Natan Sharansky does not hesitate to be blunt in summing up how he views the event of the past several months. "We came very close to destroying the Zionist enterprise, " he says.

It's Sunday, and though the Knesset is out of session today, Sharansky's office is bustling; the leader of Israel Ba-Aliya moves from one meeting to another, interrupted by an urgent phone call here and there.

In an interview with In Jerusalem, Sharansky says there is a place for Western immigrants in his party, noting that there is a common Zionist ideology and issues of concern shared by all olim.

But the bulk of the 40-minute interview focuses on Jerusalem.

Sharanksy recalls one of the last cabinet meetings he attended as minister before resigning from the government in July, on the eve of the Camp David Summit. He recalls one minister arguing that the conflict over Jerusalem was a conflict over symbols, and that Israel, for practical reasons, should forgo some of those symbols. "But I said, " Sharansky recalls, "the whole Jewish nations is about symbols. We have no chance to exist if we don't believe in symbols. "

According to Sharanksy there is what he terms a "blindness" among members of the government, including Prime Minister Ehud Barak, as to the concept of a Jerusalem for the Jewish people.

When Sharansky received a phone call from Barak during the Camp David summit, he told the prime minister: "Remember that you are the first leader in Jewish history who is voluntarily dividing Jerusalem."

For many Israelis, Camp David blurred the red lines on Jerusalem. Where do you draw the red line?

Two months before I resigned from the government, I wrote an open letter to Barak, listing the concession that he was ready to make. I wrote a phrase which people here paid no attention to. I said exactly as the unification of Jerusalem united us as a people, the moment we are ready to divide Jerusalem it will damage the connection between the people and the state of Israel, and it will make all of us - those who are here and those in the Diaspora - much weaker.

I was the second generation of assimilated Soviet Jews. We were one of the most assimilated communities in Jewish history. We knew absolutely nothing. We never heard the words Pessah or Hannuka. We knew we were Jewish because there was anti-Semitism; it was written in our ID cards.

Then came the Six Day War and the declaration "The Temple Mount is in our hands." You would suddenly see that anti-Semites would treat you maybe with the same hatred but definitely with more respect. And then you find out that an event of historic proportions happened. In short, what I want to say is that the breaking through the Lions " Gate was also the breaking through of the Iron Curtain.

The moment you put yourself in the perspective of 3,000 years from Mount Sinai, and of 2,000 years of "next year in Jerusalem" you feel very strong. Then you have enough power to go against the system, and you find that there is the solidarity of Jewish people around you.

In 1977 I was arrested and in 1978 there was the trial. They were threatening to sentence me to death. And they asked me at the end what do you want to say to the court. I said, "I have nothing to say to the court. But to my people, to my state, and to my wife I say "next year in Jerusalem."

This was such a powerful phrase, such a powerful prayer, such a powerful connection for the people that were not in Jerusalem, because they believed that the day would come. That idea was the best guarantee that we would succeed.

When I found out that we were ready to discuss the division of Jerusalem, I left the government.

Barak called me from Camp David and I told him, "Please remember that you are the first leader in Jewish history who is voluntarily dividing Jerusalem. Think all the time about this."

I told him, "I can't understand another thing: I hear Arafat saying that he won't decide anything about Jerusalem without going to the league of Moslem countries, without going to Mubarak and discussing it. I can't understand how you can sit there yourself and make decisions on Jerusalem without going to the Knesset and the people of Israel and without discussing it with the Diaspora Jewry."

This is a question which will have tremendous influence on all the relations between the people of Israel, the land of Israel, the history, the past and the future.

So now we come to the question of Abu Dis. [Barak asked] is this the place we prayed for when we prayed for Jerusalem? But that is not the point. If you are starting by saying that Abu Dis is the down payment, then the payment itself will be the Temple Mount.

I can assure you the moment that the Temple Mount is theirs and we will be at the Western Wall, every week Arafat will use more pressure and of course it will be "out of his control" when 300,000 Moslems on the Temple Mount start throwing stones down on the Western Wall. Very soon we will decide that it is practically impossible for us to keep our forces there, we will move 300 meters to behind the Dung Gate and keep our forces there. We see what happens when there are practical considerations - how we left Joseph's Tomb. And then there will be UN forces to protect our access to the Western Wall.

That will mean that those haredim who always said that a Zionist state cannot be a Jewish state will be right. Because we, due to practical considerations, decided that in order to defend Tel Aviv and Netanya we have to leave the Temple Mount and the Old City. On a spiritual level, on a moral level, that will be the end of Israel. Israel can only succeed as a democratic state and a Jewish state at the same time - because you need all this passion of Jewish history and all this glue of the generations. Even when, in my case, I was facing the death sentence, I knew that this phrase "next year in Jerusalem " is much stronger. And here, we who have the state will give it away? We will have no chance to survive.

Twenty years ago, in the face of death, you were saying "next year in Jerusalem." And now you are here on the phone with Barak telling him he will do what no leader has done before if he divides Jerusalem. This is a little surrealistic.

The fact that we came to this situation, the fact that it reached the negotiation table with our agreement, is one of the big problems of secular- Zionism.

I am one who is Zionist and who at the same time - I don "t know if you want to say I "m a secular-Zionist - one who believes that Zionism successfully connected our religious roots with our secular aspirations, and that Israel can survive only as a Jewish and a democratic state.

A sort of blindness of secular Zionism, and this atmosphere of post-Zionism really brought us to the situation where our leaders, for pragmatic reasons, came very close to destroying the very base on which this Zionist enterprise stands.

Because I am an optimist and I believe in the power of Jewish history and the Jewish people, I believe we will not do it. But it's a very dangerous point we reached.

And the fact is that Barak was blind to this point - he was arguing with me on the specific points (about the alleged concessions on Jerusalem) - but didn "t pay attention to the point that the people of Israel will be weakened spiritually if Jerusalem is divided. It was something not taken into consideration, as if it doesn "t exist, and that is something very dangerous.

One of the other ministers in the government said that after all, Jerusalem is all about symbols, and that we can forgo some of the symbols. I told him "The Jewish nation is all about symbols. The Jewish nation has no chance to exist if it doesn "t believe in symbols. For 2,000 years Jews were saying - I didnt say stupidly, but without it really making any sense - "next year in Jerusalem." If you don "t believe in the power of the symbols, we don "t exist as a Jewish nation. "

What I heard at the cabinet meeting was "we are a practical politicians, we have to find a way for our people to live in peace." But they are sacrificing the essence of our existence.

This all come down to the Zionism/post-Zionism discussion. The argument among religious Zionists and others is that it all comes down to education, specifically Jewish education.

I believe that Israel has to encourage different types of education, all types of education. But to every type which the government supports there has to be a minimum of subjects which are taught, on one hand civics, on the other hand a minimum of Jewish education which explains the meaning of Jewish civilization.

Will you support the Likud candidate for prime minister?

We will see who the candidate is and what the platform is. I can say for sure that we definitely never will be able to support the candidate that will try to go back in one way or another to the Camp David understandings, to dividing Jerusalem and to giving away the Temple Mount.

You envisioned Yisrael B "Aliya as becoming a mainstream party, not just one for olim from the former Soviet Union

The idea of the Israel Ba-Aliya party was to give power to olim to open the door in the society which are closed to them, and in this way to accelerate the process of integration. And in this way we were a huge success. Now there are hundreds of members of local councils and 20 deputy mayors; in every city there was a major breakthrough for immigrants.

We were the party which led the process of the disintegration of this government because of Camp David. It wasn "t only me; we had all the democratic meetings of our bodies and all of them supported this line.

Some of the accusations from One Israel was how dare Sharansky - he was elected on the mandate of helping immigrants and he is demanding we change our policy in Camp David. First they were angry at us for forming a special-interest party for olim, now when they see we have a stand on other matters, they are angry that we don "t just concentrate on our interests.

We are getting a lot of sympathy and interest among Western olim for what we are doing. For example the issue of reform conversion. There was no other party that showed an interest for this issue. There are many points, ideologically, which immigrants from the west and from the former Soviet Union have in common.

As someone who, probably better than anyone else, knows about the willpower to persevere, can you give advise to the residents of Jerusalem, of the Greater Jerusalem area, on how to make it through this time?

When I was in the punishment cell for a hundred days, in the darkness and cold with nothing to do, the flow of time is torture by itself. And you knew the minute you gave in to the KGB, everything would change.

What you have to do is remind yourself all the time, rationalize all this: why you are here, what is behind this, why you cannot make any compromise. It is easy for me to say that it is very important for all of us to remember why we are here, what we are defending, why it so important from the point of view of history, what will happen if we all start leaving.

I was in Gush Katif and they told us that members of the Shinui party came to visit them and asked them why they were keeping their children there. And I told them that some of our friends and relatives called from America and said why are you keeping your children in Jerusalem, why don "t you send them for these couple of months to America? That is absolutely the same logic.

But I don "t want to make the comparison to the Gulag. Because the difference is we are citizens of the State of Israel. And all the power of the state was that for the first time in history there is state which takes care of every Jew in the world, whether he is in Entebbe or whether in the punishment cell in Siberia. And that is the power of the Jewish state.

That's why its so awful what's happening in the last two months. I told Barak that the most awful thing is that by not reacting immediately, by giving the feeling that there are some higher political considerations why not to react when our people are lynched and killed, by turning our citizens into pawns in some bigger political game - you are destroying this unique feeling that there is one state in the world that will defend the Jews. And that's why you go to Israel and not to the United States, and not to Canada, and not to Australia. Because there is one state which doesn't think twice when it comes to defending Jews from pogroms, from persecution, from shooting.

That's why I can say all these nice words to the people why they have to be strong - and they have to be strong - and to explain the things I did when I was imprisoned and how they helped.

But it's not the same situation. This is a situation where the state of Israel must have the final word and for the state of Israel it must be a top priority. If what we are discussing in Gilo is when will money come for fortifications - and as for more proactive actions we could not do it because that could harm chances for peace, then that's what destroys all the glue and the hope of generation that we are talking about.

That's why I want to strengthen them - I want to give them good advice. But at the same time I can't say that they should feel as I did in the punishment cell. Because in the punishment cell, I knew there was a state that would do everything it could; and if the state could have sent an airplane to save me, they would have done it.

I can't say to the residents of Gilo we have a state which day and night is thinking how not to permit even one more bullet in Gilo. I can't say it. That is my problem... my problem is with my own government. And that is what we have to change it and change it quickly. Where we erred

Where we erred

The Palestinian violence came about after a dead-end in the final status negotiations. Did Israel go wrong somewhere or was this inevitable?

The way that we accepted the Oslo process, it was inevitable. The Oslo process was based on the perception that if we give Arafat enough land, control over his people and rights, at some moment he will start taking care of his own people. He will be so interested to use all the things he got - the land, rights, free passage, airport - and start building a national life for the welfare of his own people. And the moment he will start doing this, we will have mutual interests: he will be concerned about the welfare of his people, we will be concerned about the welfare of our people, and we will have mutual interest. And then the new Middle East starts.

But [according to the Oslo view] as long as he has nothing, he is only a terrorist. The moment we help him become leader of a nation, with territory, with communication, an economy, he will have to start dealing with us and then he will be our partner. That was the theory.

But there were people who were doubtful, not only on the right, but also on the left, even Yizhak Rabin wasn't ready to buy it immediately. So they said you don't have to be concerned what will be at the end because we are building it as a process, step by step. We do a little, and we will see what Arafat will do and we expect for him to do his part. So that's the process - at any moment when we see the process is not developing, we'll go back.

Where did we go wrong from the very beginning?

Arafat used his weakness as his weapon, using it to explain why he should not deliver at each stage. So at each stage we had to deliver everything as we obliged, because we are a democratic society and cannot avoid our responsibility, and he was busy explaining why he cannot deliver.

So I believe the basic mistake was that we were trying to ignore the principle difference between democratic and non-democratic regimes. Not only were we trying to ignore it, but we thought that because they had a non-democratic regime it would work to our advantage.

If the leaders depend on their people - they have to start taking care of the welfare of their people. If the people depend on their leaders - then leaders have to control the people, and to control you need an external enemy and that enemy is Israel.

The only way to guarantee that this wouldn't happen was by reciprocity. He is doing a step, and we are doing a step; he is becoming more open, and we are becoming more open. But we, from the beginning, started giving away on reciprocity. So as a result, Arafat didn't change his nature a bit, or the nature of his regime; didn't change on all these things which I believe had to be central points: how he is teaching his children in schools, and what he is saying on TV, etc. We never made a rigid linkage. When we tried to we reneged under the pressure of the Americans and others. And so the moment he reached everything he could at the negotiation table, he started the violence.

Jacob Lefkovits Dallal