Others, led by Rabbi Uri Sharky, a senior member of Machon Meir (a right-wing think tank) and a rising force among religious Zionists, take a far more aggressive approach. In addition to direct action against any future evacuations, Sharky wants to infuse Israeli society with the spirit of religious Zionism by making the Supreme Court subservient to the Rabbinical Court, requiring religious education in schools, and creating sophisticated religious media outlets for propaganda purposes.

Then there are religious Zionists who want nothing more to do with the state of Israel, but who will pursue their dreams at all costs. This group includes many young people who insist that they will not serve in the armed forces, will not vote, and will no longer pray for the state or for the army. This group includes young men like Yehuda, who no longer think of themselves as mere Zionists but rather as “saviours” of the Jews and of Judaism itself.

There are echoes of the same determination (and anger) in Elyakim Haetz-ni. When I visited him at his home in Kiryat Arba, Haetzni told me that he would much rather give up his Israeli citizenship and live under Palestinian rule than move out of his home. During the run-up to the disengagement, Haetzni recommended that resistance take the form of illegal roadblocks and sit-down strikes. Like most members of yesha he did not suggest military disobedience, and most certainly did not endorse firing on Israeli soldiers. “But there are a hundred shades of grey between the passivity that finally characterized the resistance and the shrill insanity that some of the rabbis had called for.”

Haetzni’s big idea was to fill the jails with protesters. This tactic, he believed, would have forced the government to reconsider. And for the first few weeks of the resistance, it seemed that his plan might have worked. In May and June 2005, at intersections across central Israel and on the ramps to major highways, hundreds of young protesters wrapped themselves in orange T-shirts, orange ribbons, and orange headgear, and carried enormous signs with slogans like “Sharon is bending to terror” or “A Jew does not exile a Jew.” But one of Israel’s most popular broadcasters announced on public television that the next time he ran into protesters he would beat the living daylights out of as many of them as he possibly could. The broadcaster was not alone, and such animosity caught yesha off guard. Fearing a total shipwreck, the leadership redeployed its troops to legal protests in Kfar Maimon and Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square.

“They [yesha] simply have no balls,” Haetzni told me. “What did they think That acts of civil disobedience would make the people love them Of course they would not. The point of the disruptions was not love but imprisonment. By backing off this strategy, the rabbis proved that they simply do not have what it takes to lead. They want to be loved not only by family, friends, students, but by the nation as a whole. Most of them really believe they are acting in the nation’s best interests and cannot get it into their thick heads that not everyone sees things as they do.”

Haetzni’s disdain runs deeper than he would like to admit. As a Holocaust survivor who moved to Tel Aviv soon after World War II, Haetzni does not countenance any kind of passivity. On September 5, 1972, the very day eleven Israeli athletes were kidnapped and then killed at the Munich Olympics, Haetzni packed up his young family and moved from bustling Tel Aviv to the Judean Hills. “Moving to Kiryat Arba was all about my rights as a Jew. The kingdom of Jordan prohibits any land sale to Jews. And Kiryat Arba, to which I moved, operated under Jordanian law. I needed to take a stand against such things.”

It is with this history in mind that Haetzni views the lack of resistance to the Gaza pullout as an abomination never to be repeated. For him it is simply a matter of human rights, the right that any man or woman has to live wherever they so choose. “Arik Sharon, as the democratically elected prime minister of Israel, had the right to withdraw Israeli troops from wherever he likes. The prime minister can even go so far as to turn off the lights that Israel has supplied, reroute the water mains, the roads leading in and out of the Gaza settlements. But what Sharon had no right to do is force settlers to leave their homes. He had no right to render Gaza Judenrein [free of Jews]. Those who wished to remain under Palestinian rule should have been allowed to do so. And if it were me living in Gaza, I would have preferred to stay put rather than give up on my Zionism and on my right to live wherever I so wish.”

In one sense, Haetzni was simply letting me know that should Israel wish to evacuate the Hebron region in which he lives, he will not move and may fight to the death to preserve his fundamental right. But it is interesting to note the extent to which Haetzni’s core beliefs converge with the more extreme elements within Israel’s left wing. Might his commitment to a rights-based religious Zionism extend to Palestinians wishing to live in Israel Do they not also have the right to live wherever they wish Are they not equally entitled to the right of return If the answer to these questions is “yes, “how will the Jewish state remain a Jewish state Perhaps, in the end, there is an internal contradiction in Zionism—a contradiction that is irresolvable. I asked Haetzni if it was not paradoxical that his extreme rights-based position blended with those advocating a binational state.

He smiled and said, “After all, this is the Middle East.”