Israel’s Dilemma: Unity or Peace?

Ever since President Bush introduced his ‘Road Map’ for a permanent solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in April 2003, a great deal of public attention has focused on its demand for a reformed Palestinian Authority (PA) to confront aggressively radical Palestinian groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad who violently oppose a two-state solution to the conflict. One of the major obstacles to meeting this demand has been the Palestinian leadership’s express reluctance to risk initiating a civil war amongst Palestinians, and especially between the PA and the increasingly strengthened Hamas movement. But it is not just the Palestinians who confront a difficult choice between maintaining their fragile internal peace or pursuing external peace. So too do Israelis. Although the danger of civil war looms larger over Palestinian politics than it does over Israel’s, there is a symmetry in the internal challenge both sides face. Both Palestinians and Israelis are likely to experience intensified domestic division and conflict should the peace process between them finally resume. Moreover, a final settlement of their conflict poses a real danger of civil disobedience and domestic violence for both sides. Will Israelis be willing to sacrifice their aspiration for national unity for the sake of peace? To answer this crucial question, this article analyses the issue of national unity in Israel and the importance attributed to it by Israeli policy-makers and the Israeli-Jewish public. It also examines how the perceived need for Israeli national unity has affected Israel’s policy towards the peace process with the Palestinians. National unity became a subject of particular concern in Israel after the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in November 1995 by a right-wing religious extremist. The murder of an Israeli leader by an Israeli Jew was a deeply traumatic event for Israeli society. It generated a widespread desire for national reconciliation, to the extent that ‘healing the rifts within the nation’ came to rival, if not displace, the pursuit of Israeli– Palestinian peace as the leading item on the Israeli national agenda. The Oslo peace process suffered as a result. More than ten years have now passed since Rabin’s assassination. But the deep social and political divisions within Israel dramatized by this event