Behind the Headlines Kadum — How It All Began

Israel’s political community is expectantly awaiting the Cabinet debate on West Bank settlement in general and the fate of the Gush Emunim settlement at Kadum in Samaria, in particular. The discussion is expected to take place next Sunday. No one can rule out a full-blown coalition crisis, since opinions around the Cabinet table seem irreconcilably disparate.

Columnist Yoel Marcus, writing in Haaretz, says of the Kadum affair that it exemplifies the Israeli political trait of turning molehills into mountains (the Hebrew Idiom is “a fly into an elephant”). After all, Marcus notes, all save the extremists on either side must realize that the fate of the 150-odd Kadum settlers is not, ultimately, going to determine the course of the Mideast conflict.

Other observers disagree. They see Kadum as a test-case: a single instance embodying in itself the essence of the “great debate” that has raged in Israel ever since the Six-Day War–a debate whose repercussions do indeed directly affect peace prospects in the area. How did the Kadum episode begin?

In early December 1975 a group of 30 young Jewish families, most of them members of the Gush Emunim nationalist movement, circumvented army road blocks and pitched camp at an old Turkish railway station at Sebastia, near Nablus. The group, soon joined by thousands of Gush Emunim supporters, declared that they were ready to resist violently and Israel Defense Force attempts to remove, them. After two days of negotiations with the Gush Emunim leaders, the Cabinet was summoned on Dec. 7 in order to decide how to deal with this illegal settlement attempt.

STORMY RECEPTION GREETED PERES

At the Cabinet meeting, Defense Minister Shimon Peres reported on the stormy reception he had received when visiting the Sebastia camp. Peres told the Cabinet that he was personally insulted by Gush Emunim leader Rabbi Moshe Levinger. The Defense Minister predicted that should the Cabinet decide to remove the group, a clash between the settlers and their supporters and the soldiers could not be avoided.

Peres mentioned that the poet, Haim Guri, a well-known former Palmach figure, whom he had run into in Sebastia, had suggested a compromise whereby the settlers would be moved to a military camp in Samaria. Asked by some of the Cabinet members whether he was in fact seconding Guri’s suggestion, Peres said that he was merely reporting it. Premier Yitzhak Rabin, with the assistance of Minister-Without-Portfolio Israel Galili, proposed a deliberately vague formula to conclude the Cabinet meeting.

Accordingly, the Cabinet decision declared that no settlement in the administered territories would be permitted without Cabinet authorization; the government is ready to order the IDF to take measures to impose its decisions with regard to settlement policy; and the government will do its utmost to avoid the unfortunate consequences that might be caused by a confrontation between the settlers and the soldiers in Sebastia.

CONTRADICTORY ELEMENTS IN DECISION

The Cabinet’s decision thus contained obviously contradictory clauses: while one paragraph stated the government’s readiness to bring the IDF into action in order to enforce its policy, another paragraph reflected the Cabinet’s reluctance to bring about a confrontation between the army and the settlers who were in fact challenging its policy. This contradiction explains the different impressions which each of the ministers took with him when the meeting ended.

Some of the participants were convinced that the Premier would order the army to remove the Emunim group from Sebastia, while the others believed that the real meaning of the decision was a recommendation to renew the efforts to come to a compromise with the settlers.

On Dec. 8, one day after the Cabinet meeting, Peres reached an agreement with the Emunim group which in effect implemented Guri’s compromise proposal. The settlers were transferred to the Kadum military camp nearby, where they were to remain pending a Cabinet decision on overall West Bank settlement policy. Rabin informed the Cabinet of the compromise, arguing that it accorded fully with the earlier decision.

Several Cabinet ministers frankly expressed their astonishment, claiming that the agreement contradicted the Cabinet’s expressed wishes. There was a good deal of subsequent criticism, too, in the Labor Alignment Knesset faction and Rabin threatened to resign, during a stormy faction debate, should the majority vote against the “Kadum compromise.” He assured the doves that the arrangement with the settlers was a temporary measure only–pending a full-scale Cabinet debate, to be held within two or three months.

Now, five months later and after many delays, that debate is finally about to be held. The settlers, in the interim, have been provided with caravans by the government authorities, and have settled into a regular life-pattern in the Kadum camp.