For a flickering moment after September 11, it looked as if the U.S. might, out of pragmatic self-interest — i.e., to defuse the appeal of Islamic terrorism — impose a solution to the Palestine conflict. Israel gets three-billion a year from the U.S., mainly in military aid, and surely a good nudge from Washington would settle the mess fast, especially since the major issues were agreed on by both sides at the Taba talks in 2001.

But the U.S. reverted to backing Ariel Sharon’s harsh stance, almost if not quite unconditionally. Still, hope persists. Most recently, it has come, on the Israeli side, from a group of army reservists who have publicly said they refuse to serve in the occupied territories. The Israeli paper Haaretz says the group is now “at the top of the public agenda.” What’s the proof? Israel’s army has begun a personal relations campaign to undermine their appeal.

Their declaration, which now has 235 names, with rank and so forth, has a prophetic ring. That’s prophetic not in the predictive, Jean Dixon sense, but in the biblical, Old Testament one: moral intensity and outrage.

“We, whose eyes have seen the bloody toll this Occupation exacts from both sides & who sensed how the commands issued to us in the Territories, destroy all the values we had absorbed while growing up in this country & who understand now that the price of Occupation is & the corruption of the entire Israeli society & who know that the Territories are not Israel, and that all settlements are bound to be evacuated in the end.”

Why their impact? I’d say it’s because they have cut through the fear and rage that cloud clear thinking on both sides, to focus on the issue that underlies the deepening violence: Israel’s thirty-five year occupation. They have done so concretely, by committing themselves to defend Israel but not occupy others’ land. This makes a rapprochement possible, even in these times, with a Palestinian like Marwan Barghouti, head of the militant Tanzim, who writes in Egypt’s Al-Ahram, “I do not seek to destroy Israel — only to end its occupation of my country.”

They are organized, making them more effective than the individual Israeli military “refuseniks” of the past. And they are astute: They decline interviews with the foreign press, because they feel it would shift public debate away from the issue of occupation to whether they are “traitors.” At the heart of their plea, though, is that moral fervour, based on what they have seen or had to do.

This includes demolishing homes, such as the fifty-eight destroyed in a Gaza refugee camp last month, “some while their inhabitants were still sleeping inside & at least 520 people made homeless in the dead of winter, 300 of them children” (Israeli professor Jeff Halper).

Former Jerusalem mayor Meron Benvenisti says, “It would be hard to overstate the symbolic value of a house to an individual & whose national mythos is based on the tragedy of being uprooted from a stolen homeland.” It would also be hard for any Israeli to be unaware this is precisely the “national mythos” behind Israel.

I want to insist on the biblical echoes, since the Bible, including the prophetic books, is Israel’s national literature. The prophets, too, denounced authority. Nathan railed against King David, not only because he stole another man’s wife, but because he used his power to send that man to his death in battle.

Micah said, “Alas for those who covet fields, and seize them; houses, and take them away.” Isaiah decried “pragmatic” foreign alliances that would lead to national disaster. They were often called traitors as a result. Nor did prophets just attack kings or the rich; they criticized the entire people.

I don’t mean to cherry-pick biblical verses; you can find almost anything you want in there. The settlers, after all, quote God’s promises of land. But to me the amazing thing about the prophetic books is that they are in the Bible at all. They castigated the rich and powerful, along with their policies, yet they were honoured by their tradition. In our society, opposition on basic issues, such as the bombing of Afghanistan or global corporatization, may get heard, but it’s generally marginalized and grateful to have even that.

In the Bible, those views were canonized, not just tolerated. It’s as if our society left a record of radical dissent but nothing from mainstream editorials and government press releases. This lends a powerful sanction to moral opposition in Israeli society.

It increasingly has felt as if the Mideast debate is so morally polarized that the only way out is to set aside questions about who’s right and wrong, and accept an arrangement that both sides can live with, no matter how bitterly.

But human beings don’t easily set aside questions of right and wrong, even in the face of possible annihilation. What the new refuseniks of the Israeli army may help do is provide their fellow citizens with a moral justification for the only practical solution.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.