Asking Some Hard Questions

The following discussion, taped in the spring of 1988, was held between Menachem Brinker, an Israeli writer and activist in the peace camp, and Dissent editors Mitchell Cohen and Irving Howe.

Dissent: Twenty-one years after the 1967 war and the occupation of the West Bank, over half a year after the beginning of the Palestinian uprising, Israel finds itself in difficult political circumstances. What are its options?

Brinker: There are several theoretical options, but given the stalemate in Israeli politics, there is not much to do except go on with the status quo, although such a policy is harmful, even disastrous. Labor, together with all the groups to its left, has the support of less than...