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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JULY 22, 1986
PAGE 17
generally left the other alone. They tolerated each other by mutually
adhering to a loose compact known as the Status Quo.
Under its terms
Israel was designed as a nation based on traditional Orthodox values, but
with safeguards for the rights of the non-Orthodox minority.
Nevertheless, tensions have remained ever since Israel's founding
in
1948.
And over the years the power and influence of the religious
traditionalists has grown. The two big parties, Likud and Labor, cannot
form governments without including some of the small religious parties in
coalition. This forces mainstream politicians to cater to their demands,
such as the pressure to force El Al, the national airline, not to fly on
the Sabbath.
Some Israelis fear a polarized society.
"The radical fringe groups on
both sides," notes one observer, "are growing every day and are becoming
far more militant and aggressive." (One militant secular group is called
"Tanach" -- a Hebrew acronym for "Terror Against Ultra-Orthodoxy".) This
polarization potentially poses as grave a danger to the stability and
unity of Israel as threats from surrounding Arab nations or the P.L.O.
History shows that the Jews have suffered greatly when deeply divided or
when zealots have taken hold.
Europe:
Halfway to Unity
It remained for an Israeli journalist to
present one of the more interesting analyses of the European scene in
recent months. David Krivine wrote the following in the July 3 JERUSALEM
POST:
/;he most startling thing I discovered, during a seminar on the
Common Market I attended this month in Brussels and Strasbourg,
\ is the rise, albeit in vestigial form, of a distinct sense of
Europeannationality.-:-:. The chang�ll-not happen overnight,
but in the course of time France, West Germany and even
reluctant Britain may well decline to provincial status. They
will, perhaps in the next century, become what Normandy,
\ Bavaria and Yorkshire are today -- regional components of a
)
larger, this time European, entity.
What I detected was an
intangible something underlying the way people talk among
themselves and discuss common problems. Staff members of the
/ U.N. are nominally world citizens but actually old-fashioned
nationals. Staff members of the Community are different, they
1
seem to have a new allegiance. They no longer look upon each
other quite as foreigners•..•
The EEC is still not fully integrated, as the 50 states of
l
America are integrated. It is not a single market as Japan is
1 \ a single market.
Behind the tariff barriers now dismantled
lurk other barriers:
different tax systems, different legal
\ systems, different currencies, different public procurement
\
.
policies, different national standards and specifications••••
Most of the barriers are due, it is hoped, to be swept aside by
I
Dil.7:".--Planned is--
th�aboI'iTion of personal checks at
I frontiers.
A European passport will be introduced.
All
j citizens will have the right to live in other member states.
(.
(Workers will thus be free to go where the jobs are, regardless
of nationality.) Capital flows will be eased, taxes harmonized
'"----