The primary topic, “Did the Zionist mainstream
collapse?”, which has been discussed over the course of ten sessions,
covered many different areas. From a disciplinary perspective, the
analysis is sociological in nature and focuses on delineating the social,
political-ideological map on the one hand, and the ramifications of that
map on the nature of the Jewish-Arab conflict and its strategic aspects on
the other.
The drawing of the political map was not an objective
in and of itself. It was an attempt to assess the moral strength of the
Jewish population in the face of both the armed struggle with the
Palestinians and the social-cultural and ideological schisms.
The principal motif of the talks was an attempt to
point to the fact that the settlement enterprise in Judea, Samaria and
Gaza, or at least part of it, was an undertaking which disrupted the
course of the history of the central Zionist movements, movements which
strove to achieve Jewish sovereignty while in the process achieving
optimal disengagement from the Arab population. Religious-theological
motives and insufficiently validated military considerations disrupted
this process on the Right. Conversely - illusions, conceptual errors,
historical impatience and even extreme naivete – often characterized the
Left.
