the next few years has been set. It will involve the gradual relinquishing of 1967's stolen inheritance. And yesterday, at long last, Israelis gave that destiny their blessing.
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