By Graham Usher Sitting in his small study at Haifa University -- perched on the very summit of the Mount Carmel mountain range that dominates Haifa port and the Lower Galilee -- Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, ruminates on where Israel is at, 50 years on. "I don't think we have Zionists in Israel any more," he says. "What we have are neo-Zionists and post-Zionists, or rather Zionists who have yet to understand that the founding myths of Zionism are no longer functional". These potential post-Zionists include political forces like Israel's leftist Meretz bloc and Pappe's own party, the non-Zionist and mainly Arab Democratic Front for Peace and Equality. The neo-Zionists are settler and other nationalist-religious groups who have gone back to Zionism and extracted from it the "most extreme, most fanatical" essence. "The neo-Zionists are Israel's new right," says Pappe. "For them values like democracy and liberalism are utterly dispensable. The only value that counts is the Jewish nation. If preserving this nation means another war with the Arabs, so be it. If it means occupying more Arab land, so be it. This is the ideology that assassinated Rabin -- it knows no inhabitants". Pappe's taxonomy was illustrated on 30 April, Israel's Independence Day. While most Israelis were preoccupied with the shenanigans surrounding the "Jubilee Bells" celebration in Jerusalem -- where a modern dance troupe pulled out of the ceremony after Jewish orthodox groups insisted that it perform "fully clothed" -- Palestinians observed a festival at Jebel Abu Ghneim in the "closed" and occupied West Bank. To commemorate Israel's 50th anniversary, Jewish settler and other rightist groups had called on their followers to gather there to "lay a symbolic cornerstone" at the site of the new Har Homa Jewish settlement. And gather they did. From morning to dusk, thousands streamed through what remains of the hill's pine forest and walked along the new dirt roads that now ring the mountain. Families laid out picnics and a children's playground amid the ruins of an ancient Arab fort on the crest of the hill. On a makeshift dais, "Jewish nationalist" rock music blared out while men and women danced themselves into a religious fervour. Right-wing leaders, like the Gesher Party's Michael Kleiner, gave speeches calling on Binyamin Netanyahu to "liberate us from the Oslo agreement". (Three days later Kleiner's Land of Israel Front warned that it would "topple" the Israeli government if Netanyahu considered a further West Bank redeployment of "more than 10 per cent"). Most of the estimated 10,000 who attended the festival were wearing black Kippurs and, for the women, medium length dresses, the emblem of Israel's pro-settler National Religious Party (NRP). But there was a considerable number in jeans and Nike T-shirts, draped in the blue and gold colours of the Likud Party's Betar youth movement. Whatever their affiliation, all were there to assert the sovereignty of Greater Israel over the West Bank and effect, symbolically for now but in the future actually, the demographic and territorial transformation of Jebel Abu Ghneim into Har Homa. They were -- in Pappe's parlance -- the human embodiment of "neo-Zionism". Those he hopes will become Israel's "post-Zionists" were assembled at the foot of the hill. Around 300 Meretz and Peace Now supporters were staging a "counter-demonstration" to protest the settlers' takeover of Jebel Abu Ghneim. To make up for their small numbers, the protesters tried to inflate a massive white dove. But it stubbornly refused to leave the ground. They then lined the road leading to the mountain, picketing each settler who passed. One woman in a headscarf and pushing a pram raised her eyebrows in contempt. "Why do you listen to them?" she asked, referring to Peace Now. "They are a minority". Given that those on the hill out-numbered those at its foot by around 15 to one, the question needed an answer. Why was the turn-out of Israel's Peace Camp at Jebel Abu Ghneim so derisory? No one with any sense of proportion can dispute that groups like Peace Now are committed to peace and are against settlements like Har Homa. But a clue to the left's current crisis in Israel was given on the placards Israel's Peace supporters brought with them to Jebel Abu Ghneim. Amid the usual slogans that "Har Homa = the end of peace" and "Bibi is bad for everyone", one banner stood out. "Har Homa is not Zionism," it read. For the Palestinians who lost their lands 50 years ago -- and who live under Israeli occupation today -- Har Homa has always been Zionism. And, for Israelis like Ilan Pappe, Har Homa is Zionism now. "The Zionism left in Israel wants to square the circle," he says. "It says it wants Israel to be a democratic state, but denies that it can be a state for all its citizens. It says that Jews -- who do not live here -- can be equal citizens of Israel, but Palestinians -- who live or did live here -- cannot. It pretends that Zionism has somehow had nothing to do with the oppression of Palestinians. These are impossible contradictions". Until they are resolved, suggests Pappe, the left is likely to stay marginal in Israeli society. Once they are resolved -- which will probably be "after further violent upheavals" in the region -- the left may not only be for peace but ready for it on the basis of a post-Zionist ideology. But this is for the long term. In the short term, the left will continue pumping up a dove that refuses to fly. And the right will have the mountain.
