The new found voice of the Israeli left may represent a last hope for peace, writes Ibrahim Nafie The Geneva Agreement, reached by prominent Palestinian and Israeli political and intellectual figures outside official channels, has sparked heated controversy in Israel. It appears that the Israeli left is awaking from years of slumber since the aborted Camp David II talks, and the right is not taking this lying down. The very fact that two groups of Arabs and Israelis could get together and hammer out an agreement of this sort has delivered a powerful blow to the many spurious claims of the Israeli right. True, the agreement is not without shortcomings. The most salient is its failure to make explicit reference to the Palestinian "right of return" or to include a provision that would make Israel responsible for compensating Palestinian refugees for the loss of their property. However, it marks a step forward in many other respects. Perhaps its major strength is its symbolic value at a time when the agenda on the Palestinian- Israeli track has been commandeered by an extremist right-wing government in Israel that enjoys the unmitigated support of an equally conservative administration in the US. What it tells public opinion in Israel and the West is that, contrary to the claims of the Likud government there is a Palestinian peace partner to talk to and that the full range of final status issues can be hammered out around the negotiating table. It also conveys the message that the current Israeli government's campaign of death and destruction against the Palestinian people will never bring peace and security to the Israeli people, and that this aspiration can only be realised through an agreement that results in the creation of an independent Palestinian state on all Palestinian territory occupied by Israel in June 1967. The ripples that are finally moving the stagnant waters of the Israeli left bring to mind the climate that prevailed in Israel at the time of the signing of the Oslo Accords. Then, too, opinion was sharply divided over how to handle the Arab- Israeli conflict. But, just as it seemed the controversy was to be settled in favour of the camp advocating a peaceful settlement a member of the extreme right stepped forward to assassinate Rabin. As of 4 November 1995 the peace process effectively ground to a halt, in tandem with the rising fortunes of the political right in Israel and the rightward shift of the traditional left. 11 September 2001 gave impetus to this trend, to the extent that it seemed that there were no dissident voices left in Israel to counter right-wing bellicosity. Even Labour, under Barak and then Ben Eliezar, began to sound like another mouthpiece for Likud. Recently, however, such figures as Yossi Beilin and General Amram Mitzna have surfaced to reassert the principles they feel their party had betrayed. Beilin, who had left Labour in order to found a new movement, and Mitzna, forced to resign as Labour leader for being "too moderate," were two of the architects of the Geneva Agreement. They, along with their fellow participants in this effort, have inspired peace activists to action against a government that is relentlessly pushing the region ever closer to the brink of war. Not surprisingly the Israeli right, long accustomed to a mute and docile left, has reacted violently. Epitomising the reaction was MK Shaul Yahalom's petitioning of the Israeli Attorney-General Elyakim Rubenstein to file charges against the Israelis who took part in the Geneva Agreement. In his letter to Rubenstein he wrote: "The Israelis behind this initiative have devised an agreement the goal of which is, among other things, to deprive Israel of its sovereignty over the (Palestinian territories) and notably Jerusalem." He further charged that they were attempting to rally international support to pressure "a sovereign government into accepting the agreement." Such acts constituted "a crime of treason necessitating a death sentence or life imprisonment". Other Israeli officials were equally vehement. Minister of Defence Shaul Mofaz described the Geneva Agreement as "a grave danger to the security of Israel", adding that the roadmap was the only avenue to a solution "though until now we have not found a Palestinian partner to negotiate with." Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom went so far as to insinuate that the authors of the Geneva Agreement had been bribed. In a cabinet meeting last Sunday he is reported to have said that the foreign ministers of France and Belgium had offered Beilin $7 million to "market" the Geneva understandings. The Israeli left, by which I mean those who have remained true to the ideals of Rabin, has refused to be cowed. Yuli Tamir, one of the founders of the Peace Now Movement, said: "This agreement is an affirmation of our long-held dream, the dream of a Jewish state. Sharon offers no alternative. Rather, he is destroying everything we have built. If he has nothing to offer now is the time for him to step down." In a similar vein Elia Leibowitz writes in Haaretz of 24 October that "the creators of the Geneva understandings are the only Israeli citizens in the past three years who deserve to be called statesmen. What they did required resourcefulness, wisdom, forbearance, psychological understanding and courage -- traits that have disappeared from this country." Perhaps the most damning censure came from Israeli novelist Yoram Kaniuk. Commenting on a government that has led Israel from one disaster to the next he writes in Yediot Aharanot that "Israel is the only country in which there is not a government of the people but a people of the government. Whatever the Sharon government does the people will love him, even as they cry. And the more it makes them suffer the more they will love it." Later in the article he observes that "wise Jewish people" had either lived in Israel for a while then left, or emigrated to the US and won Nobel prizes. "Meanwhile, here in Israel education is considered less important than statements calling for the expulsion of Arafat." But discontent with a government bent on imposing its version of a solution by force is not restricted to left-wing intellectual and literary circles. Evidence of this can be seen in the growing support for the Israeli Air Force pilots who, on 25 September, wrote to Air Force Commander Dan Halutz. "We, both veteran and active pilots, who have served and who still serve the state of Israel, are opposed to carrying out illegal and immoral orders to attack, of the type Israel carries out in the territories. We... refuse to continue to hit innocent civilians... The continued occupation is critically harming the country's security and moral fibre," the report read. Even as the Geneva Agreement opens a faint glimmer of hope for peace and security the Sharon government presses ahead with the separating wall, in fulfillment of Sharon's illusory promise of security. When completed the wall, extending 24 kilometres into the West Bank, will not only engulf a considerable portion of Palestinian territory but cut off 70,000 Palestinians from the rest of the West Bank. This project, too, has come under scathing attack by the newly resurgent left, as have the settlements that the wall is intended to defend. Again Kaniuk, in Yediot Aharanot: "Our children today are being sent off to defend remote settlements and are being picked off on the way like ducks in a shooting gallery. May the Just Lord ask why innocent young women must be killed in order to defend a few dozen settlers in Netzarim." Such humanitarian pleas are not only alien to the Sharon government but to an American administration more committed than ever to lending its weight to the injustices perpetrated against the Palestinian people. Not only has the US used its veto to prevent the passage of a UN Security Council resolution calling upon Israel to halt construction of the separating wall but also, according to an article in the Financial Times, it has dispatched "experts" to advise on fortifications in a wall Bush once described as a "snake" slithering through the West Bank. Now his administration speaks of "minimising the detrimental effects of the wall on the life of the Palestinians" and of "keeping its course as close as possible to the Green Line". More ominous is Washington's continued support of a government determined to increase regional tensions. The recent strike against Syria, the threat to strike Iranian targets, recent references to a Libyan "nuclear programme", talk of an alleged Saudi plan to buy nuclear arms from Pakistan and the hue and cry over the growing capacities of the Egyptian armed forces all point to the intentions of that government. Responding to such ploys President Mubarak has said that Egypt -- in contrast to Israel -- honours its pledges and agreements and does not harbour aggressive intentions or expansionist ambitions. But the most caustic criticism came from inside Israel. Beneath the headline "A new threat pops up: Egypt," in Haaretz of 22 October, Reuven Pedatzur remarks, "[A]pparently the defence establishment is not convinced that promulgating these threats is enough to stop further cuts in the defense budget, so they are exhuming the so-called Egyptian threat." But, as Gideon Samet said in the same Haaretz edition, "something is definitely happening in Israel's political swamp... [S]ince Barak's cabinet collapsed the opposition has slipped into a coma. It is now awakening." And indeed it is, if we are to judge by the protest demonstration that took place in front of Sharon's home last Saturday. Organised by the Peace Now Movement, it was the largest demonstration to take place in Israel for three years. Also telling is a recent Maarev poll indicating that only 36 per cent of respondents approved of Sharon's performance. It is still too early to tell where the growing despair with the Sharon government will lead and whether or not the US administration will respond to this trend. However, it does give reason to believe that the end of the Sharon era is at hand. This would not only be in the interests of the Palestinian and Arab people: as the reawakened voice of the Israeli left makes clear it would be very much in the interests not only of Israeli security but of its very existence.
