Newsgroup: it.arti.cinema
Titolo: In Israel, the doves awaken

   Since Camp David failed, most Israelis have accepted
   the slogan "We have no one to talk to." A bold peace
   initiative has changed that -- and given rise to that
   rarest of commodities, hope.
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By Aluf Benn
Oct. 24, 2003 | TEL AVIV, Israel --
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/10/24/geneva/
Yossi Beilin has been the most daring and influential
political entrepreneur in Israel for more than a decade.
The soft-spoken, bespectacled political scientist has
managed to set the national agenda time and again,
typically setting off with little or no support from his
political peers and national leaders, and then steering
them in his direction. In a governing culture built on
hesitation and the avoidance of tough choices, Beilin
has played the role of the daring scout, charting
unpaved roads toward peace and reconciliation with
Israel's Arab neighbors.
Beilin's modus operandi works like this: He builds a
"model" for a solution and then presents it to the
decision makers at critical moments, when their policies
are going nowhere and need a shakeup. Lacking a credible
alternative, they have little choice but to follow
Beilin's lead. That is how Beilin laid the basis for the
Oslo process with Yasser Arafat's PLO in the early
1990s. Later, he conceived the formula for a final-
status deal with the Palestinians, which was eventually
discussed at Camp David in 2000. He also created the
momentum for Israel's unilateral withdrawal from south
Lebanon.
The failure of Camp David and the following negotiations
at Taba have plunged the Israelis and Palestinians into
the terrible violence that has raged without
interruption for the past three years, causing thousands
of deaths and injuries. Domestically, the breakdown of
negotiations led to the rise of the right wing, bringing
Ariel Sharon back from the political wilderness -- where
he had been exiled after a government commission found
he bore responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila refugee
camp massacres -- to the national helm. When Ehud Barak,
Labor's last prime minister, declared, "We have no
partner" on the Palestinian side, the majority of
Israelis agreed with him and the political left was
devastated. Beilin himself was kicked out of active
political life and later abandoned the Labor Party,
having lost his bid for a parliamentary seat.
But Beilin never gave up. Along with his small group of
peace-seeking devotees, he went on trying to reach a
model agreement with a similar group of interested
Palestinian politicians. A couple of weeks ago, he
scored his latest coup and once again succeeded in
turning the national agenda upside down. The "Geneva
accord" is a peace agreement reached by a team of left-
leaning Israelis -- including several prominent Labor
politicians as well as two of Israel's most acclaimed
writers, Amos Oz and David Grossman -- and moderate
Palestinians, including veteran Camp David negotiator
Yasser Abed Rabbo. Lacking any official status, it's a
mere theoretical exercise. Despite this, its authors
have managed to take the political initiative and put
Ariel Sharon's government on the defensive with the
public. Beilin's goal was to prove to the skeptical
Israelis, devastated by the endless bloodshed, that
there is a "who" to talk with" and a "what" to talk
about on the other side: to disprove the government's
line that as long as Arafat lives and holds power, any
diplomatic opening is useless and dangerous.
The Geneva accord (the name honors its Swiss sponsors)
takes up where the Taba talks ended inconclusively in
January 2001. Consequently, it aims to resolve the three
most contentious issues of the Israeli-Palestinian
dispute, the pillars of the conflict -- namely, borders,
the status of Jerusalem, and the fate of Palestinian
refugees. It seeks to break the deadlock by moving
directly to the final status, without complicated
interim steps. Its conflict-resolution formula demands
an Israeli withdrawal from much of the West Bank and all
of Gaza to the pre-1967 lines, to create a demilitarized
Palestinian state; land swaps to fully compensate the
new state for those West Bank settlements not dismantled
(about half), which will be annexed to Israel proper; a
division of Jerusalem, including its holy sites, along
ethnic and religious lines; and a "recipe" of choices
for refugees, assuming that most will remain in their
"hosting" Arab countries or will settle in the new
Palestinian state.
For both Israeli and Palestinian public opinion, the
refugee issue is the hottest potato. The Palestinian
claim that the 1948 refugees and their descendants have
"the right of return" to their homes in what is now
Israel is viewed by most Israelis as tantamount to the
destruction of the Jewish state. For their part,
Palestinians regard the right of return as symbolically
sacrosanct -- but have also sent out signals at various
times that they understand Israeli fears and would be
willing to adopt a realistic position. Beilin, who
negotiated the refugee clauses at Taba, has since tried
in vain to convince his fellow Israelis that this is a
bogus issue, used as a scarecrow by right-wingers who
oppose any compromise anyway. Nevertheless, the Geneva
architects assert that their Palestinian interlocutors
have in fact (though not formally) waived the right of
return and agreed to a deal in which Israel would
eventually accept only a small number of refugees, up to
40,000. Such a number would not cause Jews to become a
minority in Israel.
The Geneva plan is not perfect. Like previous Beilin
endeavors, it may be overoptimistic in its ambitious
effort to bridge generations-old problems with mere
words. Some of its solutions appear impractical: for
instance, its approach to the divided, but intertwined,
Jewish and Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.
Compared with the Camp David, Taba and Clinton formulas,
it walks an extra mile toward the Palestinian demands on
borders, Jerusalem and security issues, while giving
more to the Israelis on the right of return. All in all,
however, it is an intriguing effort to break the
stalemate and find a way out of the current morass of
mutual violence.
The first person to acknowledge the political importance
of the plan was none other than Sharon himself, who
attacked its authors even before the plan became public
knowledge. On Oct. 8, speaking at a political rally
ahead of Israel's municipal elections, Sharon launched a
fierce attack on the left. He accused it of subversion,
of assisting the Palestinians and aiming to topple
Israel's elected government during its war against
terrorism. These were indeed harsh charges, especially
coming from Sharon, who has tried to portray himself as
a fatherly, almost nonpartisan figure. Thus,
unwittingly, he turned himself into Beilin's best P.R.
agent.
Sharon's attack reflected the fact that the political
winds had begun to blow against him. Since taking office
in March 2001, Sharon enjoyed virtual freedom from
opposition. His failure during the 1982 Lebanon war,
which he engineered, taught him a lesson in the
importance of public consensus. His first Cabinet
included the Labor Party, but after winning reelection
early this year, Sharon formed a right-wing coalition.
Even then, the opposition was slow to emerge. First came
the war in Iraq, and then the American attempt to revive
the peace process through the "road map." Sharon
accepted the road map (albeit with reservations), and
welcomed the new Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud
Abbas ("Abu Mazen"), depicting him -- wrongly, as it
turned out -- as the successor to Arafat. But violence
erupted again after a seven-week ceasefire, Abbas
resigned, and the road map all but collapsed. Sharon was
left with no political alternative besides using more
force and threatening to expel or kill Arafat, whom he
called "the main obstacle to reconciliation."
The resumed stalemate prompted the resurrection of the
Israeli left from the ashes, where it had resided since
the Camp David debacle. The turning point was a "refusal
letter" signed by 27 reservist pilots in the Israeli Air
Force, who pledged not to participate in combat missions
in Palestinian areas, saying they were immoral. "We, who
were taught to love Israel and contribute to the Zionist
enterprise, refuse to take part in attacks on civilian
population centers," the pilots wrote. Their credibility
was somewhat problematic -- most have long been retired
from active flying -- but given the reverence for airmen
in Israeli society, their protest made a considerable
impact, especially compared with the failed efforts of
former, ground-based "refuseniks" to catch the public
attention. The military responded by kicking the
"refusenik pilots" out of the cockpits but failed to
silence them. Led by former Gen. Yiftah Spector, who
participated in the 1981 bombing of Iraq's nuclear
reactor, they became the bon ton speakers of the newly
emerged opposition.
But protest alone cannot serve as a political agenda.
Geneva gave the left an even more important commodity,
namely a platform, which it desperately needed during
the last three bloody years. Beilin managed to recruit
some of his former Labor colleagues to the initiative,
in order to give it more respectability. These
latecomers included Amram Mitzna, the former party
chairman who lost the election, and Avraham Burg, the
previous Knesset chairman. Both belong to the moderate
Labor camp. But other party seniors, like Barak,
attacked the initiative, or simply turned away.
Even with this modest support, the news of the peace
plan caused a fierce public debate to burst out
overnight. Following a long period of seeming national
consensus over war and peace issues, the government
found itself on the defensive, having to defend its
policies and respond to Beilin's initiative. Geneva's
critics focused on the "subversion" allegation, accusing
Beilin and Co. of negotiating the country's fate without
proper authority, behind the government's back, thereby
weakening Israel's ability to win the war and aiding the
enemy through false hopes. Unsurprisingly, the pro and
con arguments soon went overboard. Mitzna wrote that
Geneva was even more important than David Ben Gurion's
proclamation of Israel in 1948. From the right, Knesset
member Shaul Yahalom of the National Religious Party
demanded the indictment of Geneva's authors for high
treason.
On Monday, Sharon gave his semiannual address at the
opening of the Knesset's winter session. He did not
mention Geneva, but it clearly influenced his every
word. Having realized his initial mistake, Sharon tried
to change course and turn Geneva against its authors,
calling it "a misrepresentation" and appealing to
"responsible Labor members" to support the government.
Thus he tried to split the left camp.
Nevertheless, Sharon's arguments were hollow. He
promised the wary public "a real chance for real
progress" and held out hopes that the deadlock might be
broken within "several months." Until then, the public
was asked to hold on, which meant to absorb more terror
attacks and further economic decline. Sharon praised
"the road map, with Israel's reservations," as the only
possible plan, and as always, demanded that the
Palestinians act first. True to form, he avoided taking
any initiative, save for approving the controversial
security barrier in the West Bank.
In fact, Sharon knows very well that the road map has
been all but dead for several weeks, and that there is
no reason for anyone to believe that his policies will
produce "real progress," whether in several months or
several years. The Bush administration lost its short-
lived interest in peacemaking, pulled back its envoy
John Wolf, and announced it would return only when a new
Palestinian prime minister takes office and assumes
responsibility over a unified security force. Israeli
officials understand it as a long timeout, at least
until after the American presidential election and the
forming of a new administration. They well know that
Bush sees every political reason not to enter the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict: He fears losing his
Christian evangelical base and valuable Jewish votes if
he criticizes Sharon; and with the Democrats also
unswervingly supporting Sharon's policies (the
Democratic frontrunner, Howard Dean, was savaged and
forced to retreat when he suggested that U.S. policy
needed to be more evenhanded), Bush doesn't have to pay
any political price for his position.
Following a deadly attack last week, in which three
American security guards were killed when a roadside
bomb exploded under their car near Gaza, the
administration pulled its diplomats out of the occupied
territories altogether. Washington is sticking with its
Catch-22 policy regarding Arafat: It agrees with Sharon
that the Palestinian leader is the main obstacle and
refuses to talk to him, but at the same time forbids
Israel to expel or kill him. Under these conditions, all
Sharon can do is hope for Arafat's demise. Speculations
about Arafat's recent illnesses -- a heart attack,
stomach infection, liver troubles, gallstones -- were
warmly welcomed in Israel's security circles. Israeli
intelligence maintains that the Palestinian leader is
sicker than his physicians say. American officials doubt
it, but who really knows what is happening inside
Arafat's bloodstream.
Sharon's government continues to repeat the mantra that
when Arafat disappears, his successors will prove more
"moderate" and will accept Israel's demands to fight
terrorism. So far, however, there are no indications
that this analysis is correct. Ahmed Qorei ("Abu Ala"),
the interim Palestinian prime minister, has been
thwarted by Arafat from even forming a Cabinet, with the
sticking point, as always, being control of security. By
Nov. 4, Abu Ala must present his permanent Cabinet or
resign. Israeli security officials give him zero chance
of remaining in office, despite the government's pledge
to negotiate with him if he succeeds.
Facing this stalemate, some Likud politicians have
started raising alternatives. Sharon's deputy, former
Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert, suggested a "unilateral
move" in which Israel would define its borders and
abandon parts of the West Bank. Defense Minister Shaul
Mofaz, Israel's war leader, warned of a diplomatic
vacuum. But both, like other politicians, have merely
whispered, avoiding serious public debate over their
ideas.
Sharon's grip over Israeli politics appears to be
unchallenged, despite his failure to bring peace,
security or prosperity; his recent decline at the polls;
and the ongoing criminal investigation into his campaign
finances. Senior Likud members say that he could win
approval for a moderate diplomatic initiative, which
would include the removal of several isolated
settlements. But Sharon is in no rush. He prefers
waiting -- while escalating his military response to
Palestinian attacks -- to taking any peace initiative.
Given America's total support for Sharon, it's hard to
see any imperative for policy change in Jerusalem.
As Sharon spoke at the Knesset plenum, the fragile, de
facto calm between Israel and Hamas broke down. The
Palestinians launched Qassam rockets on Sunday,
prompting a fierce Israeli response with helicopter
attacks in Gaza that killed 12 people the next day.
Since then, Israelis are waiting in despair for the
inevitable deadly response.
This cruel reality was not lost on Shimon Peres,
Sharon's longtime friend who returned to the post of
opposition leader. When the Labor Party leader rose to
give his customary response to Sharon's speech, he
avoided shaking the prime minister's hand. Once on the
podium, he launched a fierce, unprecedented attack on
the government's sit-tight policy, seeming to erase the
memories of his loyal service as Sharon's foreign
minister until their coalition collapsed a year ago. As
always, the 80-year-old Peres gave a vigorous
performance, speaking without notes and spellbinding the
audience, in stark contrast to Sharon's carefully read
talking points.
It was a good show, but in the end it was just a show.
Neither Peres, nor his opposition colleagues who
interrupted Sharon's speech with numerous boos, have any
chance to topple the government. The election results
made Likud the dominant party, an inevitable axis for
any possible coalition. Even if Sharon leaves, his
successor will be from the right.
Still, things have changed. Before the nation heard
about Geneva, Peres had avoided even the smallest
criticisms of Sharon and seemed to want to crawl back
into the Likud leader's lap. Only when Beilin, his old
protég´, dared to put his alternative on the table, did
Peres remember his real place in Israeli politics.
Despite some reservations over Geneva's details, Peres
has publicly defended the negotiations.
In all probability, the Geneva accord will not be
translated into a formal peace deal in the foreseeable
future. Nor will its authors assume leadership
positions. But it already sowed the seeds of an Israeli
debate over the most momentous matters: war and peace,
relations with the Palestinians, the future of the
Jewish state. And judging by the experience of the past
30 years, this is the first step toward policy and
political change.

 see any imperative for policy change in Jerusalem.
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