Quotes of the Day

My flat is a 15-minute walk from Tel Aviv's Rabin Square, the preferred venue for large political demonstrations. I hardly have any excuse to skip left-wing demonstrations held there; and as those are anyway rare occasions these days, I make sure to attend. So I was there on May 15, for a very unusual rally. It's been a long while since the square was so crowded for a political event, not to mention a left-wing one. The rally was held under the slogan: "The Majority Has Decided. Leave Gaza. Start Talking."

Israeli papers said there were 150,000 demonstrators — a large number for a country of 7 million people. But it wasn't the numbers that impressed me so much as the mood. I felt that the crowd was paying serious attention to the speakers, rather than just automatically cheering in advance for every speaker. Only a couple of weeks ago, I complained in this column that Israelis had not filled the streets when the Likud party rejected Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to evacuate Israeli settlements in Gaza.

What brought so many to Rabin Square on Saturday? The catalyst was a very bleak one: Last week, 13 Israeli soldiers were killed in Gaza. Chemi Sal, the organizer of the May 15 demonstration, told me that although the rally was planned about 6 weeks ago — when nobody thought that Sharon's disengagement plan would fail to get the Likud's approval — it was only after the news about the dead soldiers that some of the speakers agreed to take part. And Avi Belleli, the leader of a rock band who preformed in that rally, said to me that although he and the other band members are not politically active they decided to play there out of a feeling of frustration. "We did not want to let the chance (of leaving Gaza) slip away," he said.

For the past four years, the majority of the Israeli left and center have been paralyzed by frustration. The death of those youngsters in Gaza, coming only days after the declarations of the Prime Minister and the Defense Minister that a military presence Gaza is not a necessity for Israel's security, turned that frustration into rage. For many Israelis, the Gaza Strip now serves as a reminder of their country's disastrous entanglement in South Lebanon. After all, when the Israeli army invaded Lebanon in 1982, for what was supposed to be a 48-hour operation to destroy terror infrastructure, nobody thought that it would drag out for 18 years. And while the Israeli army stayed in South Lebanon — out of fear that withdrawal would leave northern Israel under constant attack — 1500 Israeli soldiers lost their lives, the political powers in Lebanon changed and the extremist Muslim military organization of Hizballah took control over South Lebanon. Unlike Gaza, there were no Israeli settlements in Lebanon, but the excuse for that misadventure — securing Israel — is just the same.

It's clear that Israel will one day leave Gaza, but it's not clear when, and at what cost. Last week's tragic events reminded us of the cost in terms of human life. But the demonstrators in Rabin Square were also anxious about the political price that Israel would pay for any further deterioration in Gaza. That's why the speakers who earned the most applause were the ones who talked about negotiations with the Palestinians — instead of Sharon's suggested unilateral disengagement — and for returning to the 1967 borders.

Clearly, most of the people in the square realized that the only way to stop the bloody cycle would be to have a valid settlement with the Palestinians. And such an agreement would be achieved only if Israel were to give up the major parts of the West Bank and Gaza.

A couple of days after the demonstration, the Israeli Defense Forces entered the Gaza town of Rafah, aiming to destroy the terrorist infrastructure and the weapons' smuggling networks there. But this action might again cost lives, Israeli and Palestinian. And it will inflame again the rage felt by Israelis who realize there's no point in staying in Gaza. We know how our misadventure in Lebanon turned out.

Karl Marx said history repeats itself "the first time as a tragedy, the second as a farce." We need to be careful not to repeat history here — the first time was a tragedy, the second would be a catastrophe.

• MICHAL LEVERTOV
• Israelis are expressing their frustration about the IDF in Gaza, says Michal Levertov