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PEACEWatch | |
Vol. 1 #26 Jan 8, 1999 |
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Neglected Issues Ami Isseroff |
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| In Israel, pre-election campaign skirmishes proceed as if there were no
peace process and no occupation. Among Palestinians, the struggle for statehood continues
almost as if there are no elections in Israel. An absurd situation, because the two are
intimately connected. The issues raised by the candidates of the so-called left in Israel are ‘unity’ and the economic situation. True, Bibi must love poor people: he has created so many of them. True, Bibi has helped widen every possible rift in Israeli society. But those are not the issues that concern the peace movement or Palestinians; they are not the real issues in this election. There is really only one issue, peace, and it is hardly mentioned. Without peace there will be no prosperity. Until the question of ‘Greater Israel’ versus ‘Land for peace’ is resolved, there can be no unity. If the government continues its current policies, the consequences will not be long in coming. But people cannot see the future, even if it is only a few months away. Pressures from the United States, and the peace process, are on hold while President Clinton is preoccupied with the impeachment trial. Nobody in Israel wants to say the dreaded words ‘concessions, withdrawal, peace.’ Bibi can wave the flag, lower the interest rates, and call everyone a leftist, and for now, all the candidates can ignore what is happening in our backyard. Peace is last on the agenda, as though the occupied territories were in some remote place like Australia and of little concern to people living in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. The territories are not that far away. U.S. President Nixon once said that domestic social issues would ‘benefit from a policy of benign neglect.’ They didn’t of course, and the peace process will not benefit from neglect either. Less than two weeks ago, Israeli authorities demolished two houses in Kifl Harith, near Ariel. Kifl Harith is perhaps half an hour from Tel-Aviv. We saw it all happen on television: children crying, newly homeless adults struggling with soldiers. It was a symbolic blow to the peace process, as pictured in this week’s cartoon.
The resumption of house demolitions was a blow to Israel’s international standing. Another seed of hate planted in the hearts of our neighbors. The now homeless families were not terrorists, nor were they terrorist sympathizers before they lost their homes. They had the misfortune to own land that is partly in Area ‘C,’ and to want to live there. They were pawns in the land-grab game. How many Israelis who favor unity and social progress and Mom’s apple pie (or gefilte fish or couscous) could be in favor of this senseless policy? Yet no major candidate even mentioned it. Defense Minister Mordehai is a popular politician who is considered a moderate. He has been praised by candidates of all parties, anxious to woo his allegiance. Nobody is bothered by the fact that Mordehai carries ministerial responsibility for house demolitions. Peace is not on the Israeli public agenda. Hebron is about a half hour’s drive from Jerusalem. In Hebron, someone shot up a car, wounding two Jewish women seriously. Both sides could have worked to defuse this incident, but neither side did. This incident provoked the usual Israeli response, a punitive curfew. The curfew provoked the usual Palestinian response, organized ‘spontaneous’ demonstrations of youths throwing rocks at soldiers. Peace is not really on the Palestinian public agenda either. The orchestrated riots inspired a bizarre tragedy. In a gesture that, in a way, symbolizes the self-defeating and ineffective role of violence in the Palestinian struggle, a ‘mentally handicapped’ 26 year old Arab got gunned down as he charged Israeli soldiers with what turned out to be a toy pistol. Israelis must understand that time will not stand still. The Netanyahu government has not frozen the Wye River agreement, it is busy sabotaging it. It is setting the stage for a disaster that will overtake us, perhaps before the election campaign is over. What our candidates and political parties do and say, both during the election and afterwards, will have a profound effect on whether or not there is any peace process after next June. Palestinians are also going ahead with their agenda almost as though there are no elections in Israel. They must understand that what they do in the next months can determine the result of the Israeli elections, and that these elections can determine their future as well as ours. In 1996, Bibi Netanyahu won by a razor-thin margin, after four terrorist bombings wrecked the chances of Labor PM Shimon Peres. Bibi’s best speech was a harangue by Yasser Arafat about liberating Jerusalem and Palestine with blood and spirit. It was played over and over in Likud election commercials, and it was supremely effective. Israelis concluded that we had given sizeable chunks of land, and gotten nothing that could be called "peace" in return. The elections will be determined by a large group of undecided Israelis who do not identify with the right or the left. They are watching the Palestinians to see what the nature of the proffered peace will be. The Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian people can get Bibi Netanyahu reelected again by bombs and scary rhetoric, or they can convince these undecided Israelis to give peace a chance. The attitude of the Palestinians to the peace process will likewise be determined by what Israelis do. The people who lose their homes, the people who suffer from the curfew, the people who lose their land will not easily forget. They don’t want to wait for the election campaign to be over. They will get little comfort from the notion that Defense Minister Mordehai is a ‘moderate,’ or that he may have prevented even wilder actions contemplated by Bibi. The little girl who no longer has a roof over her head does not know which government did this to her. To here, we Israelis did it. This is what the ‘peace process’ means to these people. These are ‘facts on the ground’ even more important and damaging to peace than by-pass roads and new settlements. The Likud government is establishing these ‘facts’ every day. Facts that are bad for peace and bad for Israel. Yet the opposition is strangely silent. Ami Isseroff Rehovot New Feature - Peace Resources PEACE is preparing a survey of Mid-East peace resources, beginning with a listing of dialog groups we have posted at www.ariga.com/peacewatch/dialogs.htm More Israeli election commentary at www.ariga.com. Mid-East News Service - In Depth Background on Regional Issues |
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| Copyright 1998 by the
authors and the PEACE group. May be reproduced intact provided that credit is given to the
authors, and to the PEACE Mid-East Dialog Group, including addresses listed at the
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