Restraint breeds indifference by Nadav Shragai Ha'aretz 8 August 2001 "Every day a funeral..." lamented poet Uri Zvi Greenberg during the period of restraint at the time of the 1936 Arab uprising. In his difficult language, he described how Jewish society in the country became somewhat apathetic to the killing and the dead. "Even killing without respite is already a habit in the nation ... where is there a Diaspora land where blood flows so easily? ... where is there a land whose Jews are drowning in blood and sadness, and are silent for four months of killing without respite?" Almost 70 years have passed, and restraint circa 2001 is having a similar cumulative effect. Existential indifference is already here and, as then, it does not testify to strength or determination to continue a normal life in spite of everything, but rather to acceptance and equanimity and seclusion, each in his own home, and the truth is - it's no wonder. The frequency of incidents has long since gone beyond any reasonable norm. From September 29, 2000 until August 1, 2000, the Palestinians have fired 547 times at Israeli settlements within the Green Line and outside it. Israeli vehicles on the country's roads have been shot at 1,067 times; 279 hand grenades have been thrown; 286 bombs have exploded; 111 have been dismantled. The Palestinians have shot at military installations 4,016 times. Five suicide bombers and 10 car bombs have exploded and, in all, during the past 10 months there have been about 6,400 attacks, for an average of 21-22 attacks per day. During this period, 136 Israelis have been killed, and 1,073 injured. So many attacks and casualties, and as many red lines which have been routinely moved, time after time. At first it was the attacks on the roads that "Israel cannot accept." Then the red line moved beyond the Green Line, and Israel made it clear that shooting at settlements within the borders of the sovereign state of Israel was a casus belli. The shooting at Israel's capital of Jerusalem, and in particular at the Gilo neighborhood, was for months described as crossing a red line. The shooting of mortars at Jewish settlements in the Gush Katif region in Gaza was described the same way, as were the car bombs and the suicide bombers, and finally the attack on the Tel Aviv Dolphinarium [where 21 young people were killed on June 1]. With their own hands and with their empty threats, the governments of former prime minister Ehud Barak and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon have weakened one of the outstanding components of security in the state of Israel: our power of deterrence. The natural outcome of this was the creation of a legitimization, among the nations of the world, of a certain level of Palestinian terror. Israeli restraint demonstrated to the world that Palestinian terror is an acceptable and inseparable part of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, whereas the very limited Israeli reactions were gradually portrayed as aggressive actions, with a weak and incomprehensible basis of legitimacy. The routine of restraint has seen a parallel process developing among Israelis. Almost nobody in the country considers the terror legitimate, but emotionally, many Israelis have closed themselves off in a sealed room and watched the terror raging around them as though through a glass wall. The Israelis have lost their cool only when terror hit them or their loved ones, or when there was an unusual attack, with a large number of victims. In this way, parallel to the collapse of our external power of deterrence, another internal component of our security has been undermined: the mutual responsibility that for many years characterized the Jewish people. But the worst thing of all is happening now. The relative legitimization that the Palestinian terror has gained for itself in the world - thanks to our restraint - has led to a situation where even a pinpoint attack on the attackers and those who send them, in Nablus or in Tul Karm, is no longer comprehensible. And inside Israel, there is a horrifying countdown until the next major attack, only after which will it presumably be legitimate for us to carry out a large-scale action against the Palestinian terrorist authority. This countdown is morally horrifying, and it is wrong for two reasons: It accepts as a norm a toll of one dead and several injured every other day, and it also determines ahead of time that the country will pay with the lives of dozens of additional Israelis, in order to regain (presumably) legitimization for attacking terrorism and its dispatchers with great force - a legitimization it has lost due to that same restraint.