Uri Avnery
22.11.08
Eyes Wide Shut
THE DAY before yesterday,
two documents appeared side by side in Haaretz: a
giant advertisement from the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the
results of a public opinion poll.
The proximity was accidental,
but to the point. The PLO ad sets out the details of the 2002 Saudi peace
offer, decorated with the colorful flags of the 22 Arab and the 35 other Muslim
countries which have endorsed the offer.
The public opinion poll
predicts a landslide victory for Likud, which opposes
every single word of the Saudi proposal.
THE PLO ad is a first of
its kind. At long last, the PLO leaders have decided to address the Israeli people
directly.
The ad discloses to the
Israeli population the exact terms of the all-Arab peace offer: full
recognition of the State of Israel by all Arab and Muslim countries, full
normalization of relations - in return for Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967
borders and the establishment of the Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as
its capital, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The refugee problem would be
solved by mutual agreement – meaning that
I have said it before: if
this offer had been made on June 4, 1967, the day before the Six Day War, Israelis
would have felt as if the Messiah had arrived. But when it was published in
2002, many Israelis saw it as a cunning Arab ploy to rob
The Israeli government
has never officially reacted to this historic offer. Public opinion and the
media ignored it almost completely, walled in by the national consensus that
there is no chance for peace.
Recently, the old offer
woke up to new life. Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak discovered it suddenly, as if they had found a
treasure in a hidden cave. Tzipi Livni
discovered that it has some interesting points. That is the background to the
blessed initiative of Saeb Erekat’s
“PLO Negotiation Department” to publish the ad.
Israeli public reaction:
nil.
THE PUBLIC opinion poll,
on the other hand, made a deep impression. It cast its shadow over the entire
political arena.
True, there are still 80
days to go before election day, and in
It says that if the
elections were held this week, the Likud would have
34 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, three times more than it has now, and become
the largest faction. Kadima would get only 28 seats,
one less than in the present Knesset. (Explanation: Kadima
would lose many voters, who would return to Likud,
but gain almost the same number from Labor.) The Labor party would come down to
10 seats, half of their present miserable number. Shas
would get the same number, as would the ultra-right Liberman.
Meretz would rise from 5 to 7. (In Yediot Aharonot’s competing poll,
Likud got 32, Kadima 26 and
Labor 8.)
THE DAZZLING ascent of Likud is an ominous phenomenon by itself, but even more
important is the general picture: the bloc of all the parties that support
peace, whether by paying lip service or sincerely (called “the Left”) will
have, according to the polls, 56 seats at most, as against the 64 seats of all
the anti-peace parties combined (called “the Right”).
Meaning: if the election had
taken place this week, the outcome would have been a Knesset devoted to the
continuation of the occupation, the settlements and the annexation. Binyamin
Netanyahu would be Prime Minister and would be able to choose freely between a
dozen possible compositions of the next government coalition.
How did Netanyahu achieve
such a status? After all, 10 years ago he was shamefully thrown out of the
Prime Minister’s office by a public that had decided that they could not stand
him for one more day. No other previous prime minister has attracted so much
opposition, disgust and even loathing.
For several months now Netanyahu
has been behaving like a model pupil. He kept silent when it was right to keep
silent. He acted in a statesman-like manner. And then, like a magician at a
children’s birthday party, he pulled one rabbit after another from his top hat.
Every few days another personality joined Likud with
much fanfare, in a well controlled selection and dosage: Binyamin Begin, a man
of the extreme right and Dan Meridor, of the moderate
right, Assaf Hefetz, former
police chief and Moshe (“Bogi”) Yaalon,
former army chief, and more and more. Big and small stars,
who gave the impression that Likud is now regarded by
everybody as the coming governing party. A
multicolored party, a party of renewal, headed by an experienced and
responsible leader. A party in
which there are many shades of opinion, but which is united by a platform that
says no to withdrawal, no to a Palestinian state, no to
any compromise on Jerusalem, no to any meaningful peace negotiation.
And, of course: no to the Arab peace offer.
Is there a yes? I
almost forgot: Netanyahu proposes an “economic peace” – to ameliorate the
situation of the Palestinians in the West Bank, so that some day in the future,
before or after the coming of the Messiah,
If Netanyahu is elected,
we must expect four years in which we shall not only not
advance toward peace by one single inch, but, on the contrary, the ongoing thrust
of the settlement enterprise will push peace ever further away.
THE FLIGHT of Tzipi Livni, on the other hand, is
not gaining any height. That is another clear conclusion of the polls.
She has had a few months
of grace. When the whole country was mesmerized by the corruption affairs of Ehud Olmert, Livni
looked, in comparison, like a shining white dove. An ideal candidate: also a
woman, also honest, also speaking the language of ordinary human beings, also
one who believes what she says.
But after Olmert’s resignation, corruption disappeared as a central
theme of the elections. So what does Tzipi have to
offer?
She has no overpowering
charisma. She is no orator (and that is perhaps to the good). She does not
excite. She does not appeal to the emotions. She does not touch the heart of
people. She is compelled to rely on rational arguments.
But what is her rationale?
She is a great believer in “peace negotiations”. But “peace negotiations”, like
the “political process”, can easily become a substitute for peace itself.
Livni does not offer an exciting peace message. She does
not draw up a peace proposal of her own. She is “diplomatic” and keeps her
cards close to her chest. No clear solution for
THE SITUATION of the
Labor party is even worse. Much worse. The polls give Labor
10 seats at most, perhaps only 8. The party that in its former incarnations kept
absolute control over the Yishuv and the new state for
44 consecutive years may shrivel in the next Knesset to the status of fifth
largest faction (after Likud, Kadima,
Shas and Liberman.)
No wonder. Like an aging
strip-teaser, the party has dropped all its garments. It has embraced “swinish
capitalism” (a Peres coinage) like the other parties. As far as peace is
concerned, it limps behind Kadima, and sometimes even
tries to outflank Likud on the right. It seems that
its real platform is down to one single clause: Ehud Barak must remain Minister of Defense under whoever will be
the next Prime Minister, Netanyahu or Livni.
It is not an attractive
sight: not only the rats are leaving the sinking ship,
but also the admiral himself: Ami Ayalon, former
commander of the Israeli navy, announced this week that he is leaving the
party. The incumbent 19 Knesset members are squaring up for a fight to the
death over the few remaining “real” seats, competing with each other and with the
handful of new joiners (including the director of “Peace Now”, Yariv Oppenheimer, and the journalist Daniel Ben-Simon).
Ehud Barak is a walking
disaster. But he cannot be removed from the leadership of Labor before the
elections. The party is crawling towards its rout with eyes wide shut.
SEVERAL MEN OF LETTERS,
professors and political consultants, some of them refugees from Labor, have
done something: they got together and announced that they would ally themselves
to Meretz, in order to create a kind of super-Meretz.
They did raise an echo,
but the recent polls still give the reinforced Meretz
no more than 7 seats (compared to the present 5). Not quite a revolution.
Why? The initiators are
well known. They are members of the Ashkenazi elite, like all of Meretz. The public got the impression that instead of the
past and far-past leaders who have left the Meretz
leadership one after another (Shulamit Aloni, Yossi Sarid,
Yossi Beilin, Ran Cohen,
all of them with positive credentials), other people are coming in, good people
but not really different, with the same good but failed slogans. They have no
new message for the new generation, for the Oriental Jews, for the Arab
citizens, for Russian immigrants, for the secular people who want to fight
against religious encroachment.
The active peace groups,
with their young and enthusiastic members, were not invited, so as not to give
the party a “radical” look. In the best case, the renewed party might take a
few seats from Labor. As far as the general picture is concerned, that would be
quite unimportant, since only changes in the balance between the two large blocs
have any real effect. Many new voters must be mobilized.
There is a place for a
new Left party, with a new name, a new spirit and a message of hope, that will do an Obama:
arouse the masses of the young generation, infect them with enthusiasm, promise
real change.
Such an experiment was conducted
just now in the Tel-Aviv municipal elections with astonishing results. A new
election list appeared out of nowhere, the young generation of Tel-Avivians joined it with gusto. It attracted the new voters,
as well as voters who are disgusted with all politicians, people with a green
agenda, people with a social conscience, gays and lesbians, and many others. Hundreds
volunteered for it, their candidate attracted a third of the votes against a
popular incumbent mayor.
Meaning: yes, it is
possible. But it will not happen this time.
BARACK OBAMA will enter
the Oval Office twenty days before the Israeli elections. He has still got a
chance to have a decisive impact on the outcome. Nobody in
If the new President
announces immediately after taking office that he is determined to achieve
peace between
If Netanyahu is elected,
President Obama will be faced with a dilemma: either to
enter into a serious conflict with the Government of Israel, with all the
American domestic implications, or to leave peace in the freezer, like his
predecessors.
The American elections
were important for