The Death of Unity : As politics in Israel become more atomized--Netanyahu’s victory is but one example--the country is beginning to look like other democracies.

NEW YORK —  Israelis have learned to live with fear. It’s not just a national thing, it’s a Jewish state of mind. Call it the paranoid style in Israeli politics. It doesn’t matter if you have the best-trained, best-equipped army in the region, with the world’s only superpower backing you. Jews, no matter how mighty, often feel that around every corner, a hostile enemy lurks. Of course, among Jews paranoia is not irrational: Pharaoh existed, the concentration camps were real, Hamas is the latest potent enemy and most of Israel’s neighbors are not exactly on sugar-borrowing terms with the Jewish state.

In Israel, though, fear used to be something you felt about the outside world. You feared the British, or the Hashemite Kingdom, or the Palestinians. Whom you did not fear was your fellow Israeli, but all this has changed and Wednesday’s elections--in which the conservative Benjamin Netanyahu narrowly defeated Shimon Peres--are a splendid illustration of the end of Israeli unity and of the fragmentation and deep suspicion that exist from one extreme of the society to the other. Israel has grown strong enough and lasted long enough for its people to forget the unity that made their country strong and durable.

The assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was the defining moment for the new domestic dissension. It clearly marked the battle lines: Religious nationalist Jews, like Rabin’s assassin, felt secular Jews--Rabin, Peres, the Labor Party--were selling out the country. They feared losing Israel altogether: the Golan Heights here, the West Bank and Gaza there, half of Jerusalem, Abraham’s tomb in Hebron--where would it end? The knitted skullcaps (nationalists who are religious) and the black skullcaps (the religious who are, often, nationalistic) joined together in revulsion against the bareheaded. (This is why Rabin’s killer, Yigal Amir, a nationalist, worked so hard to find religious justification for his act.) On the other side, Rabin’s supporters feared Israel was descending into fundamentalism and would never be able to join the ranks of modern nations.

Talk to secular Israelis and you hear the intolerance you associate with fundamentalists: “God does not enter into it,” one woman told me after Rabin was killed. “We’ve heard enough about him; he has now been excluded from our conversation.” The secular Jews do not know the religious Jews: If their respective gestalts were not barrier enough, kosher laws effectively keep them from any social contact. The religious wear the traditional garb of black Homburgs and long coats. But the secular kids of Tel Aviv, in their denims and T-shirts, and two or three earrings per ear, are in an equally outspoken uniform. Still, it means something about the new Israel, that Netanyahu, twice divorced, an adulterer and a Sabbath desecrater, was the candidate of the religious right. People, even rabbis, are willing to overlook religious issues for political reasons.

Fear dictated much of the vote for Netanyahu, though the election was so close that it’s hard to say what most Israelis are frightened of. In press conferences after the Hamas suicide bombings of late February and early March, you could almost see the buttons on Netanyahu’s suit busting with his excitement. The blood on the streets meant votes for him, because Peres’ peace was too scary. Israelis like to survive, after all--surviving is what Jews do. If the elections had been held then, Netanyahu would have trounced Peres.

But, clearly, fear and uncertainty about the peace process were not the only emotions motivating the vote. Peace is popular among Israelis, and Netanyahu’s win is not a repudiation of peace--even if his victory ends up, incrementally, destroying the peace process. As the campaign wore on, Netanyahu moved ever closer to Peres on peace--sensing the nation’s mood. If he had not, he could never have cobbled together his victory.

In the voters’ minds, the campaign became not so much an issue of who would pursue peace, but of who would pursue it more safely. Netanyahu and Peres became metaphoric figures--each reflecting different insecurities among the electorate. “I have to ask myself,” one veteran of three of Israel’s wars said, “whether Peres really understands what security means, since he was never down in the trenches. I have to ask myself whether his age is forcing him to move too quickly in the peace process, because he fears failing to achieve his goals before his time is up. On the other hand, Netanyahu may be a warmonger, and does he have the experience necessary to lead Israel in this difficult time? We are ready to fight for our country, but not uselessly or frivolously, and we are ready to negotiate a peace, but not hurriedly or for a politician’s personal glory.” If he were alive, surely Rabin would have won.

It is not clear to anyone, as they look at Netanyahu’s victory in the clear light of the morning after, that the Likud leader’s triumph will mean greater personal security for Israelis. Most Palestinians professed their neutrality on the Israeli elections. But, for them, certain issues are still bellwethers. “If the Israelis fail to remove themselves from Hebron,” the deputy mayor of that West Bank city said before the elections, “then I cannot help but believe that there will be a renewed and more violent intifada.” A renewal of Israel’s West Bank settlement-building is also likely to spark generalized violence.

Ironically, these elections, in which many religious voters rejected a more secular, normal Israel by voting for religious parties, really make Israel seem more like other democracies. The give and take of the election, the voluble fray of debate among voters, show that Israel is now a society of many strong interest groups who are not going to be subsumed into some kind of single-minded union. In Israel, Jews now disagree with Jews, revile Jews, even kill Jews. It’s normal now, and not so shocking.

When Rabin was killed, Israelis were horrified that a Jew had done it. But Rabin’s funeral, with its star-studded cast of world leaders, as well as world reaction to the suicide bombings, showed them that their country was now, more or less, accepted in the world, and that they did not have to be so frightened of divisions among themselves: Israel had survived its infancy, and could continue to exist if there was dissent, even internecine violence. Being Israeli is getting to be like being American, or Canadian. It’s not so much of a mission. It’s not so single-minded. You can disagree absolutely with your neighbor and still consider yourself and him part of the political fabric.

Look at Natan Sharansky. Here is a typical new Israeli: He survived the Soviet gulag, survived his refusnik status, underwent the worst kind of psychological and political torment and isolation. He survived and came to Israel, and now here he is, making politics not to bolster Israel’s security, but to get better housing and better jobs and some respect for his constituency.

In its first days, Israel was driven by Zionist dreams. Later, it was fueled by Holocaust survivors’ fantasies of escape to a Jewish land. Today, however, its new citizens want to assimilate and succeed. Even the valiant and shrimpy survivor Sharansky is becoming normal.

Yet, there is still that worried voice in the back of people’s minds. Is peace with the Palestinians possible? Are we signing our own execution form? Will a Jewish state ever really be accepted by the world? The new electoral laws, allowing people to vote separately for the party of their choice and the candidate of their choice, permitted them to express this worry while also renewing their commitment to their own special interest--whether religious, ethnic or ideological.

If you wanted to, you could vote for Netanyahu and Meretz, the party of the left (one wonders if anyone did). This kind of split voting was never possible before. Most of all it meant that in order to reject Peres, religious voters did not have to vote for the overwhelmingly irreligious political coalition that Netanyahu had formed with Ariel Sharon and Rafael Eitan, two right-wing, nationalistic former generals. They could vote for Netanyahu and United Torah--and they did. The new system gave a wider berth to combined expressions of ideology and interest, and Israelis grasped the concept and took full advantage of it. They went to the ballot box like Americans voting for a liberal Democratic president as well as the GOP congressman who has been keeping those lucrative businesses in the district for 20 years.

It’s hard to see how Netanyahu can retreat on peace. Israel would have to be willing to give up the international standing it has gained since the Oslo process began, as well as the economic well-being and the relative calm with neighbors Egypt and Jordan.

How Netanyahu can pursue peace is another question. Negotiators who have years of experience and familiarity with their Palestinian counterparts will no longer be a part of the process. Policies that ended because they are irreconcilable with peace--such as Israel’s discredited settlement policy--may now be revived, since they were a part of Netanyahu’s campaign rhetoric. And bargaining chips vital to the continuation of the talks--like the Golan Heights and the withdrawal from Hebron--may now be removed from the table, as Netanyahu has vowed. If Netanyahu lives up to these campaign promises, its hard to see how he can proceed with peace, as well as how he can retreat.*