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Peace Now and The Failure of the Israeli Peace Movement
By Bernard Avishai / February 21, 2008
Last Saturday evening, I attended a memorial for Peace Now activist Emil Grunzweig, a young scholar of democratic theory who was killed by a disturbed rightist’s grenade in February, 1983, at a demonstration in front of the prime minister’s office. Ten years ago, the fifteenth anniversary of his death, hundreds came. This time, a few dozen, perhaps.
Many have noticed the decline in the profile of Israel’s peace movement during the past 20 years. What could be expected when Israelis are so obviously spurned in the region and under attack by bombers and missiles? Does it not seem unrealistic to expect a peace movement to get traction without a change in Arab attitudes?
Imagine, though, the effect of an Arab leader coming to the Knesset today and delivering a speech like the one given by Anwar Sadat on November 20, 1977. Apart from the stirring compassion of the speech, notice Sadat’s approach to the so-called “core issues,” now ostensibly being negotiated under the Annapolis framework. They are, more or less, the lines of policy one has heard for years from the Palestine Authority and from the Arab League’s 2002 initiative.
Which brings me back to the Israeli peace movement. The waning of interest in Peace Now seems much more the result of its belated success than its failure. Why take to the streets when the government, and the broad center—Tel-Aviv, professionals, the more educated—now espouse your approach, if only in principle? How different are Peace Now’s ideas—and Sadat’s, for that matter—from the approach Ehud Olmert’s close friend Vice-Premier Haim Ramon has hinted at in various interviews?
Menachem Begin, remember, responded to Sadat with a vision of a region in which “we shall all live together—the Great Arab Nation in its States and its countries, and the Jewish People in its Land, Eretz Israel—forever and ever.” This was code for the Likud’s platform. (Here is Begin’s whole speech: judge for yourself.) There was no occupation to acknowledge in Begin’s response. Israel would deal with the Arab states, not with the Arab stateless. Jerusalem, too, belonged to the Jews; other religions would have access to their holy places.
Nor was there a Palestinian people. (“I invite genuine spokesmen of the Palestinian Arabs” to come along with King Hussein, etc.; I remember distinctly that Begin used the Hebrew phrase Arviyeh Eretz Yisrael, “the Arabs of Eretz Yisrael,” though it is translated differently here.) “We took no foreign land,” Begin instructed Sadat; “We returned to our Homeland. The bond between our People and this Land is eternal.” Oppose this way of looking at Jewish history, Begin went on, and you were being cavalier about the holocaust.
The key to all of this was settlements. Eretz Yisrael still beckoned. Then, the number of Jewish settlers beyond Jerusalem and Gush Etzion was only about 2000; by 1979, 6000. Today it is a quarter of a million. I remember thinking that Sadat’s face said it all: listening to Begin, he looked as stricken as many of us felt.
And it was in response to Begin’s response that 348 junior officers signed a letter imploring the prime minister to seize the moment. Their letter launched Peace Now, and prompted demonstrations that numbered in the hundreds of thousands in the late 7os and eraly 80s.
PEACE NOW'S EFFORTS did not save the ensuing peace process, which foundered largely on the settlements policy. Settlements precluded any implementation of the Palestinian autonomy plan that Sadat and President Carter extracted from Begin at Camp David. They were the reason why Sadat refused to travel to Oslo with Begin to collect the Nobel Peace Prize. They were a major reason for the collapse of Oslo. Olmert has claimed to have stopped settlements, too—though not within the extensive boundaries of Jerusalem. His policy is too little and far too late.
The real problem, now, is nothing Peace Now activists can do anything about. They have won the battle of public opinion in Israel, at least among those who are not in the third of the country for whom the process of forming opinions is itself suspect.
Olmert knows what he must do eventually, but he likes his job, and does not like enraging the residents of Jerusalem, who support the settlers, and who make up a good many of the third in question; he continues to develop Jerusalem’s suburbs across the Green Line and pander to Shas, his rightist coalition ally, while undermining the already shaken reputation of Mahmud Abbas. He has asked, and apparently got, assurances from Secretary Rice that the US will back his desire to leave this problem of Jerusalem “to last,” as if there is a first that can be negotiated without including East Jerusalem in Palestine’s borders. As if blurriness about US policy and interests helps him.
Haaretz chief editor David Landau, for one, had enough a little while back . He told Rice in Jerusalem that his "wet dream” would be that the US “raped” Israel, that is, simply imposed a settlement. Landau may have broken protocol (and also revealed the repressed state of mind of former British yeshiva students). Anyway, he lost his job last week. But what the peace negotiations need, at least for now, is not just a clear head but a strong hand. And the US—still unable to grasp that in getting tough about the shape of a deal it is actually strengthening Israeli leaders who claim the need for peace now—is getting hustled for the 30th year in row.
* Cross-posted at BernardAvishai.com
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Lie #1: Fatah and Abbas represent a moderate Palestinian faction
we must negotiate with while Hamas represent an extreme faction
we must alienate.
Since Hamas came to power, the vast majority of terrorist attacks
on Israelis have come from Fatah. The last several terrorist
attacks including the twin suicide bombing in a cafe in Dimona
was carried out by Fatah. Hamas has been shelling Israel from
Gaza, but it is Fatah which has been waging a terrorist campaign
inside Israel.
Hamas has been concentrating on Egypt meanwhile because it is
associated with the Muslim Brotherhood which hopes to come to
power in Egypt. That is why America views Hamas as dangerous and
extremist, because it represent a regional threat to America's
Arab allies, while Fatah is considered to be a threat only to
Israel. That is why America has taken a hard line against Hamas
but continuously forces Israel to negotiate with Fatah. Hamas is
viewed as regional Islamic while Fatah as nationalistic
Palestinian, when Israel is told that Fatah must be propped up
against Hamas, this is not in Israel's interests, it is in
Mubarak's interests.
As far as Israel is concerned, the only substantial difference
between Fatah and Hamas is that Fatah is willing to engage in
blackmail at the negotiating table while Hamas has no interest in
playing the negotiating game at this stage.
Lie #2: Only negotiations can bring peace, even in conflict,
negotiations are the best path to bring about an end to the
hostilities.
Peace negotiations only work when both sides are prepared to end
the fighting because they recognize that it isn't working. But
the fighting is working for the Palestinian Arabs and has been
since Day 1. The refusal to understand this is at the root of
every single lie told about the fraudulent peace process.
Terrorism has been the only negotiating tool the Fatah side has
ever used and it is the only one that they ever put on the table.
There is no reason for them to give up terrorism because it is
their best card and it keeps working and they have never been
continually penalized for playing it.
Peace works when two weary adversaries decide to give it a rest
in their own best interest. But contrary to the media portrayal,
this is a struggle between one weary adversary and one deluded
and vicious adversary. That is why the negotiations continue to
go nowhere. The Palestinian Arab side has never concluded that it
is in its own interest to stop the violence. That is why the
violence continues, often cloaked by completely implausible
denials and self-victimization. The peace process has always led
nowhere because Israeli demands for an end to the violence as a
precursor to negotiations have been discarded even by Presidents
like Bush who once gave lip service to them.
You cannot bring an end to the violence when one part has nothing
to lose and plenty to gain by continuing the violence. For 15
years it hasn't worked and it never will work.
Lie #3. A negotiated settlement is possible if we work hard
enough to achieve one based on territorial concessions
A negotiated settlement in a zero sum game simply isn't possible.
Since 1948 the struggle between Israel and the Arabs has been a
zero sum game with the Arab side set on the destruction of
Israel. Despite that fact Israel has made repeated territorial
concessions, even though Israel's own territory is the smallest
piece carved out of the territory of the Palestine Mandate that
had been set aside after WW1 for the creation of Israel.
Despite numerical superiority and vaster land and populations and
a record of starting wars with Israel, at no point in time has
any Arab state ever ceded land to Israel. By contrast Israel has
ceded land to Egypt and Jordan, proposed to cede land to Syria
and it has ceded a sizable portion of the land within its
territorial borders to the terrorists who had been attacking it
and it has proposed to cede even more land to them, including
portions of its capital.
To gain peace Israel has ceded land equivalent to 3 times its own
current size (not counting the Palestine Mandate which was 6
times Israel's current size.) And the Arab world demands that
Israel continue giving up land even though over 7 million
Israelis live on a piece of land smaller than New Hampshire with
a population density that is the 37th largest in the world,
barely behind Japan at 32nd, Rwanda at 37th and denser than Haiti
at 42nd. When eliminating islands, city states and principalities
from the list, Israel actually has the 10th highest population
density in the world behind India, Japan and Rwanda.
Twice Israel has expelled its own populations in acts of
self-ethnic cleansing virtually unparalleled in history. These
precarious withdrawals have put more of Israel's own population
on the firing line than ever resulting in Hizbullah and Hamas
shelling Israeli towns from Lebanon and Gaza. Rather than
bringing peace, these withdrawals have only made the situation
more dangerous and unstable and Israel is running out of land to
give up. Israel can only carve itself up for so long before
nothing is left.
Bush has made it clear that the return of refugees, the classic
Arab demand, is now on the agenda, which means forcibly creating
an Arab majority in Israel, the ultimate conclusion of the zero
sum game.
Lie #4 – A solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict will stabilize
the rest of the Middle East
The middle east is a stew of tribal, ethnic, political and
religious conflicts, the vast majority of which do not involve
Israel. Israel represent an infinitesimal portion of the region
in both land and population and has virtually no political
influence in the Middle East.
Sunnis are not about to embrace Shias, Islamists will not embrace
secularists, tribes will not cease their blood feuds, dictators
will not become democrats, Muslims will not learn to tolerate
Christians, countries will not cease squabbling over their
borders regardless of what happens in Israel. The Middle East has
only been unstable when it has been ruled by a strong leader or
strong leaders.
Israel does not cause the Middle East's instabilities, they
predate the modern State of Israel by many centuries. The
inherent cause of domestic instability is a lack of strong
central governments that can control the instability within their
own borders and the cause of regional instability comes from
strong central governments with an eye on their neighbor's
territory. This paradox makes the Middle East along with much of
the world, inherently unstable. Browbeating Israel will not
change human nature of move the Middle East ahead in time by
three centuries.
Lie #5 – America's support for Israel has caused resentment and
terrorism toward America which Israel is obligated to address
America's role as a superpower is what causes resentment toward
America, of which its support for Israel is only a subset.
America did not fight Saddam for Israel but for Kuwait and Saudi
Arabia, Israel only got the blame for for a war that began when
Saddam invaded a bunch of Sheiks with ties to the Bush
Administration. At no point in time has America ever fought a war
in defense of Israel. It has however fought two major wars in
defense of Arabs and American soldiers continue dying every week
to keep Iraqis safe.
Israel cannot make Arabs and Muslims like America, especially
when even America can't make them like America. Europe, which is
generally hostile toward Israel, is suffering from a terrorist
epidemic greater than that suffered by the United States. Dozens
of countries are facing serious Muslim terrorist problems, some
of which don't even have diplomatic ties to Israel.
Arab hostility toward America is multifold and would exist even
if America had never developed close ties with Israel. Indeed the
reality is that America had developed close ties to Israel
because it was unable to develop close ties with any major Arab
country. Arab government after government that the US has tried
to befriend has either been overthrown or like the Saudis have
continually stabbed America in the back. None of this is Israel's
fault and the diplomatic frustration that is being directed at
Israel will not fix the problem until the US takes a long hard
look at the Middle East and the Arab nations it is trying to
befriend.
As a Non-Muslim superpower unwilling to simply hand out weapons
with no questions asked, the way Russia does, the US will never
be popular in the Middle East. But Russia's popularity nor even
its hostility to Israel has not kept its citizens and cities from
being blown up by Muslim terrorists either. It would seem that
being popular still won't keep the terrorist wolf away from your
door .
The Peace camp is bankrupt because it calls for a binational state in which Jews are terrorized by Arabs, and have 2 choices-accept terror and dhimmitude, or leave. Most of Israelis today are descendants of Arab Jews, who know full well what dhimmitude is, and are not anxious to accept it voluntarily. If we follwed Mr Avishai's advice, Qassam missiles would be aimed from the Temple Mount all over Israel, and Israel would not retaliate because of fear of damaging the mosques. In Avishai's real world, Qassam missiles would rain daily on Ben Yehudah street, Emek Refaim, and Tel Aviv, injuring the "losers" while Avishai and his elite would be partying it up in Paris, having wet dreams about Jews being killed. I am happy that Mr Landau lost his job-I hope he moves to Lebanon and satisfies Hassan Nasrallahs wet dreams every hour
I never knew there was substantial Israeli opposition to the settlements back in the late 70s/early 80s, before they became such a problem.
–Z
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