Tuned out, turned inward

Kadima did well in prosperous locales in the 2006 election. It received more than 50-percent support in Kfar Shmaryahu, nearly 40 percent in Ramat Hasharon, and also performed admirably in Ra'anana, Herzliya and other well-to-do towns. Many disillusioned Labor and Likud voters defected to the new party that offered a different, fresh and daring politics. With the help of the tailwind produced by the disengagement, Kadima looked like a successful experiment.

Back then, when the campaign got under way, prime minister Ariel Sharon stood out as a determined leader, capable of leading to expanses that none of his predecessors had approached. Tami Rechter, a psychologist from Kfar Shmaryahu, said last week that it was Sharon's spirit that led many of her neighbors and friends to vote for Kadima. She, who considers herself a definite supporter of the Left, also voted for the new party, out of a sense that it would advance peace, engender a new social agenda and hold out hope for the future.

A year and a half later, Rechter is determined to blot out that political adventure, as though it had been a chimera. The disappointment from the fact that no "different politics" was born, and that the country is not being run according to any particular vision, has impelled her and her friends to sink into the pleasures of life - trips abroad, nearly compulsive acquisitions and treatments for body and soul.

"It's a terrible impotence, which makes a person self-centered," she explains. "People have no more motivation. Take all the wealthy people in Kfar Shmaryahu and you'll see that you won't find a single one who will take it upon himself to change anything. People are tired and they have despaired. They went into the last elections with the hope that something would happen. And what happened? Nothing. There was a war. Everyone has learned to live with the situation. So have I. Everyone is concentrating on himself."

Her friend Rivka Idan, a veteran inhabitant of Kfar Shmaryahu, is of a similar opinion. According to her, she says that instead of concern for the collective, many people have gone back to concern for themselves, and distanced themselves from what is happening in the public arena. In the 2006 elections, she struggled with the temptation to vote for Kadima, but remained faithful to Labor. She is convinced that the disappointment that has spread among Kadima supporters derives from the last war and from the way the government has been disregarding signs that Israel's neighbors may be interested in making peace. "I don't understand how a government can see peace signals from all directions and ignore them," she said angrily.

Tami Rechter says she's "always worked for peace and wanted peace. I was sure that Kadima would go in that direction." Now though, she says she understands that, "for me, Kadima was a one-time experience." Despite the disappointment, both she and Rivka Idan are hoping for social forces that will ignite enthusiasm among Israelis. "Otherwise, people aren't going to vote in the next elections, and will look out only for themselves," warns Rechter.

Jerusalem. Nostalgia

Against the backdrop of the general despair, several hundred veteran fighters for peace met in Jerusalem last week in an attempt to re-launch their paralyzed camp. At a conference of the organization behind the Geneva Accords, at Mishkenot Sha'ananim, there were those who reminisced about the days when they actually had influence over the government of Israel. There were those who felt impotent in face of a reality in which they have become irrelevant. The Second Lebanon War was not prevented, the Arab League peace initiative has evaporated from the agenda without even a protest, and the peace camp is not succeeding in advancing the Syrian calls for peace or to block the momentum of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank. This camp, which in the past brought down its wrath on obdurate prime ministers and could bring together hundreds of thousands in the city square, now feels left out of the game. Only Uri Avnery could find consolation in the fact that peace awareness has been etched in the minds of the Israelis with unprecedented strength. An optimist, he suggested to his colleagues that they view this as a tremendous success.

The peace camp's big failure derives, in Avnery's opinion, from the fact that it has sloughed off, either because of ego, arrogance or disgust, large populations that in a natural way could have strengthened it. Had the camp lured a million Russians, a million Mizrahim (Jews with ancestry in the Muslim countries) and a million Arabs, the picture would be different. "Had we been able to help them develop in the direction of peace, we would be winning," he says. "To change the vision of the Mizrahi public, you need a Mizrahi. The peace camp has failed with these publics because it preferred to make peace with itself and within itself."

Avnery also found another reason for the waning of the camp: While the Right has tremendous quantities of emotion, the Left is burdened with an excess of rationality. If it were possible to balance the distribution and transfer a bit of rationality from left to right and a lot of feeling from right to left, everything would be looking different, he says.

Everyone agreed that in light of its bleak situation, the peace camp needs to be established anew. Tzali Reshef and Yaron Ezrahi, who were among the founders of Peace Now, called for building a body that would reignite the peace forces. "I am envious of the Yesha [settlers' acronym for Judea, Samaria and Gaza] rabbis who distribute thousands of leaflets every Sabbath in the synagogues," says Ezrahi. "The peace camp has to construct a new dictionary and new arguments that will bring in new blood. This isn't going to be done through speeches by Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua, but rather by the building of an alternative." Reshef said that "the peace camp does not lack strategists and discussions. We need to connect to the students and to broad publics."

The colleagues in the hall, battle-worn from demonstrations from the past, looked as though they had come to terms with the fact that in the struggle between bullying politics and the vision of peace, the later has paid a high price. Prof. Tamar Herman, a researcher of peace movements, has come to the conclusion that the public has internalized life without peace and has learned to eke the maximum benefit out of the situation. She believes that the economic prosperity and a sense of personal security have anesthetized the public to the urgency of the need to make peace.

Herzliya. Convergence

Dan Shilo, a 62-year-old economist from Herzliya, says this is why many of his friends have despaired, abandoned politics and even stopped reading newspapers. Their disappointment with Kadima, he says, has sent them back to supporting Labor, in the hope that it can extricate the country from its despair.

Shilo says he has noticed changes among his friends: Each of them is concerned with himself and by what is happening in his immediate surroundings and working to advance his own standing. He says Israelis are fed up with the state because it has failed to fulfill their wishes. "I am amazed to see that they aren't interested in anything," he says,"not in what's happening in the West Bank, in Gaza, in Deheishe or in the settlements. So what matters to them? That their money flows like it should. It's important to them that Israel has a finance minister who's is good at his job, and that everything works the way it should.

"A new sort of Israeli bourgeoisie has developed," Shilo continues, "made up of people who aren't interested in what's happening in the country. In the area of Herzliya, Kfar Shmaryahu and other wealthy locales, nothing interests the people except for money, family and friends. The political situation doesn't cause them to bat an eyelash."

Tamar Herman calls the phenomenon of this convergence "the politics of anti-politics." She has combed blogs and talkbacks on the Internet and in other media, and in her opinion, Israelis are trying to "run away" from the state.

"People are going through an 'exit' process and are dealing only with their own individual issues and not with the country's," Herman explains. "Israeli democracy has encountered fatigue, and the Israelis have lost interest in their representatives in government."