The Alternative

By Moshe Feiglin


2 Cheshvan, 5773
October 18, '12

Translated from the Makor Rishon newspaper


"We've been living under mortar fire for eighteen years. We have to do something!" said the young woman from Sderot on Razi Barkai's radio show.

"What do you want the leaders to do?" asked Razi.
"I don't know, but what they are doing now doesn't help."

"Sorry to say this to you, but they also don't know what to do," Razi said. "Not because they are stupid, but because there is simply no solution."

Eighteen years is more or less the time that has passed since the Oslo Accords were implemented. It is simple to understand that the continuous terror raining down on Israel's cities is the result of those accords. Why then, doesn't Israel's leadership annul the Oslo Accords? Why doesn't it restore full Israeli control over Gaza, Judea and Samaria? Isn't it cheaper than digging Be'er Sheva into the ground? Covering Sderot with a layer of cement? Isn't it safer than being the targets of a hail of missiles on civilian targets? What does "there is no solution" mean? After all, our very own esteemed president and his men brought this problem upon us and we can also free ourselves of it.

Why doesn't that happen?

The answer to that question has two dimensions. First the technical dimension: It is impossible to free ourselves of Oslo because those who brought it upon us knew how to tie the fate of a broad spectrum of Israeli elites to the "peace process." Too many politicians, businessmen, academicians, senior IDF officers, political pundits, journalists, writers and other opinion makers – almost everybody who is anybody in our small land, is sustained in one way or another by Oslo. They are all sitting on the branch that – if we want to solve the problem – must be cut off. 

So although we sent the IDF into Gaza in the Cast Lead Operation, we stopped precisely at the point at which Gaza would have surrendered, leaving us once again responsible – sovereign - over it. That would have cancelled Oslo. That is why I opposed Cast Lead at the time. I knew that defeat was built-in to the operation from its very beginning – as later became crystal clear. 

The second dimension is the deeper, spiritual reason: It is impossible to blame the Left for the desperate, dangerous and irresponsible Oslo experiment. Zionist normalcy had reached a dead end. Oslo was not anti-Zionist. Oslo was a final, desperate attempt to cling to Zionism; to cling to the return of the Jewish People to its land. (The Disengagement was something else and the true leftists opposed it). We returned to history specifically in this Land. If our neighbors cannot accept that – even after they have been repeatedly beaten by us – something is simply not working. "We must compromise", the Left says. If we don't, we will have used the vehicles of secularism and Zionism to return to the exile state of non-normalcy from which we fled. The entire Zionist idea will be proven a failure. 

We cannot claim that the Left has failed because the Right, including the religious Right, never proposed an alternative. Until Manhigut Yehudit came along.

"What do you suggest?" Avrum Burg asked Hagai Segal on the Knesset channel. When the answer he got was more or less, "We'll wait and see," Burg continued: "Feiglin is the only person who challenges the political frameworks in Israel." 

That is actually the reason that I am running: to give Israeli society a new direction, an alternative to Oslo. We really can't nullify Oslo. Not because of the technical reason, but because first and foremost, because we have no alternative.

The alternative is already here. When it is internalized, the people of Sderot will finally be able to leave their bomb shelters.