Israel tramples talk of peace
For four years, a team from the PLO has met thousands of Israelis to explain the merits of a two-state solution with Palestine. But hardline Israeli defence minister Avigdor Leiberman has moved to gag its leader, reports Ben Lynfield, Foreign Corresponden
RAMALLAH // In the past four years a team from the Palestine Liberation Organisation has quietly met thousands of Israelis to explain the merits of a two-state peace solution to the century-old conflict.
But its work is now in jeopardy after the appointment of the hard right politician Avigdor Lieberman as Israel’s defence minister. The committee was set up by the PLO in December 2012, and is comprised of activists from the organisation and the Palestinian Authority.
It has met about 70 members of Knesset, academics, rabbis, kibbutz dwellers, mayors and even West Bank settlers.
“We decided to address people on the other side directly to explain to them that genuine peace is in the best interests of both sides, so that the public in Israel will influence the government to move towards peace,” says Mohammad Al Madani. Mr Al Madani is head of the Committee for Interaction with Israeli Society and a central committee member of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement. The meetings took place on average several times a week at the Knesset, universities and the homes of Israelis. But last month the defence ministry revoked Mr Al Madani’s entry permit to Israel, making it impossible for him to conduct his meetings there.
And on July 11, the ministry denied the dovish former Israeli minister and Oslo agreement architect Yossi Beilin permission to travel to Ramallah to meet Mr Al Madani.
There was no reason given to Mr Al Madani and Mr Lieberman’s spokesman, Tzachi Moshe, could not be reached for comment.
But the Times of Israel quoted Mr Lieberman as saying at the time of the ban that “a foreign diplomatic official who is trying to intervene in political life in Israel is illegitimate”.
Other reports quoted defence ministry officials accusing Mr Al Madani of orchestrating “subversive” anti-Israel activities and trying to bring about the formation of a new Israeli political party grouping Arab citizens and Jews with roots in Islamic countries.
Mr Al Madani denies trying to orchestrate a new party.
“Regardless of the fact that the Israeli government occupies our land, I still look at the Israeli people as a civilised nation which has its own morals,” he said in his Ramallah office.
“I don’t think they need someone like me to tell them what to do but we know they are misled by their government.”
Mr Al Madani said the government fuelling Israeli fear of Palestinians “is something we have to address”. “We met so many people who are victims of this fear element and we tell them that our security and theirs are intertwined based on a peaceful settlement.
“Whatever they do afterwards in terms of forming a party or not I don’t even know. That’s their own business.’’
He said that “out of meetings with thousands of Israelis, we found the overwhelming majority were peace seekers, peace supporters”.
Mr Al Madani said that often after meetings in the homes of Israelis, participants who had never before met Palestinians offered to organise meetings with their friends so that they could hear the committee’s message. He said Mr Lieberman’s move “can be seen as part of his incitement against Palestinians. He doesn’t want to see Israelis and Palestinians talking together”.
“Lieberman believes that by doing this he will limit our ability to convince Israelis that a twostate solution is in the best interests of both sides.”
But Mr Al Madani, whose office wall is adorned with a poster of Albert Einstein and a picture with the word peace in 31 languages, insists his committee will keep up its efforts despite the ban.
“Meetings will go on. It’s not only me but a team that works on this committee,” he said, adding that two Israeli Jews had recently been added to the committee to make its efforts easier. Mr Al Madani’s family comes from the north of what became Israel, and during the 1948 nakbah – the Palestinian catastrophe that accompanied the birth of Israel – his brother was killed in fighting with Jewish forces.
His father died of a heart attack after hearing the news.
After 1967, Mr Al Madani joined Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement and moved up the ranks, becom- ing close to Arafat and Mr Abbas. The committee was formed in 2012 after Israel tried to block the successful Palestinian bid to be accepted by the UN General Assembly as a non-member observer state encompassing the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
“We were not seeking immediate results from the interaction,” Mr Al Madani said. “We presented the Palestinian narrative and official position on all issues so that the Israeli public would understand who exactly is for peace and who is the radical anti-peace government that we see in Israel.”
“During meetings I raise questions such as, ‘Is there an existential security threat to Israel?’”
“I tell them that the largest Arab country, Egypt, has a peace treaty with Israel. There is peace with Jordan and no one can cross the frontier to fight Israel.
“Iran has a deal with the Americans and others, and there is no reason to think that a war will break out with Iran.
“What is happening in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya proves there is no chance of war against Israel.” He was suggesting that the Arab world is caught up with its own problems and would not make war against Israel.
“So why continue this policy of war at the expense of peace when there is no war on the horizon?”
Mr Al Madani tries to convince his Jewish audiences that their government should not waste the chance to come to an agreement now with Mr Abbas, rather than defer peace to an unspecified time.
“If we don’t make peace during the era of president Abbas, the conflict between future Israeli and Palestinian generations will be worse, more violent than what we’ve witnessed until today,” he said. “Therefore let’s make peace while it’s still possible so that future generations can live in security, stability and prosperity.”
Mr Beilin, the dovish former minister, said: “I’m worried that there is such interference in the activity of civil society in Israel.
“Apparently whoever is doing this finds dialogue a threatening thing. Otherwise, what are they worried about?”
I still look at the Israeli people as a civilised nation which has its own morals Mohammad Al Madani head of the Committee for Interaction with Israeli Society
This month marks five years since a group of young Israelis moved their belongings to the middle of a popular Tel Aviv boulevard to protest at the rising cost of living. What began as an artistic protest – the Israelis set up an entire living room, complete with a television, in the middle of the boulevard – grew rapidly. Within weeks, thousands of Israelis had turned the tree-lined boulevard into a carnival, with people living in tents in protest at Tel Aviv’s skyrocketing rent prices. The international press rushed to cover Israel’s “Arab Spring” movement and discuss how social media organising had arrived in Israel. Five years on, the tent protests mark the death of the Israeli left and the end of any Israeli peace partner.
Liberal Israel supporters warmly embraced the promise of the tent protest movement. Gershom Gorenberg captured the initial popular attitude towards the movement in a piece for the American Prospect, writing: “Israel's summer economic revolt is the sequel to the Arab Spring, both overdue and unexpected … After years of comatose economic politics, anger is in larger supply than awareness of alternatives.” 3 There was genuine hope in the air but that belied the cognitive dissonance that pulsates through Tel Aviv when it comes to the Palestinians.
From the beginning, the tent protest leaders rejected discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While there were small pockets of anti- occupation activists, they were generally pushed out by the majority of protesters who felt they were disenfranchised by economic inequity. Moreover, this small group of activists rejected the Tel Aviv protests to focus on their work with Palestinians. Many of the mainstream tent protesters said that it was their time to demand changes to Israel’s economic structure. Not everything in Israel, they told me, had to be connected to the Palestinian issue. On one level, they had a point, at least at the beginning of the movement. Their protest had begun as a specific civic act directly connected to high rents in Israel’s largest city.
As with most social issues in Israel and Palestine, however, the conflict is never far away. As more and more Israelis joined the protest and encampments popped up in other cities ( including, ironically, in Israeli settlements in the West Bank), it was clear that the conflict could not be avoided. Protest leaders chose the slogan “the nation demands social justice” while maintaining a stubborn resistance to debate the occupation. The irony of demanding social justice while administering and profiting from a military occupation that deprives millions of their human rights seemed to escape most of the protesters.
One criticism that was regularly levelled against the tent protesters was their failure to demand affordable housing for Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank. This week, the Palestinian village of Khirbet Zanuta in the southern West Bank lost a decade-long Israeli court battle. Israeli settlers in the area argued that the village sits on an archaeological site; and soon the military will raze the village.
Similar cases have taken place all over the West Bank, and during the tent protests the plight of these villages was entirely absent from the calls for change. Without jumping too deeply into the mechanisms of the tent protest, five years later we can learn many lessons from this Israeli movement. Despite sending one of its organisers to a Labour seat in parliament, the movement achieved very little. Rents remain out of control in Tel Aviv, and the gulf between Israel’s rich and poor deepens by the day. According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Israel is home to one of the most unequal economies in the developed world.
More importantly, Israel’s right wing, led by politicians such as Naftali Bennett, Avigdor Liebermann and Ayelet Shaked, has nearly taken over the political leadership. At the time of the demonstrations, I wrote that the failure of the tent protesters to confront the occupation of the West Bank and Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians demonstrates that there is no sector in Israeli society that is willing or able to genuinely acknowledge the occupation and pursue peace. Five years on, the absence of a viable Israeli partner for peace is clear.
Across Israel’s political spectrum, the only political constant is continuing the occupation. The mainstream left, which now includes some of the tent protest leaders, has demonstrated a complete unwillingness to take meaningful steps to end the conflict. In the 1990s, the mainstream left included Israelis who appeared to be serious about peace. We know they set up tents to protest at their economic situation and refused to acknowledge their role in the occupation as if it wasn’t their issue.
That is the legacy of the tent protests. They were the ultimate confirmation that there is no peace partner in Israeli society. With a new American president on the way and an international community suffering from grave economic and political instability, this knowledge shouldn’t go unnoticed. For peace to be achieved, outside pressure will have to be exerted on Israel to force it to change course. We can’t rely on Israelis to make the sacrifices by themselves.
The absence of a viable Israeli partner for peace is clear