The inevitable battle between Greater Israel fanatics on the one hand and proponents of peace, sanity and pragmatism in Israeli society is all but over.

The settlers and their supporters challenged Sharon to a showdown at high noon. Dodge city was a little community called Kfar Maimon, where Israeli police and the IDF stopped thousands of settlers from entering Gush Katif in order to physically obstruct disengagement. The overwhelming majority of Israelis understands that this was not a legitimate democratic protest. A legitimate democratic protest could have been mounted in Rabin Square. When Peace Now wanted to protest the war in Lebanon, they did not try to send 500,000 people to the Litani river or Beirut in order to disrupt the operation of the IDF.

The showdown has been brewing for many, many years. The reality was always that supporters of Greater Israel at any price were always a minority in Israeli society. They usurped "Zionism" and "patriotism" and harnessed them to a project that didn't have the support of the majority of the Israeli people. Under the umbrella provided by Palestinian extremism and Arab refusal, they built settlements in places that almost nobody in Israel ever thought of as part of Israel, bending or breaking the law to fund their activities out of the taxpayers' money.

The great march of the settlers on Gaza, which the Greater Israel people hoped would prove that their cause has the support of the majority of Israelis, fizzled. The settlers tried to usurp the law. Sharon, in the person of the police, and the settlers, faced-off in the Negev. The settlers put away their guns. There could be no other outcome. In the Knesset too, a motion to postpone the disengagement was voted down by a large margin. Israel has decided: Gaza is not Israel. It is the wrong place to make a stand for Zionism and Jewish rights in our land, because it is not our land, and because we recognize that we are not the only people here with rights and claims.

The battle with the settlers is not just about real-estate. It is a battle for the content and purpose of Israeli society of life, and the future of the Zionist movement. The settlers and their supporters were intent on coopting Zionism and patriotism, and transforming it from a democratic national revival movement into a racist theocratic monstrosity that seeks to evict people from their homes in the name of "God-given rights," a Jewish Hamas. They wanted to turn Israeli society into the demonized image of Zionism that has been painted by anti-Zionists, and they haven't given up yet.

The most famous casualty of the struggle for sanity versus "Greater Israel" was Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin, murdered during a real democratic protest against violence. In retrospect it is obvious that after the conclusion of the Oslo Declaration of Principles, Israel had no business in Gaza and no reason to invest in settlements that were bound to be removed one day and that served only to cause friction with Palestinians.

Unfortunately, internal political considerations made it impossible for Rabin to remove the settlements in Gaza. Ariel Sharon would have been the first to raise the banner of a then-powerful opposition. The end of this crazy adventure had to wait until Sharon was in power and could not oppose himself, just as peace with Egypt had to wait until Menachem Begin was in power and could no longer yell "Not one centimeter" at every proposal for peace.

It would have been much better to evacuate the settlements then, and to save the money wasted in supporting and defending these settlements, not to mention the lives that were lost, for worthier causes and for issues that really threaten national existence. Had Israel evacuated at least Gush Katif in 1994 or in the course of the Oslo negotiations, Israeli earnestness about the peace process would have gained credibility both in the world and among the Palestinians. It could have been done peacefully, with a bilateral agreement, and it could have strengthened Palestinian moderates. Now it is too late. Of course, Palestinian extremists are claiming that it is their terror that drove Israel out of Gaza. However it would be insane to pour good money after bad just to take up the juvenile dare of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

The process of disengagement, and the firm rejection of settler calls for violence should have a salutary effect on Israeli self-image and on our image abroad. Propagandists have projected a racist stereotype of an Israel populated by wild-eyed religious fanatics from Brooklyn, and an IDF staffed with racist religious warmongers. A memorable bit of fiction by the notorious Jack Kelley that was passed off as news related how an Israeli settler put on his knit kippah before gunning down innocent Palestinians. That inflammatory nonsense should have been put to rest by the events of the past week, for everyone except the most dogmatic readers of axisoflogic and counterpunch. With few exceptions, the soldiers with knit kippoth, like all their comrades, obeyed their orders and kept the settlers out of Gaza. At the forefront of these soldiers was a man whose whom and family are in Gush Katif. Israel proved to itself and to doubters around that world that it is an orderly and democratic society, not a rabble governed by irresponsible lunatics.

Despite announced plans for a further march next week, it seems that the crucial battle is just about won, but that does not mean that the struggle with supporters of Greater Israel is over. If there is to be peace, Israel will need to give up most of the West Bank - historical Judea and Samaria. The settlers and their supporters will certainly be back, in strength, when the time comes. No doubt there will be many more Israelis willing to rally to settlements in "Judea" and "Samaria" which are well anchored in Jewish tradition as part of "the land." They will be reinforced by the bitter sacrifice that they made in giving up the settlements of Gaza. Very probably, their cause will be helped by Palestinian extremists who will provide the justification for maintaining the occupation so as not to "reward terror." However, Israel can't keep shooting itself in the foot in order to avoid "rewarding terror."

Ami Isseroff

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