Trees in a Hurricane
By Uri Avnery, 28.10.2000
When a hurricane strikes a forest, every tree is tested. The rotten
ones are uprooted and swept away by the wind, sometimes far away. The
strong ones, those with deep roots in the earth, remain standing.
The Israeli peace forces are being tested now. The winds of war are
blowing. Some peace camp celebrities (alias "Leftists") were uprooted
and blown all the way to the right. Others doubled up, stuttered or
fell silent. But an impressive number of people stood straight and
were counted.
The Israeli media, all of them mobilized for the war propaganda
effort (except for a few remarkable individuals), are having a ball.
It's fashionable now to talk about the "disintegration of the
left". Those poor fellows who are beating their breasts in the style
of Bolshevik "self-criticism" are enjoying the limelight. They weep
pitifully: The left was wrong; There is no partner; Arafat is a
villain; We must rethink everything from the beginning.
Why, for God's sake?
We have said all along that there will be no peace as long as the
Palestinians are not allowed to realize their just demands: to set up
a state of their own with the Green Line as the border between Israel
and Palestine, with Jerusalem as the capital of the two states and
the settlers going home. We have said that the building and
enlargement of settlements, confiscation of land, demolishing homes
and building "bypass roads" all over the West Bank are creating
terrible anger. We have said that if the Palestinians despair of
the "peace process", there will be an explosion. Anyone who took the
trouble over the last few months to read my articles on these pages
knows that I warned again and again that a new - and this time armed -
Intifada was going to break out.
All this is happening now before our eyes. But they say that this
shows the right-wing was right. How's that? Well, when the guns
are firing, logic is the first casualty. Even among some of
the "leftists".
As a matter of fact, there never never was one, unified peace camp in
Israel. Many groups, with quite different backgrounds, opinions and
even temperaments, are active in the field.
One division is between the sentimental and the political wings. To
the former belong people who look mostly inside. What's really
important to them is their moral stance. Somebody once joked that
after every peace demonstration some of them look into the mirror and
exclaim: "My, how beautiful we are!" People mock them as "Yeffei
Nefesh" ("Those who have a beautiful soul") and coined the
phrase "They shoot and weep".
For these, the Palestinians serve more as an object for the
application of the moral ministrations than as an equal partner with
his own personality. Therefore it took them so long to recognize the
PLO, accept the idea of the Palestinian state, agree to East
Jerusalem becoming the capital of Palestine. Such people are liable
to fall down in every serious crisis, such as the Lebanon war
(‘Silence! Shooting is going on!") the Gulf war (Yossi
Sarid: "From now on, let the Palestinians search for me!") and the
present Palestinian war of liberation ("There is no partner!")
The other wing of the peace camp, the political one, to which I
belong, understands that if one wants to make peace with the
Palestinian nation, one has to understand its aspirations, feelings,
fears and hopes (as they must understand ours). Only such
understanding can create the basis for co-existence in this country
and this region. That's why we started our contacts with the
PLO leadership in 1974, that's why some of us have spent untold
hours in conversation with Palestinians from all walks of life.
That's how we were able, ten to twenty years before all the
others, to recognize the Palestinian people, the PLO, the State of
Palestine and its sovereignty over East Jerusalem and the Haram-ash-
Sharif. It's not a matter of love but of historic
reconciliation, without which peace cannot come.
Another difference between the peace forces concerns their domestic
political orientation. The adherents of the first camp have a deep -
even hereditary - attachment to the Labor party. They can mount the
barricades against Sharon and Netanyahu, but find it extremely
difficult to raise their voice when Labor is in power. Labor, after
all, is the "Lesser Evil". We "Don't have Another One".
That's why they break down when it's a Labor party leader
waging war against the Palestinian people.
The other camp has no such problem. We protested when Rabin (and his
chief-of-Staff, Ehud Barak) deported the Islamic activists in 1992,
and we supported Rabin when he signed the Oslo accord a year later.
We voted for Barak, but we fight against him when he becomes the
grave-digger of peace.
The Peace Camp will emerge strengthened from the present test. The
strong will remain strong, the bent will straighten up again. For
those who were uprooted, we shall not shed a tear.
