Two years have passed since the disengagement and the public discourse is focused on the failings in rehabilitating those uprooted from their homes. The motives guiding some of the critics are obvious: If the government could not rehabilitate 8,500 evacuees, what will happen when the time comes to remove 100,000 settlers from Judea and Samaria? Other dire outcomes of the disengagement are being repressed. These include the intensified rocket attacks and citizens fleeing from the western Negev, and the Hamas takeover in the Gaza Strip and its victory in elections in the West Bank.

Few are the individuals, or the institutions, willing to admit errors; certainly not an error that has caused so many disasters. The media, which sided nearly in its entirety with Ariel Sharon, have no interest in demanding (as did of the government, the army and the local authorities following the Second Lebanon War) a serious evaluation of the lessons of the dislocation.

One of the developments being ignored, whether because of ignorance or by intention, is the deep, mental and ideological disengagement from the state being experienced by the uprooted and some of their supporters. The fact that the refusal to serve in the army was minimal during the days of the uprooting and the Lebanon war is no reason for calm. Deep, fundamental and long-term processes are being experienced by this population, and especially by the youth. And unless the process is stopped, they are likely to become even more alienated from those they consider to be responsible for a historic transgression.

	Advertisement

The rage is not directed only against the left. The institutions, including the IDF, the police, the judiciary and the media, are regarded by this community as perpetrators of an unforgivable sin.

The way Gush Katif is being commemorated reflects the growing spiritual dimension being ascribed to the uprooting. It is nearly impossible, a fact known by every devout person, to add new texts to those being recited in synagogues. Nonetheless, in synagogues throughout the country, in addition to the traditional lamentations for Tisha B'Av, those written for Gush Katif's destruction were also read.

In the profound pain they express, and the defiance and insult, these words are no less powerful than the canonical lamentations found in ancient texts.

Rabbi Dr. Yoel Elizur, a faculty member at Hebrew University who was present in Gush Katif during the uprooting, wrote a lamentation of 18 verses. Fifteen of these begin with loaded the expression, "How Doth?," which opens the Book of Lamentations, written by Prophet Jeremiah, the epitome of traditional lamentations.

Elizur writes: "Faith and justice and righteousness and law / have been trampled; they have become a mockery and a laughingstock / The honest are in prison, the distress has grown great / Justice has been replaced by injustice and charity has been replaced by bitter cries."

His lamentation was recited on Tuesday in synagogues around the country.

The destruction of the Second Temple did not only occur because of the Roman's military supremacy. Jews fought each other, and their strength weakened before the common foe. There were Jews whose hatred for their brethren was so powerful that they joined the Romans, even though they were about to destroy the Jews' capital and temple. In conversations with youth and adults I hear a parallel being drawn between the Jews allying themselves with the Romans, then, and the alliances Israeli governments make nowadays with enemies of the Jews (in Oslo, for example).

This is reflected in another verse in Elizur's lamentation: "How Doth those elected by the people betrayed / their god, their electorate, their souls, their seed / and how the soldiers and policemen were transformed / from beloved brothers to enemies and those who lay siege."

Elizur's lamentation appears to reflect the internal storm felt by many. The long-term national-strategic implications of the chasm with this community - a group whose motivation to serve and defend the state was unshakable in the past - must be given top priority by those who are hopefully busy assessing the state of the nation. This is said in light of the fact that a trend to shirk army service exists among those considered responsible for the uprooting, and with the knowledge that there are those planning further disengagements.