Profile: Small Group of Young Religious Israelis Call for Evacuation of Settlements

All Things Considered: May 28, 2003

MICHELE NORRIS, host:

If the latest Mideast peace plan is actually implemented, at some point Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will face the painful decision to dismantle Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Such a move would spark a potentially violent confrontation with settlers, some of whom regard their presence in the territories as a non-negotiable expression of their faith. But recently, a new group of young, religious Jews shocked the religious community by calling for the evacuation of settlements, not as a matter of politics or a military strategy, but as a matter of theology. NPR's Peter Kenyon reports.

PETER KENYON reporting:

Thirty-year-old Meir Shitreet's life as a teacher at a religious high school on the Golan Heights changed dramatically after he signed a petition calling for settlement evacuation. Suddenly students and rabbis began attacking him as crazy, a traitor to his religion. But he says it's critical that young religious Jews begin to think about what Israel is really doing in Gaza and in Judea and Samaria, the preferred name among religious Zionists for the West Bank.

Mr. MEIR SHITREET (Teacher): The call is in a way a religious call. As the right wing's, in Israel, call to hold the territories, is a religious obligation, we call to leave the territories as a religious obligation.

KENYON: Shitreet says the more he studies Jewish Scripture, the more he's convinced that some religious settlers, people he loves living in a place he dearly loves, have a glaring blind spot when it comes to the abuse of Palestinians that goes on under their noses. He says he came to believe that the biblical covenant granting the land of Israel to the Jews is predicated on them living according to the moral code of the Scriptures, which Shitreet argues is not the case today.

Mr. SHITREET: You cannot live here and say, `I can do here whatever I want,' and this is why our group started to say these things to the religious people in Israel. You must deal with moral issues before you claim your rights on this land.

KENYON: Schlomo Zoggman(ph) reached a similar conclusion last year on one of his many drives from his home in the Alon Shvut settlement to Jerusalem. For years, he'd been leaving his house in between the West Bank cities of Bethlehem and Hebron, driving through the beautiful hills past the checkpoints, never really focusing on the lines of Palestinians that always seemed to be there except to reflect that they might be terrorists. Then, on a drive no different from all the others, it all changed.

Mr. SCHLOMO ZOGGMAN: Once I saw a little girl with an old man, sitting beside the soldiers, waiting the sun, and I thought that of all people like them that lives under our regime has no civil rights, no human rights. What would you have thought if you would see your grandfather and your daughter in this situation? How would you feel?

KENYON: So far, the organizers say, about 160 people have signed a petition calling for settlement evacuation, hardly a tidal wave of support. Meir Shitreet's wife, Rani(ph), says she was prepared for the backlash, but it's still painful. At a time when a right-wing Israeli government has conditionally accepted a peace plan that calls for the evacuation of some settlements and negotiations over the rest, the settler movement is on edge and not welcoming this dissent from within.

The mayor of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, Shaul Goldstein, says the group makes some good points, but drew the wrong conclusion.

Mayor SHAUL GOLDSTEIN (Gush Etzion): I think on one hand, they're right. We have to treat those people who are under our control better. I think we have a way to go to improve. But to say, OK, because of that, we're not entitled to sit where we sit, this is not right.

KENYON: Goldstein says these young people are retreading the path of the Meimad movement, the left-wing religious Jews who later joined the Labor Party. Meimad founder Michael Melchior says it's encouraging to see young religious people grappling with the dilemma of the Jewish presence in the territories, and he agrees that Jewish law provides a compelling basis for withdrawing because a central tenet holds that even the most sacred laws may be broken in order to save human life.

Mr. MICHAEL MELCHIOR (Meimad Founder): I think that this is absolutely sanctioned by Jewish law. The whole discussion, if it is permitted or not permitted to give up land, is always put aside when it is for the purpose of saving human life.

KENYON: But many more religious Jews believe that it's the Palestinians who are taking innocent lives, and they shouldn't be rewarded with the evacuation of settlements. Melchior doesn't think this new group will win that debate anytime soon, but he's glad they've revived it. The petition signers say if nothing else, they'll send a message to Ariel Sharon and President Bush that if world leaders are prepared to enforce the hard decisions necessary for peace, they'll find that some religious Zionists are willing to back them. Peter Kenyon, NPR News, Jerusalem.

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