I am certain that Sharon expected opposition to the Disengagement Plan to be fierce. After all, he was far from quiet in his own opposition to the idea when Labor’s leader at the time, Amram Mitzna, raised the issue as part of his electoral platform in 2003. And Sharon doesn’t even live in Gush Katif.
Sharon’s handling of the opposition to his plan could have won him many admirers if it had been done with the sensitivity and understanding that was necessary. Instead, it has won him nothing but contempt from the political right and even from the right-of-center bloc within his own party.
The government, its institutions, law enforcement agencies, the army, the media, and society in general have become so afraid of Disengagement opponents that most democratic norms have been dispensed with in favor of heavy-handed restrictions and methods more reminiscent of fascism than the democracy Sharon is supposedly trying to defend.
This past spring, numerous incidents were reported across the country of people wearing clothes with some orange in them being prevented from entering shopping malls, cafes, and even the Western Wall, out of fear that they might begin demonstrating and causing a scene. Over the past three months, there have been many demonstrations and rallies across the country. Hundreds of demonstrators, including teenagers and some as young as 9 or 10 years old, have been arrested and imprisoned, some without charge, because they dared to look like they might try to block traffic for a few minutes. Two weeks ago, when opponents to the plan gathered at a community near Gush Katif to hold a three-day rally and march, the police acted to prevent over 100 busses from traveling to the rally, confiscating the keys to the busses and often the licenses of the bus drivers for no legally valid reason.
One of the major foundations of democracy, an element whose absence renders the entire idea of popular rule impotent, is freedom of expression – the right of individuals and groups to demonstrate their opposition to government policy with the aim of exerting enough public pressure to cause the government to change that policy. Citizens of democracy are constantly expressing their support for or opposition to any given policy through the media, public discourse, and, when necessary, civil demonstration. In a politically charged society such as Israel’s, such expressions are generally more powerful, more strident, and more emotional.
A government that strives to protect and enhance democracy must nurture such expressions of opinion and encourage citizens to engage in public discourse of the issues. The more important the issue, the more vital it is that the public be encouraged to express its opinion in whatever fashion is available to them within the limits of the law. But the law must not be used as a weapon to abuse and silence political protest, whether mass demonstrations, the use of the media, or electoral participation.
When the law is abused in this manner by the government, and when the media is co-opted by the government to ignore such abuse, and even to join in the repression and denigration of those expressing their opinions, democratic traditions are in serious danger.
As such, Sharon’s disengagement plan cannot be said to have as its aim the protection of the Jewish democracy in Israel. Rather, it is being used as an excuse to foist proto-fascist rule on a nation that wants to take its democracy seriously.
If Sharon really believes his own rhetoric, it is time to allow the opponents of the disengagement plan full freedom to express that opposition, and to hope that this opposition will allow for a full and free public debate about the issue. This is the only way to calm the opponents of the plan and to reach a solution that will prove as friendly and as accommodating as possible to those who are most harmed by the plan – the residents of Gush Katif and northern Samaria who are about to be kicked out of their homes. Until and unless Sharon realizes this, his disengagement plan endangers all of Israeli society through the erosion of democracy and the very real threat of serious social discord to which the policy is leading.
Copyright 2005. All rights reserved. Yehuda Poch is a journalist living in Israel. Reproduction in electronic or print format by permission of the author only.
