The Israeli peace forces
are being tested now. The winds of war are blowing. Some peace camp
celebrities (alias "Leftists") were uprooted and blown all the way to the
right. Others doubled up, stuttered or fell silent. But an impressive
number of people stood straight and were counted.
The Israeli media,
all of them mobilized for the war propaganda effort (except for a few
remarkable individuals), are having a ball. It’s fashionable now to talk
about the "disintegration of the left". Those poor fellows who are beating
their breasts in the style of Bolshevik "self-criticism" are enjoying the
limelight. They weep pitifully: The left was wrong; There is no partner;
Arafat is a villain; We must rethink everything from the beginning.
Why, for God’s
sake?
We have said all
along that there will be no peace as long as the Palestinians are not
allowed to realize their just demands: to set up a state of their own with
the Green Line as the border between Israel and Palestine, with Jerusalem
as the capital of the two states and the settlers going home. We have said
that the building and enlargement of settlements, confiscation of land,
demolishing homes and building "bypass roads" all over the West Bank are
creating terrible anger. We have said that if the Palestinians despair of
the "peace process", there will be an explosion. Anyone who took the
trouble over the last few months to read my articles on these pages knows
that I warned again and again that a new - and this time armed - Intifada
was going to break out.
All this is
happening now before our eyes. But they say that this shows the right-wing
was right. How’s that? Well, when the guns are firing, logic is the first
casualty. Even among some of the "leftists".
As a matter of
fact, there never never was one, unified peace camp in Israel. Many
groups, with quite different backgrounds, opinions and even temperaments,
are active in the field.
One division is
between the sentimental and the political wings. To the former belong
people who look mostly inside. What’s really important to them is their
moral stance. Somebody once joked that after every peace demonstration
some of them look into the mirror and exclaim: "My, how beautiful we are!"
People mock them as "Yeffei Nefesh" ("Those who have a beautiful soul")
and coined the phrase "They shoot and weep".
For these, the
Palestinians serve more as an object for the application of the moral
ministrations than as an equal partner with his own personality. Therefore
it took them so long to recognize the PLO, accept the idea of the
Palestinian state, agree to East Jerusalem becoming the capital of
Palestine. Such people are liable to fall down in every serious crisis,
such as the Lebanon war (‘Silence! Shooting is going on!") the Gulf war
(Yossi Sarid: "From now on, let the Palestinians search for me!") and the
present Palestinian war of liberation ("There is no partner!")
The other wing of
the peace camp, the political one, to which I belong, understands that if
one wants to make peace with the Palestinian nation, one has to understand
its aspirations, feelings, fears and hopes (as they must understand ours).
Only such understanding can create the basis for co-existence in this
country and this region. That’s why we started our contacts with the PLO
leadership in 1974, that’s why some of us have spent untold hours in
conversation with Palestinians from all walks of life. That’s how we were
able, ten to twenty years before all the others, to recognize the
Palestinian people, the PLO, the State of Palestine and its sovereignty
over East Jerusalem and the Haram-ash-Sharif. It’s not a matter of love
but of historic reconciliation, without which peace cannot come.
Another difference
between the peace forces concerns their domestic political orientation.
The adherents of the first camp have a deep - even hereditary - attachment
to the Labor party. They can mount the barricades against Sharon and
Netanyahu, but find it extremely difficult to raise their voice when Labor
is in power. Labor, after all, is the "Lesser Evil". We "Don’t have
Another One". That’s why they break down when it’s a Labor party leader
waging war against the Palestinian people.
The other camp has
no such problem. We protested when Rabin (and his chief-of-Staff, Ehud
Barak) deported the Islamic activists in 1992, and we supported Rabin when
he signed the Oslo accord a year later. We voted for Barak, but we fight
against him when he becomes the grave-digger of peace.
The Peace Camp will
emerge strengthened from the present test. The strong will remain strong,
the bent will straighten up again. For those who were uprooted, we shall
not shed a tear.
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ua / hagalil.com /
30-10-2000 |