and there are many variations between them – holding the balance of power in the Knesset. Their numbers will only grow: a few thou- sand Haredim 50 years ago have grown to almost a million (male and female) today – a whopping welfare bill for the state of Israel. It has been calculated that by 2040 some 75 per cent of children entering school in Israel will be either Haredi or Palestinian. Over at the Knesset, a chamber elected by


proportional representation, the loud and lurid debates indicate the complexity of Israeli society. Avigdor Lieberman, born in Moldova and a sometime nightclub bouncer, is the most spectacular rightist rogue elephant: his most recent proposal is to investigate the funding sources of all left-leaning agencies. Amazingly, he is Israel’s Foreign Minister. As leader of the million or so Russian Jews sup- porting his “Israel is our Home” party (Yisrael Beiteinu), he cannot be kept out of govern- ment. Meanwhile, ultra-orthodox party Shas represents Sephardic Jews from Arab coun- tries and there are also Arab, Druze and Christian Members of the Knesset. Political position-taking in Israel breeds


strange bedfellows. Many Haredim, for exam- ple, join radical leftists in opposing the security fence (a wall at Bethlehem) that isolates the West Bank. Their reasoning is not so much that it imposes economic hardship, but that it sets territorial limits to Israel – which cannot be truly established until the coming of the Messiah. Some leftists reason that the barrier


does de facto articulate Palestinian territory, while centrists accept that the fence saves lives – there has not been a major suicide bomb attack in Israel since 29 January 2007. Hamas planted a bomb in the cafeteria at


the Hebrew University in 2002 that killed nine and deafened or otherwise injured 85 students. Posters of suicide bombers, with their date of self-detonation, still hang along the main street of Bethlehem. Their semiotics, like that of everything in these parts, are com- plex: the young martyrs will not be forgotten, but their images are fading. The remarkable collaboration between


Palestinian Fatah and the Israel Defence Forces has greatly improved security on the West Bank. The index of personal safety and security felt by Israelis in 2010, as recorded by the Taub Center, rose to a 10-year high. Strict control of the banking sector has helped Israel avoid the embarrassments of other nations. The Israeli economy is in robust health, and gas has recently been discovered beneath Israeli territorial waters. Now is actu- ally a good and favourable time to drive the peace process forward. Well-informed Israelis concede that 98 per cent of the settlement can be achieved quickly; but who will take the initiative to lead negotiations over the intractable 2 per cent? Some young Israelis and Palestinians, unim- pressed by the log-jammed Knesset, are building their own peace process by devel- oping personal relationships. Marriage across


the divide still brings a world of trouble, but friendships are achievable. The Interfaith Encounter Association, for example, works rather like the Corrymeela Community does in Northern Ireland – people who would never ordinarily meet, do meet. What gesture of solidarity might Catholics offer in the spirit of friendship to Israel and the Palestinian ter- ritories? I would suggest cultivating friendship with both sides, rather than viewing Israelis as oppressors and Palestinians as victims. But perhaps the most meaningful sacrifice might come from Rome itself. Deep within the Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, a small display records the war record of Pius XII. This contrasts ingloriously with that of Orthodox Metropolitans Stefan and Kiril, heroically instrumental in the saving of Bulgaria’s 50,000 Jews. Their names are memorialised at Yad Vashem’s Garden of the Righteous among the Nations; that of Pius XII is not. While one understands that the Vatican did not wish to lose its newly achieved sovereign status in 1942, studied neutrality is not the stuff of sainthood. And so, in the spirit of interfaith understanding, one would ask our Catholic leaders to defer this particular aspiration: santo lentissimo.


■David Wallace is Judith Rodin Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He spent autumn 2010 as the Roberta and Stanley Bogen Visiting Professor at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.


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19 February 2011 | THE TABLET | 11


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