Prof. Gideon Aran

Let me share with you telegraphically and selectively, some tentative insights that emerged when reading my two-decades old notes, findings or contentions that should be considered in the context of the possibility of future evacuation.

Written By Prof. Gideon Aran

1. During my real time research, the central settling cadres’ age was about twenty to thirty. Right now these imposing and experienced personalities are in their sixties. Some difference: youth versus middle age, trail blazers and revolutionaries versus establishment, adventurous daredevils versus bourgeois with vested interests.

To be sure, the vast majority of the contemporary settlers are young people born in the territories (note their astonishingly high fertility rate), sort of natives, who take present geo-political reality as a given. In fact, it’s hard for them to conceive of a reality essentially different from the present. How does this biographic or demographic fact influence their reaction to the threat of evacuation? Should they present stronger opposition or a weaker one compared to their parents and grandparents, whose settlement was not taken for granted but rather a conscious ideological act of free choice with vision and sacrifice. Continue reading →

My scholarly capital of interest to this conference rests upon three elements in my academic career. First, I have long been an observer of radical religion, religious violence and militancy in general; and I have written on  fundamentalism, Jewish and Middle Eastern fundamentalism in particular. 

Written By Prof. Gideon Aran

Let me make just one point out of many taken from my comparative studies: when talking about the Jewish settlers’ potential for lethal aggression we should take into account the possibility of violence directed toward themselves, that is that incidents of mass suicide may occur.  In many intriguing ways the tragic scenarios of Waco Texas or Johnstown are not far-fetched analogies.

Second, I have authored a book-long research report on the evacuation of Eastern Sinai (Yamit Region 1981-2) following the Israeli-Egyptian peace accord.  Is that evacuation a valid precedent?  How applicable are the extensively studied lessons, especially those concerning the Doom and Gloom forecasts about the possible outbreak of civil war.  Again, I would like to mention just a single conclusion, the one regarding the settlers’ religious ability to absorb extreme frustration.  Continue reading →