Twenties, a different political outlook met the test of election. The new party, called the New Force (or the Ha'olam Hazeh Movement, because it was initiated by the magazine which bears this name), received 1.2 per cent of the vote, evenly dispersed throughout the country, but with a much higher percentage in the army, some frontier settlements and the Israeli Arabs. It is a small victory, but of significance. It was also a cheap victory. While other parties spent tens of millions of Israeli pounds in a vast orgy of waste, the New Force spent about forty thousand -and certainly could neither promise nor provide jobs or benefits to anyone.
More significantly, the New Force is non-Zionist, and its leaders have been ostracized for many years for advocating such heretical ideas as a return of the Arab refugees, cooperation with Arab nationalism, and abolishing the Zionist organization. Yet thousands of voters throughout the country, especially in the younger generation, the kibbutzim and the army, openly supported this new movement. The New Force also advocates that Israel should cease to declare itself a Jewish state, but rather become a pluralist one. It believes in full equality of the Israeli Arabs, in a complete separation of synagogue and state, and for promulgation of a written constitution, still sadly lacking in Israel after twenty years.
Israel has a long way to go before a real change will be effected, enabling the country to assume a new posture in the Region. Yet, our initial success proves, at long last, that new forces can arise in Israel, that the winds of change are blowing stronger, and that conditions are ripening which may create the psychological and political prerequisite for breaking the vicious circle-finding a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.