Imagine

Maybe one of these days rabbis will stake out positions on environmental issues.

Maybe one of these days voters will be able to write directly to a politician whose name they specifically chose in an election.

Maybe one of these days political leaders won't fear the illiterate and supersititous, and will seek the counsel of scientists and artists.

Maybe one of these days politicians who claim that peace is at the top of their agenda will use generosity and goodwill instead of threats and patronization; maybe one of these days the politicians will understand that force breeds resentment, that the wisest use of power is to spare its use.

Maybe one of these days it will be possible to drive from here to the Pacific Ocean. Maybe one of these days it will be possible to drive to the Atlantic Ocean.

Maybe one day the numbness, the impotence that has turned ito apathy, will wear off and maybe tens of thousands of people will gather outside the Knesset and say enough is enough. Maybe it will be hundreds of thousands.

Maybe, finally, at last and just in time, someone will rise to whatever historic occasion presents itself.

All these maybes are hopes and nothing more. Like dreams or nightmares, they are spoken aloud only by those unafraid of mockery and ridicule.

Fear, of course, is at the heart of the debate. Fear of Arabs of Nazis of goyim of Peres of BiBi of Faisal Husseini of Arik Sharon; fear of being a patsy, a sucker, a freier.

Fear is the great equalizer, the perfect excuse.

You fear peace, I fear war; you fear fundamentalism, I fear depravity; you fear mercy, I fear brutality; you fear hatred, I fear love. Fear is the great paralyzer. Petrifying action, freezing thought, fear exonerates those guilty of making proimises that cannot be kept.

The bluster and bravado does nothing to hide the fear; all the Phantoms and tanks, all the heroes and martyrs, do nothing to alleviate the fear.

Indeed, they only exacerbate it, for if there is one point at which enemies always can identify with each other it is the point of the gun, the readiness for bloodshed, the suspicion that breeds suspicion.

It is being said that never before has the gap here been greater between those who rule and those who are ruled.

Between the crowded bus and the chauffeur-driven Volvo, is the same gap that exists between the rhetoric of love of the land and the reality of its physical degradation and uglification.

Between the broken public payphones and the cellular telephones is the same gap that exists between the reality of the transience of every single person and the self-delusion that ascribes permanence to any human condition.

Wealth, or at least the means that wealth provides has always been a measure of power, of course. But the gap is not merely about the wealth of the oligarchy, nor about the hypocrisy of the powerful claiming to act on behalf of the powerless, nor even about the means by which the oligrachy guarantees its rule.

The gap is about the distance between the personal present and the personal future, between the promises of peace now or next week and the impossibility of planning even two weeks ahead.

If there is a maybe that all of us could hope for it is the maybe that one day it will be possible to live here honestly without the feeling that our own, personal futures, are not beyond our reach.

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