Uri Avnery is one of the New York Times’ favorite op-ed writers from Israel. He is indeed an interesting and venerable character, a fighter in the anti-British Zionist underground and Israel’s 1948 war of independence who was associated for a while with the “Canaanite” movement of the 1950s, an intellectual coterie that called for a new “Semitic” Hebrew culture that would dominate the Arab Middle East. Eventually he moved on from these romantic fantasies to the more conventional Israeli far left.

Mr. Avnery’s latest op-ed in the Times is called “Israel’s war of the colors.” Writing about how anti-disengagement Israelis have recently taken to flying orange protest ribbons from their cars and about how pro-disengagement Israelis have responded by flying blue ones, Mr. Avnery laments the fact that, although the pros greatly outnumber the antis in the polls, the oranges have it on the roads. He writes:

“The settlers and their allies have a distinct logistic advantage. They live in their own communities, so it is easy for them to mobilize thousands of children and youngsters, who disperse through the country and attach their ribbons to the cars. … Many [pro-disengagement] citizens are simply anxious. They are afraid that if they fly the blue ribbon, their cars will be vandalized by right-wing hooligans. … [Others] just want to be left in peace and do not like to trumpet their convictions.”

These are valid observations. But there is one more observation that Uri Avnery might have made but didn’t. There are many pro-disengagement Israelis who wouldn’t dream of flying the blue ribbon for another reason – namely, that they don’t want to be associated with people like Mr. Avnery. I should know because I’m one of them.

Why do we feel this way? Uri Avnery explains it in his op-ed when he writes:

“… The blue ribbon is a unifying symbol. Forces of different shades are working together in this campaign, from those who support Ariel Sharon and withdrawal from the Gaza Strip only, to those who want to turn this withdrawal into an instrument for the achievement of a general peace. To belong to this camp is respectable, for it is a camp with a liberal and peace-loving culture, a camp that believes in equality between the citizens of both genders and of all ethnic and national backgrounds. In short: the opposite of what the settlers believe in.”

So there you have it: The blue ribbon is a “unifying symbol” because it divides Israel into two camps – one liberal, peace-loving, and for equality, and the other intolerant, warmongering, and for inequality. And the intolerant warmongers, needless to say, are the settlers and their supporters.

There’s a problem, however, with Mr. Uri Avnery’s logic. He wants the blue ribbon also to be flown by those who “support Ariel Sharon and withdrawal from the Gaza Strip only” – that is, by Israelis who think there is something wrong, not with all Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, but only with those that are in areas which Israel would be wise to pull out of.

That is, Uri Avnery wants the blue ribbon to be flown by … intolerant warmongers too.

As a pro-disengagement, intolerant warmonger myself, I can only say, “No thank you. Fly it yourself.”

It’s the old “Popular Front” ploy. You latch onto a cause supported by many (two out of three Israelis are for disengagement, although barely one out of five voted for the left in the last elections), invite them all to join it for the sake of “unity,” and then shanghai it in the name of your own “liberal and peace loving” policies.

The pity of it is that Mr. Avnery, and very likely the editors of the Times, are missing the real point of what has been happening in Israel in recent months and years. This is not the chasm between the “peace-loving” left and the “warmongering” right. It is the resurrection of the center, which for many years had all but disappeared from Israeli political life.

Until the late 1970s or early 1980s, such a center existed. It drew heavily on supporters of various parties, including both Labor and the Likud, and its attitude toward the Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts was pragmatic. It was patriotic but not chauvinistic; it was wary of ideologies affirming the sacredness either of an undivided land of Israel or of the 1967 cease-fire lines with Jordan, Syria, and Egypt; and it viewed the settlements as valuable assets in helping to redraw these lines without making of their inhabitants a fetish or a supreme cause.

Starting with the Likud victory in the national elections of 1977, accelerating with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and climaxing with the 1993 Oslo Agreement, this center was all but wiped out. Israel was divided into a bitterly warring left and right that jointly devoured every more nuanced political opinion between them. It was a tragedy for a country that needed to think in nuances and not in strict contrasts of black and white.

Now, following the failure of the Barak-Arafat negotiations in the year 2000 and the four-year Palestinian war of terror that came in its wake, the center is back again. The vast majority of Israelis are once again tired of ideologies – of the ideology of peace at all costs and of the ideology of the land of Israel at all costs. They want sane, pragmatic policies, of which disengagement from Gaza seems to them a good example. They see the settlers in Gaza not as enemies but as fellow Israelis caught in an unfortunate situation. They are thankful that in other areas there are enough settlers to make Israel’s claim to them strong.

Let Uri Avnery fly the blue ribbon. But if he’s in, count us out.

Mr. Halkin is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.