The Guardian (of Truth)

The Israeli left thought they I had hit rock bottom five years ago. On that late evening in November 1995 when a fellow Jew gunned down their leader and hero, Yitzhak Rabin,, they saw their world fall apart. Not only was the Israeli nation eating itself, it was also destroying the country's best chance for peace. Rabin had signed the Oslo accords with the Palestinians two years earlier a feat only a man with his trusted military credentials could have pulled off. With him gone, the road to peace would be blocked. Now the Israeli left has realised that November 1995 was not the all-time
Low; things can get even worse. As one liberal Tel Aviv commentator put it yesterday, the mood is "a gloomy blend of depression, anxiety and despair".
The immediate source of heartache is grief for what has been a fortnight of blood. They have seen their own people killed, along with a hundred Palestinians, including children. They hate what. Israel is doing to its neighbours and they hate what this war is doing to them: making them the brutal occupier
Once more. But the pain goes deeper than mourning. The Israeli left is depressed to see years of progress reversed. They are shaking their heads in disbelief that Rabin's heir as the soldier turned peacemaker, Ehud Barak, has invited Ariel Sharon into his cabinet. Sharon is not only the man who ignited the current inferno taking a stroll in the most contested piece of real estate in the world he is also remembered by Palestinians and Israelis alike as the villain of the 1982 Lebanon war. That conflict was a defining moment for the Israeli peace movement, not least the Lebanese massacres of Palestinian refugees at Sabra and Shatila which AW' took place under Sharon's nose. After that, Israel's own Kahan commission of inquiry branded Sharon unfit to serve as defence minister. Yet now he is back. The left is depressed to see its own leaders looking like strangers. In a CNN interview on Thursday, Barak's face was a taut, glaring study of fury. "Builshit!' he bellowed to one question, all diplomatic niceties dropped. That same night the Nobel laureate, Robins partner Shimon Peres, appeared before a Jewish audience in London seeking to build support for Israel. Usually Peres is criticised as a naive idealist, dreaming of a Middle East living in hi-tech, e-commerce harmony. But here he was back on a 1970s agenda, arguing that the Jewish claim on Jerusalem was twice as old as the Muslim one and that the Palestinians should be grateful: Israel would give them a state when none of the Arab nations had ever done the same. Even the dreamer Peres has started talking like a Likudnik.
But the root of the lefts dismay lies with the Palestinians. For three decades, Israel's Peaceniks have told their fellow citizens that one day they will have to make a painful compromise and share the land with their neighbours, the Palestinians. For years they were lambasted as traitors, for daring to propose the handover of territory. But slowly, with the election of Rabin and then Barak, they began to win the argument.
This year, for the first time in Israel's 52-year history, a majority had come round to the notion of an independent Palestinian state. At Camp David in July, Barak went even further, proposing the partial handover of East Jerusalem and even agreeing to place the ultra contentious holy sites outside Jewish control. By common consent, this package was the most generous Israel had ever offered: the chances of Barak getting it past Israeli public opinion were slim. Yet even this, the Israeli left now realises, was not enough. Yasser Arafat did not accept it. Instead, say Israel's peaceniks, he returned to a war footing, encouraging this new intifada. For the peace camp this has been a humiliation. The Israeli right had always regarded dealing with Arafat the way Ian Paisley regards talking to Sinn Fein: 'Negotiations are doomed; as soon as things don't go their way, they'll start fighting again.' The left had insisted that, no, Arafat was sincere; he had chosen the path of talks and compromise. Even if the Palestinians don't get their way immediately, said the left, they'll carry on talking. Now the right looks vindicated and the left looks naive.
That's why the Israeli left feels so betrayed by the Palestinians: Barak offered them a fair deal and they have thrown it back in his face. Now the Palestinians will get a rightwing, Likud regime who will give them nothing. To the Palestinians, of course, it all looks very different. Given their starting point that Israel was the historic interloper none of these "handovers" looks much like concessions. After all, Israel should never have been there in the first place. Far from being grateful to receive the West Bank and Gaza, Arafat sees these as merely partial restoration of what should be rightfully his. He is a man who's been mugged and is suddenly meant to be grateful when the mugger offers him 70p for the bus fare home. None of the little enclaves Israel was state and nor was there any point staying at the table: the Americans were in charge and they are on Israel's side.
Given that vast gulf or perception, what hope can there be reconciliation? The Americans hope Arafat will wake up to reality, realise that Barak is his best hope and agree at least to discuss the Camp David deal. Then Barak will persuade; his nation to forget the past two weeks, give him another shot and trust the Palestinians once more. He will then hand over lots of land and spend billions to redress five decades of apartheid-style discrimination endured by the one million Palestinian citizens within Israel's borders. So much for the dream. The better course for optimists may be pessimism. They should assume that Barak is finished and that he will be ejected as soon as elections are called. Sharon or even Binyamin Netanyahu will then take over, elected on a promise of no surrender. But reality will soon impinge, even on them. It will take longer and they will do it through gritted teeth, but a Likud government will eventually have to make a deal with the Palestinians probably the very same package on offer at Camp David in July.
There is a precedent. After all, it was not a Labour PM who returned Sinai to Egypt. but the Likud's Menachem Begin. It was Nixon who went to China. So perhaps it will take Ariel Sharon to share Jerusalem with the Palestinians and to confront and even evict those Jewish settlers from the lands that will finally have to be handed over.
That is a pessimistic sort of optimism, the hope that a peace available three months ago will materialise three, five or 10 years from now. But it may be the, best hope the peace camp, Israeli and Palestinian, have got. These two peoples have no choice but to share the land they both love. Whether they do that ,now or later, with Arafat and Barak or a new generation of leaders, is up to them. But they will do it for it is the choice of life over death.

Jonathan.freedland@guardian.co.uk

Back to:- The Guardian--- Moon Page--- Islamic Page---Home