In
the gloomy days after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, a delegation of intellectuals from the United States came to Jerusalem. There were no visitors in Israel at the time, and they were perhaps the first to arrive. It was after the war and just before the elections. I was on the slate of a leftist party called
Moked. It was a tiny party. We knew almost all our voters by name. The quality of the supporters was never in doubt—it was the party of the left intelligentsia—but the numbers were very much in doubt.
In the event, we got one seat in the Knesset, out of 120. The party advocated a two-state solution: Israel and Palestine. Those were the Golda Meir days. The mere mention of a Palestinian state was a heresy that guaranteed its adherents a place in the frozen lake of Dante’s ninth circle. The ice has melted since then. The idea of two states has become an Israeli consensus, something that many Israelis say in public, but not enough Israelis believe in private.
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