An incomplete voice

The comments of 33 Israelis are collected in the book under the subtitle "Israelis think about the disengagement." However, women are largely absent. Out of 33 people from the "left, right, center, academia, security and policy," only two are women: Prof. Ruth Gavison and Minister Tzipi Livni. These are the sole two representatives of the female sex in this "Israeli drama of this time, which will determine our fate in the next few years," as Shavit writes. Women, then, have largely been left out of the drama, out of the circle of speakers.

One of the reasons for this surprising decision seems to be the fact that a third of the commentators - 12 out of 33 - come from the security establishment, heads of the Shin Bet security service and the Mossad, the Israel Air Force and Military Intelligence. It certainly wasn't a coincidental, absentminded choice; Shavit picked these names as representatives of the thinking Israeli. To express an opinion in "Halukat Haaretz," it is preferable to be connected to a prominent security service.

But even in Shavit's choice of the rest of the analysts - politicians, civil servants, academics and one author - women are not included. The distribution of land is left in masculine hands. Livni is the sole female among eight politicians in the book, from Ehud Barak to Benjamin Netanyahu, from Yossi Beilin to Natan Sharansky. And when Shavit chooses this composition of politicians, he simultaneously decides not to include other important Israeli women: Shulamit Aloni, Yuli Tamir, Tamar Gozansky, Geula Cohen and Yael Dayan, to name a few.

The book includes comments by academics such as Emmanuel Sivan, Asher Sasser and Dan Shiftan, but not by female researchers and lecturers involved in fields closely related to the topic at hand, such as historians Prof. Anita Shapira, Prof. Naomi Chazan or a long list of others.

And what about the group of combative women who brought about Israel's most recent withdrawal? The Four Mothers movement transformed the opinion of the Israeli public and raised for the first time a simple demand: leave Lebanon. Their success was tremendous, but their voices are not heard in this book. We have already become used to the removal of women from the war-security dialogue, but the disengagement presumes to be a dialogue of peace. Are women detached from this, as well? If so, then which discussion does make room for them?

Shavit brings in the voice of author A.B. Yehoshua, but decided not to give space to others who fall outside the establishment: Bambi Sheleg, the editor of Eretz Acheret, a journal on Jewish and Israeli identity; author Amona Elon; poet Dalia Rabikovitch; and others.

Shavit's choices were not made in a vacuum. The number of women in senior positions in the civil service, academia and politics remains low. But if female Knesset members constitute 15 percent of all MKs, there is no reason that only 6 percent of those involved in the first serious discussion on the disengagement plan should be women.

The participation of more women would likely have moderated the security element that played a major role in the book. The approach that makes it seem as though security officials are the sole, or at least primary, people capable of mapping out our fate necessitates policies set by men. It's time for this view, which has produced dubious results, to come off the table.

In his introduction, Shavit writes: "What all these writers have in common is that they are capable of thought; what they all have in common is that they are important Israelis." When these are the criteria, the inescapable conclusion is that Shavit was unable to find thinking women whom he found suitable.

"For too long we have covered intellectual failures with emotional and ethical dictums," Shavit writes. "Such that now... It's right that we be clear and topical. It's right that we approach the analysis with the cruel level-headedness of surgeons." The conclusion is clear: Women (emotional by nature?) are not partners in a cold and calculated discussion based on an orderly arrangement of arguments.

All this is not to take away from the importance of "Halukat Haaretz." Shavit's work has created space for intensive discussion of the disengagement plan. Reading the book plants in the reader a feeling of genuine responsibility to join this space and try to formulate a reasonable, considered position on the plan. But at the same time, both male and female readers must notice that the space Shavit has created is incomplete and lacking.

To the Haaretz article