To boycott, or not to boycott, Ariel? That is the question.

"My contract with the theater says explicitly that I am obligated to perform within the State of Israel -- and Ariel is not part of the state."
Israeli actor/director Oded Kotler

Back in the ‘80s, when I was a member of Kibbutz Harel, between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, our fledgling farming collective would each year field a team of would-be Magic Johnsons to play in a regional amateur basketball league. 

But while our skills as hoopsters were too meager to ever get us onto the sports pages, we managed to gain national headlines another way: Through our kibbutz's decision to refuse to play against the team from the settlement of Kiryat Arba, beyond the Green Line, just east of Hebron, 22 miles away.

I hadn't thought about this incident - which created a small sensation at the time - for many a year.  And it would likely have remained embedded in my cerebral recesses, were it not for a group of 60 Israeli theater professionals, who banded together last week to declare their refusal to perform in the newly built cultural center in the West Bank settlement/town of Ariel.

Here is how one of the signatories, actor Doron Tavori ("Lemon Tree"), explained his and his colleagues' action:

"Ariel is a settlement, and the West Bank is occupied territory and the Green Line still exists, and with it the hope for two states.  This [decision] translates opposition to the Occupation into deeds.  You can't object only in theory and go appear in the occupied territories.  It's an internal contradiction..."

The idea of boycotting the settlements is a difficult one for Israelis, of course, and for lovers of Israel in the United States. 

Notwithstanding its tremendously destructive settlement policy, now entering its fifth decade, Israel remains a small country that faces real threats and has real enemies.  As a result, Israelis rather understandably shy away from the kind of internal rift that such a boycott generates.

And this week, Hamas' two ghastly attacks on Israeli civilians in the West Bank, aimed at derailing renewed peace talks, made talk of a settlement boycott even more difficult - since no one wants their opposition to the settlement movement to be construed as any kind of sympathy for this horrific taking of human lives.

Plus, there's another argument made by some who are pro-Israel, pro-peace: That a boycott of settlements might add fuel to the movement that seeks a generalized boycott of Israel, a campaign that is opposed by Meretz USA.

But if the peace process is running out of time; if Israel is in danger of having to make the tragic choice being Jewish and being democratic, then might we have arrived at those desperate times that call for desperate measures?  Here is how director Rina Yerushalmi, the 2008 recipient of the esteemed Israel Prize, contextualized her decision:

"I'm not coming out against something, but in favor of the future of the State of Israel.  Talks are now taking place about the Israeli-Palestinian future, and we need ... to see whether there's hope for a continued existence here.  Ariel is today beyond the Green Line, and we should not cross over it."

As could be expected, senior members of the Netanyahu government came out strongly this week against the theater professionals - with Education and Culture Minister Limor Livnat rather peevishly suggesting that the government might retaliate by interfering with the artistic content of the publicly-funded theaters. 

And Ariel mayor Ron Nahman complained that the settlement's residents were being unfairly sucked into a political debate that should not be allowed to impact the quality of their day-to-day lives.

But was it the actors, directors and choreographers, or the 150 academics and writers (including David Grossman, Amos Oz and A. B. Yehoshua) who expressed support for them, who have made Ariel a symbol of the settlement movement?

When Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu came to the settlement to plant trees for Tu B'Shvat this past January, he used the opportunity to continue washing away the Green Line, declaring Ariel an "indisputable" part of Israel:

"[Ariel] is the heart of our country.  We are here where are forefathers were, and we will stay here... We will continue to build...we will stay in these areas in any future final status agreement with the Palestinians. We need to help [Ariel] develop."

Earlier this week, Netanyahu went even further.  Failing to see the distinction between the two sides of the Green Line (despite his own willingness last year to suspend construction on one particular side of it!), he accused the non-performing artists of being part of the "attack of delegitimization" against the existence of the State of Israel!

But as blogger Mitchell Plitnick has pointed out, "if the fear is that Israel will somehow become an ‘illegitimate' state ..., the best way to do it is to consider Israel as encompassing territory beyond the Green Line."  And as Meretz USA has noted in its statement, "All those who refuse to recognize the Green Line as the political basis for legitimacy ...are contributing to the delegitimization of Israel."

Israel's left seems to have now reached the same conclusion - though perhaps a bit belatedly.  Back in 1985, when there were less than 50,000 settlers in the West Bank (about one-sixth of today's nearly 300,000), the Mapam party, a forbearer of Meretz, reacted with dismay when my ‘radical' kibbutz tried to dribble its way toward a two-state future.

This past week, though, hundreds of supporters of Meretz and Peace Now, as well as Hadash, gathered outside HaBima Theater in Tel Aviv to throw their support behind the embattled actors.  Meretz chair, Haim Oron, told the crowd that he, "came to thank the actors," and later noted as follows:

"The artists refusing to appear in the settlements teach us that conformism and complacency don't have to be the rule.  Their stand is a vital and moral reminder that the settlements have been and remain in dispute, lacking in [Israeli] public consensus and without any international legitimacy".

The theater professionals' letter, it should be pointed out, is still a far cry from a full-fledged effort to mount a boycott campaign against the West Bank settlements.  Described as an ‘individual act of conscience' by one of its signers, it is also not an attempt to mobilize the international community along these lines.

But as more and more Israelis begin to realize that their country is approaching what might be a now-or-never decision to separate from the West Bank, progressive lovers of Israel need to follow such developments closely.

Shabbat Shalom and Shana Tova,

Ron Skolnik
Executive Director
Meretz USA