MK Vilan: Unite Meretz and Labor

Our Israeli khaver, Avshalom (Abu) Vilan, MK, has released a bombshell in calling for his own Meretz party to merge with Labor. Not unexpectedly, this has not made him popular within the Meretz Knesset caucus. Abu may have had the misfortune of being a premature prophet. He also may have committed a tactical error in raising this publicly at this time, especially with Labor looking so weak in the wake of the Lebanon war and Meretz seeming to be holding its own. On the other hand, Labor’s weakness may be precisely the window of opportunity needed by Meretz to begin a process that would forge a reinvigorated and unified Zionist left in Israel.

One source reporting on this is Haaretz, Sept. 28. The following is Ron Skolnik’s abridged translation of an article that appeared in Hebrew on Maariv's website:

MK Avshalom Vilan, representative of the kibbutzim in Meretz, is calling for a unification of Meretz and Labor. "Meretz as a party has spent itself and must cease to exist as an independent entity and join up with the Labor Party," Vilan wrote in "HaDaf HaYarok," the kibbutz movement newspaper. According to Vilan, Kadima is a dead horse, and a few khaverim should be brought back from it, and unite forces between [Labor and Meretz] in order to create a single front. "When I look at the political map, we point the way, but we’re not on it." Vilan added: "We’re always right, but always alone and don’t influence processes."


About a month ago, Maariv first publicized the initiative to unify the two parties, which emanated from the kibbutz representatives in the two parties. But that did not diminish the anger this evening when Vilan published his letter. Most of the anger at Vilan came from the members of his party, who are fuming about the initiative.

Meretz faction chair, MK Zehava Galon, sharply criticized Vilan, saying he wasn’t relevant. "Meretz is more relevant than ever. Its necessity is clear, against the background of Labor’s failures in all spheres. But in Meretz there are elements who are not relevant, since they view themselves as a pale appendage of the Labor Party".

The assessment in Meretz was that if there will eventually be any unification between the parties, it will be when the historic remnants of Mapam, the Kibbutz Artzi wing in Meretz, will become part of Labor. "The entire party will not unite with Labor," said a senior figure in Meretz. "Maybe a small part of the Kibbutz Artzi. Meretz will continue to exist, and if Abu wants to leave, he’s invited to do so, and the sooner the better." It should be noted that when Amir Peretz was elected to lead Labor, ex-Meretz Chairman Yossi Sarid claimed that the differences between the parties had blurred, and that a union between them should be sought.

Vilan has been roundly criticized by senior Meretz officials. "Abu needs to cause a provocation so that they know he exists," said a high-ranking party members. "He’s ‘Left-Light’. Whoever was elected on behalf of Meretz and says such a thing is kicking the people who brought him into Knesset". Voices in Meretz also said Abu’s call is "stupefying, just at the time when the Labor Party is in a tough spot and losing the trust of the public, while Meretz is keeping its strength."

Haim Oron, the senior representative of the kibbutzim in Meretz, who is very popular in the party, said this is not the time to deal with the next elections. "I don’t understand why Abu is bringing up this issue at this time and what he wants. It doesn’t make sense… The last elections and recent events proved that Meretz is a stable element that talks about peace moves and changing social priorities. That’s the job of Meretz. When the political picture becomes more clear, we’ll discuss options," said Oron.

Baskin: Sad Story of Sam Bahour

Lilly Rivlin, Meretz USA’s president, writes: This makes me mad.... We have been in denial too long. One of the most important sections in the article below is "We Israelis should be interested in keeping Sam Bahour and the thousands of others like Sam as our neighbors in the West Bank. The chances for building real peace increase when people like Sam Bahour can be our neighbor. Shame on any government of Israel that would force people like Sam to leave."
If you have anyone you can lobby, this seems like a good case.

The sad story of my friend Sam by Gershon Baskin, Jerusalem Post Internet Edition, Sept. 25.

I have been spending hours during the past couple of weeks trying to help a friend. Well, he's not really a friend, we hardly know each other.

I have exchanged e-mails with him several times over the past years, and appeared with him once at a conference at Tel Aviv University. I was impressed by his mild manner and his "go-getter" attitude to life.

In a lot of ways he reminds me of myself. He immigrated to this country out of a deep sense of idealism. He felt that he was coming home. He wanted to serve his people, build a life for himself and his family. Like me, he immigrated from the States. He has been living here for years and has scored some real achievements, including making a name for himself in the business world.

His name is Sam Bahour, and he is Palestinian. He came home to Palestine at the outset of the peace process in order to build the new state and make a contribution to peace. He believed in the peace process and he wanted to build his life with his people.

Sam has built a hi-tech company in Ramallah. He's built a small shopping center there too. He has been a central and active part of Ramallah's social and intellectual life.

Sam is all over, always willing to help out, and always willing to meet Israelis because he believes in peace. He has many Israeli friends all over Israel. He even holds an MBA from Tel Aviv University.

The one place where Sam doesn't have Israeli friends is in the Civil Administration - and that's where he needs them more than ever.

WHEN MOSHE Arens was minister of defense in the early 1990s he formed a committee, headed by Prof. Ezra Sadan, to reevaluate Israel's economic policies in the West Bank and Gaza. The Sadan committee recommended, and minister Arens implemented, a major policy change that actually encouraged investors of Palestinian origin to "return" to the West Bank and Gaza in order to invest and to create jobs.

When the peace process got under way after 1993 that policy was further developed and Palestinian expatriates were called on by both the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority to come back to Palestine and build their future while contributing to peace.

That's what Sam did. Only Sam didn't know that Israel would continue to control the population registry, and that he would have to leave the country every three months in order to be able to stay in the country.

But Sam is a law-abiding citizen, and so every three months he left the country in order to get a new three-month tourist visa.

Now everyone knew Sam wasn't a tourist, but everyone has been playing the game of make-believe that he was so he could stay in Ramallah with his wife and children and could continue to manage the successful businesses he has worked so hard to build.

THOUSANDS of people have been playing the same game for years. Sam did apply for family reunification in 1994, before the PA took over. It is also worth pointing out that thousands of Jews live for years in Israel for years on tourist visas without being threatened at all.

At the end of this month, in a few days, Sam will have to leave the country again - but this time he will not be coming back. Someone decided that the charade has to end.

A certain Mr. Gur Lavie, who is in charge of Palestinian population registration for the West Bank, said to me last week: "Let's face it. We all know he's not a tourist."

I said, "That's right, we all know that."

So, said my interlocutor, "let him apply for family reunification."

Brilliant idea! Some 120,000 family reunification files have been opened since 2000, but since the beginning of the intifada in September 2000, the State of Israel has stopped reviewing family reunification files.

The registration officer's response: "That's his problem" - and he is right, it is his problem; but it should be ours too.

NOW IT IS very important to get something straight. Sam Bahour does not want to live in the State of Israel. He lives in Ramallah, and he wishes to continue to live in Ramallah. He too wants to stop playing the charade.

He is not alone. He is one of thousands of Palestinians who have no Palestinian ID issued by the Palestinian Authority, thus, he has no ID approved by the State of Israel. Sam Bahour only has his US passport and that document is no longer useful for getting him permission to live in Ramallah.

The official I spoke to is implementing a policy which is nothing more than a form of ethnic cleansing, but he did not make the decision himself. He is simply a mid-level clerk in a pseudo-government system of control called "the occupation."

One of his bosses made the decision. Since his direct boss is the head of the Civil Administration, it might appear that some brigadier-general made the decision, but Brig.-Gen. Kamil Abu Rukon, the current head of the Civil Administration, did not make the decision. It came from higher up. Abu Rukon answers to Gen. Yosef Mishlev, the coordinator of government activities in the territories, but Gen.

Mishlev also didn't make this decision. It was made by the minister of defense - not Amir Peretz but his predecessor, Shaul Mofaz. It was probably one of the last decisions he made before leaving the ministry. It is possible that Peretz is not even aware of the decision and its impact on tens of thousands of people in the West Bank.

IT IS TIME to end the charade. When I immigrated to Israel they made me a temporary resident. When I was ready I was given citizenship and permanent residency.

Sam Bahour does not yet have a state to become a citizen of, but he certainly should be granted some form of residency that allows him to be the exemplary citizen that he is. We Israelis should be interested in keeping Sam Bahour and the thousands of others like Sam as our neighbors in the West Bank. The chances for building real peace increase when people like Sam Bahour can be our neighbor. Shame on any government of Israel that would force people like Sam to leave.

During the final days leading up to Yom Kippur we should all say sorry to Sam Bahour and correct this injustice to Sam and to thousands of others once and for all. It is the most Jewish thing to do, particularly in the Holy Days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

The writer is the Israeli Co-CEO of IPCRI, the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information. www.ipcri.org .

Soros: Israel & US Blinded by a Concept

Ed: If you are wondering about the Middle East views of George Soros, the politically-engaged Jewish refugee billionaire financier, this article, posted at GeorgeSoros.com and originally published in the Boston Globe (Aug. 31) is for you. He is also the author of a book on this general subject. I would have preferred if he had said a little more on how Palestinian factions have contributed to the current mess, but this perspective closely matches my own.

THE FAILURE OF Israel to subdue Hezbollah demonstrates the many weaknesses of the war-on-terror concept. One of those weaknesses is that even if the targets are terrorists, the victims are often innocent civilians, and their suffering reinforces the terrorist cause.

In response to Hezbollah's attacks, Israel was justified in attacking Hezbollah to protect itself against the threat of missiles on its border. However, Israel should have taken greater care to minimize collateral damage. The civilian casualties and material damage inflicted on Lebanon inflamed Muslims and world opinion against Israel and converted Hezbollah from aggressors to heroes of resistance for many. Weakening Lebanon has also made it more difficult to rein in Hezbollah.

Another weakness of the war-on-terror concept is that it relies on military action and rules out political approaches. Israel previously withdrew from Lebanon and then from Gaza unilaterally, rather than negotiating political settlements with the Lebanese government and the Palestinian Authority. The strengthening of Hezbollah and Hamas was a direct consequence of that approach. The war-on-terror concept stands in the way of recognizing this fact because it separates "us" from "them" and denies that our actions help shape their behavior.

A third weakness is that the war-on-terror concept lumps together different political movements that use terrorist tactics. It fails to distinguish among Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, or the Sunni insurrection and the Mahdi militia in Iraq. Yet all these terrorist manifestations, being different, require different responses. Neither Hamas nor Hezbollah can be treated merely as targets in the war on terror because both have deep roots in their societies; yet there are profound differences between them.

Looking back, it is easy to see where Israeli policy went wrong. When Mahmoud Abbas was elected president of the Palestinian Authority, Israel should have gone out of its way to strengthen him and his reformist team. When Israel withdrew from Gaza, the former head of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, negotiated a six-point plan on behalf of the Quartet for the Middle East (Russia, the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations). It included opening crossings between Gaza and the West Bank, allowing an airport and seaport in Gaza, opening the border with Egypt; and transferring the greenhouses abandoned by Israeli settlers into Arab hands. None of the six points was implemented. This contributed to Hamas's electoral victory. The Bush administration, having pushed Israel to allow the Palestinians to hold elections, then backed Israel's refusal to deal with a Hamas government. The effect was to impose further hardship on the Palestinians.

Nevertheless, Abbas was able to forge an agreement with the political arm of Hamas for the formation of a unity government. It was to foil this agreement that the military branch of Hamas, run from Damascus, engaged in the provocation that brought a heavy-handed response from Israel – which in turn incited Hezbollah to further provocation, opening a second front.

That is how extremists play off against each other to destroy any chance of political progress.

Israel has been a participant in this game, and President Bush bought into this flawed policy, uncritically supporting Israel. Events have shown that this policy leads to the escalation of violence. The process has advanced to the point where Israel's unquestioned military superiority is no longer sufficient to overcome the negative consequences of its policy. Israel is now more endangered in its existence than it was at the time of the Oslo Agreement on peace.

Similarly, the United States has become less safe since Bush declared war on terror.

The time has come to realize that the present policies are counterproductive. There will be no end to the vicious circle of escalating violence without a political settlement of the Palestine question. In fact, the prospects for engaging in negotiations are better now than they were a few months ago. The Israelis must realize that a military deterrent is not sufficient on its own. And Arabs, having redeemed themselves on the battlefield, may be more willing to entertain a compromise.

There are strong voices arguing that Israel must never negotiate from a position of weakness. They are wrong. Israel's position is liable to become weaker the longer it persists on its present course. Similarly Hezbollah, having tasted the sense but not the reality of victory (and egged on by Syria and Iran) may prove recalcitrant. But that is where the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas comes into play. The Palestinian people yearn for peace and relief from suffering. The political – as distinct from the military – wing of Hamas must be responsive to their desires. It is not too late for Israel to encourage and deal with an Abbas-led Palestinian unity government as the first step toward a better-balanced approach.

Given how strong the US-Israeli relationship is, it would help Israel to achieve its own legitimate aims if the US government were not blinded by the war-on-terror concept.

Good News (maybe) plus Bad News (probably)

First, the possible good news, as reported by Gershon Baskin in his Sept. 24 weekly column in the Jerusalem Times:

If the report in today’s Yediot Ahronot is correct, about two weeks ago Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met with a senior official in the Saudi Royal Court. [A JTA bulletin reported official Israeli and Saudi denials.] Israeli Galai Zahal radio is reporting that Olmert met with King Abdallah, who as Crown Prince, initiated a peace deal, today known as the Arab League Peace initiative that called for full Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories in exchange for full peace with the entire Arab World. This report fits in with the initiative of the Arab League to convene a Security Council discussion on the Arab League Initiative. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni made the rounds at the UN during the annual opening of the UN session meeting foreign ministers from all over the world, including from several Arab countries that Israel has no diplomatic relations with. Israel, unfortunately opposed the Arab League plans to hold the Security Council meeting on the peace initiative, but was not successful. Nonetheless, Livni came over very well as a responsible and reasonable Israeli leader truly searching for peace. She held what was reported to be a very productive meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erikat. They apparently spoke about an upcoming summit meeting between Abbas and Olmert. Olmert also commented that he would be meeting with Abbas soon, without any preconditions, however a date has still not been set.

Ed: There is more to this “however,” however, regarding this contention of no preconditions – not to mention that little complication that Abbas must again negotiate with Prime Minister Haniyah (of Hamas) upon the latter’s apparent rejection of a permanent peace with Israel, as Baskin continues:

The Olmert-Abbas summit does appear to have several preconditions to it taking place. Olmert, it seems will not meet with Abbas until Corporal Gilead Shalit is released from captivity and it appears that Olmert is also expecting Abbas to first complete the internal Palestinian negotiations on the national unity government that would recognize Israel. Abbas has made comments over the weekend stating that the new government must recognize Israel, however Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyah has stated that he will never head a government that recognizes Israel. Abbas is back in Gaza to continue the negotiations with Haniyah. In the meantime, Abbas has stated that Fatah leader in prison Marwan Barghouthi and the leader of the PFLP, also in prison in Israel (both convicted of murder) must be included in any prisoner release for Gilead Shalit. Olmert and other Israeli government ministers, including Shimon Peres, have completely rejected this demand.

Ed: The bad news was reported in the NY Times, Monday, Sept. 25, that the first 5,000 soldiers of the reinforced UNIFIL force mandated by Security Council Resolution 1701 have no clear duties nor adequately coordinated its cooperation with the Lebanese Army to safeguard the cease-fire:

They ... cannot set up checkpoints, search cars, homes or businesses or detain suspects. If they see a truck transporting missiles, for example, they say they cannot stop it. They cannot do any of this, they say, because under their interpretation of the Security Council resolution that deployed them, they must first be authorized to take such action by the Lebanese Army.

The job of the United Nations force, and commanders in the field repeat this like a mantra, is to respect Lebanese sovereignty by supporting the Lebanese Army. They will only do what the Lebanese authorities ask.

But even this is unclear. On NPR this morning, correspondent Linda Gradstein reported that Israel is satisfied with the functioning of UNIFIL! We’re entitled to scratch our heads in puzzlement.

Lurie: ‘Good Fence’ now closed

The following is adapted from the column written on Sept. 17 by our khaver, J. Zel Lurie, for the South Florida Jewish Journal. (Readers are reminded that unless explicitly indicated, weblog postings do not necessarily reflect the view of Meretz USA.)

Thirty years ago, the fence between Lebanon and Israel was dubbed “The Good Fence.” Villagers in South Lebanon had been cut off from medical specialists and hospitals in Beirut by the civil war that was raging. They streamed across “The Good Fence” at Israel’s invitation for treatment by medical specialists from Israel’s finest hospitals. They were also permitted to import and export their goods through Haifa’s port.

I recall visiting the fence outside of Metulla in the dry summer of 1977. We found an open-air clinic in an idyllic setting of apple trees manned by a Hadassah group which had come up from Jerusalem for the day. We were accompanied by Rafi, an Israeli-Druse journalist from one of the Druse villages near Haifa. Speaking Arabic to the crowd of women and children who were awaiting treatment, Rafi learned that most were Christian with a few Muslims among them.

In 1982 tanks rumbled across the good fence as Israel invaded Lebanon. For the next 18 years, Israel occupied southern Lebanon. The gate in the fence continued to serve as the pathway to good medicine and good business.

In 2000, when the Israel Army and its allied South Lebanon Army withdrew into Israel, the good fence became the fence that separated good from evil. The Iranian proxy soldiers of the Hezbollah began their harassing attacks across the border almost immediately. On October 7, 2000, Hezbollah soldiers crossed the border and kidnapped three Israeli soldiers. Two were Jews, Adi Avitan and Benny Avraham, One was a Bedouin tracker, Omar Saud.

Perhaps they were killed rather than kidnapped, No one knows for sure. That’s what evil people do. More than three years later, in January 2004, the bodies were returned to their Israeili families together with one live prisoner, a shadowy Israeli business man who had been captured in Qatar by Hezbollah agents.

Hayim Avraham, Benny’s father said on Israeli TV: “For 1,208 days they kept us in the dark about the fate of our children.” That’s what evil people do. In exchange for three bodies and one live crook Israel released over 400 prisoners, most of them Lebanese,

In a recently published remarkable book, Coming Together, Coming Apart, Daniel Gordis describes what he saw on Israeli TV that night in January 2004. He writes: “Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham and Omar Saoud came home today. They came home to a country which is not afraid to cry. Israeli television tonight alternated between coverage of Beirut and the air force base at Ben Gurion airport.”

The Beirut segment, he relates, was filled with joyful, back-slapping released prisoners, with fireworks lighting up the sky and then came “the sickening, endless speech by Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah" in which he intimated the possibility of more kidnappings to exchange for prisoners.

And then the TV cut to the air force base where a quiet ceremony took place, at which people cried, Gordis continues:

I thought about the apartheid accusation a few times tonight especially when the coffin of Omar Saoud, a Bedouin, a career soldier who decided that defending the Jewish state was how he wanted to spend his life, was carried from the plane to the jeep. Six soldiers, three on each side of the coffin, arrayed to carry him one step closer to his final home, four who looked Jewish, one who seemed to be a Bedouin, though it was hard to tell, and one, an Ethiopian. All by the side of Omar Saoud, and then, all saluting him. And then the chief of staff and the bearded IDF chief rabbi, standing at the side of his coffin, saluting him and standing at attention. Quite an apartheid state.

And then the two Jewish fathers standing together and reciting Kaddish. And after the Kaddish, an imam, by the side of Omar’s father, chanting an Arabic memorial prayer, as his mother sobbed and the honor guard stood at attention, along with the prime minister, the president, the chief of staff, and others. So much for the apartheid state.

Two months ago, Sheikh Nasrallah made good on his evil promise. Once again his Iranian proxy soldiers crossed the former good fence and ambushed a patrol of soldiers. Two were abducted and the others killed.

Then the Sheikh got the surprise of his life. Instead of the negotiations he expected, the Israel air force immediately attacked and attacked. They destroyed his entire stock of long-range Iranian and Syrian missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv. They leveled an entire section of Beirut where Hezbollah was centered. They destroyed every bridge leading to Syria, but they couldn’t find the katyusha rockets which were scattered in homes and trucks, Almost 4,000 were fired aimlessly into northern Israel killing 43 residents, 25 Jews and 18 Arabs.

The ground troops did not do as well and a commission of inquiry will find out why. But the month-long war ended with the Lebanese army “invading” their own country and finally occupying southern Lebanon, no longer under Hezbollah control. The Lebanese soldiers will be assisted by thousands of troops, chiefly from Italy and France, under UN command.

And the two kidnapped soldiers are still prisoners awaiting a deal to free them in exchange for Lebanese prisoners, including one serving a life sentence for murdering a Jewish family. Ariel Sharon refused to release him in the 2004 exchange.

We hope the soldiers are alive but we can’t be sure. No third party, including the International Red Cross, has been allowed to visit them.

The good fence will now be a normal border fence. It will be crossed mainly by UN soldiers spending their leaves in Tel Aviv.

On the outskirts of Metulla, on a recent trip to Israel, I found a sign “To the Good Fence.” I drove up a wide paved road to a locked gate. We were the only car on the road. An Israeli soldier standing in the shade watched me as I turned around and drove back to Metulla.

A Rosh Hashana memory

My mother passed away in the early morning of the first day of Rosh Hashana, September 30, 2000. I recall it also as the day following the beginning of the Al-Aksa Intifada, half a world away in Jerusalem. Curiously, my father died virtually to the day that the first Intifada began, December 21, 1987. I've quipped more than once that it's a good thing for the Jews (and I might also add, for the Palestinians) that I have no third parent – e.g., no adoptive parent to supplement my birth parents.

My parents came to this country together with my mother's Tante Elsa, a stately Viennese lady of family lore, in June 1941, virtually to the day that the Germans invaded the Soviet Union and shortly overran their Galician shtetl hometown, Jarownow (the first w is pronounced as a v). Fortunately, rather than being trapped there, they were in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where they stayed from1938 until ‘41, assisting Tante Elsa after she was widowed and forced into exile from Nazi-occupied Austria; they waited there for US immigration visas, while being rejected by all other Western countries.

As the Nazis gathered to conquer Yugoslavia, the US consulate withheld their visas for several weeks, requiring my parents to prove that the countries they'd travel through would give them transit visas – a meaningless delay (inspired on the orders of Under Secretary of State Breckenridge Long), intended to flummox Jews in the hope that they'd be trapped rather than make it to the US. With the help of a travel agent, my father secured letters from several consulates assuring the US that travelers with immigration visas to the US would have no trouble obtaining transit visas.


My parents struggled in a new country, to raise my sister and myself, and to make a living, without the help of their parents. My mother had sisters here, but my father lost his entire family and I never knew my grandparents on either side because of the Shoah. My mother's brothers all made it to Palestine and gave root to three generations, so far, of Israeli sabras.

I've long felt a serious psychological burden as a result of this background, emanating from the greatest crime of the modern era. Given this history, it's been impossible for me to believe in Hashem as a personal god who governs such things, but I have a funny feeling of being sinful in stating this.

My mother spent most of her last decade in decline in Florida, suffering from a worsening dementia. I took her in during her final months, but was not knowledgeable enough to prevent her from dehydrating during a hot spell in May and I saw her through several months at Mt. Sinai and at the Jewish Home and Hospital. Most days, I would see her twice a day, stealing time from work, and grew exhausted. When my sister secured a place for her in a facility near her in northeastern Connecticut, I okayed the transfer. My visits, of course, dwindled to a couple of weekends.

My sister, who is disabled in a wheelchair from MS, visited with her husband every other day. My mother deteriorated quickly and died within about a month of the transfer. I won't say that I'm consumed by guilt over this, but I do feel guilty, and occasionally this feeling hits me in the gut, especially when I recall that she stopped recognizing me.

Being there for her in New York was an exhausting challenge, but her clear sense of appreciation was rich compensation. I cannot but feel that I abandoned her.

I don't know how or if the Jewish tradition sees a death on Rosh Hashana as significant. If I'm not mistaken, there is some mention for such a death occurring on Yom Kippur. But as long as I remember each Rosh Hashana, I will honor my mother's yahrzeit. Le Shana Tova!

A Civil Dialogue About Israel

I went to Amityville, Long Island with trepidation last week, to speak before a left-peace group called “PeaceSmith” (named for the deceased founder of the group, a woman named Smith). The event was filmed for local public access cable TV.

I'm happy to report that the evening came off well. It was interesting to see that the audience included activists who were strongly pro-Israel (more protective of Israel's honor than I am, in fact), as well as critics.

Hany Khalil, the United For Peace and Justice coordinator for Palestinian matters (not his title, but largely his job) turned out to be a reasonable and civil individual. We had a nice ride back to the city on the LIRR. We don't see the world and Israel in exactly the same ways, but if he were more representative of leftist temperaments on this issue, we'd have much less of a problem.

It helped that I didn’t argue against the proposition that Israel has made mistakes or committed wrongs in the past (e.g., in terms of the refugees) and continues to perpetrate wrongs in the present. But I didn’t leave it there; I challenged anti-Israel positions that excuse or fail to recognize ongoing instances of Arab violence, both at the origins of the conflict when Palestinian fighters came close to destroying the Yishuv, before the state was proclaimed and in more recent times.

I challenged Hany Khalil on the fact that the UFPJ does not take a stand for the two-state solution, choosing to be “agnostic” on one state versus two due to the influence of Al-Awda and other constituency groups who oppose Israel’s existence. Hany admitted that the UFPJ will not take such a position because this would shatter its coalition; this begs the question why it has a coalition on an issue tangential to the Iraq war that called the UFPJ into existence.

I was largely insulated on the Palestinian refugees and other contentious issues because I take the position of the Geneva Initiative, which outlines a feasible comprehensive compromise on these and other pressing matters.

If this seems too much of an indulgence, you don’t have to read further, but the following is the text of my opening remarks:

The never-ending saga of Israel at war with and being warred upon by its neighbors has driven me to distraction. The Al-Aksa Intifada years have mostly ended, but now we have a whole new set of images and variables to contend with.

Like all of you, I've been horrified by the scenes of carnage in Lebanon. I've also been heartsick about the dangers and casualties and hardships suffered by one million or more Israelis in the north. I was just there; almost all of my many Israeli relatives live in the north, under the arc of the missiles and rockets. And one young cousin that I know of fought in Lebanon.

I. But now for some encouraging news: I was gratified to hear that Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, acknowledged that their attack on the Israeli patrol on Israeli soil was a mistake or miscalculation. They didn't realize that Israel would react so dramatically. Israel wasn't just reacting to a pinprick attack that left eight soldiers dead and two captured; it was reacting to the strategic threat of 12 to 13,000 rockets and missiles, and the firm belief that Hezbollah is a proxy for Iran; with Iran in their thinking, this becomes a potential life or death struggle for Israel. This is why so much of the Israeli left endorsed the concept of the war. Israel was reacting to aggression and that Israel was ultimately in a life or death struggle with a fanatical anti-Jewish regime in Iran that is intending to go nuclear and threatens Israel's physical existence.

I don't know if all this is precisely true. I don't know if anyone on earth knows if this scenario is totally true, with the exception of Iran's Pres. Achmadinejad and the clerical rulers of Iran. In fact, I'm suspicious of these apocalyptic scenarios, but I know that Jews cannot ignore the possibility of apocalypse because it's happened to us more than once. It happened to us with the Babylonian conquest and exile around the year 600 BCE, it happened in the wars with the Romans in the first and second centuries CE, it happened in Spain in 1492, it happened during the Crusades, it happened in Poland and the Ukraine in the 17th century and it happened when one-third of all Jews in the world were murdered during WW II.

Nasrallah didn't expect this massive Israeli reaction because Hezbollah has gotten away with such incidents before. Every few months, something happens along the border. A shooting, some rockets, an attempted kidnapping. Israel has mostly ignored these incidents, occasionally responding with a local air attack or some artillery fire. this time, because the gov't. of PM Ehud Olmert is very new, Olmert felt provoked and that he could not ignore the provocation, that he had to prove himself as a security-conscious national leader in a way that Rabin or Sharon never needed to.

We all know something of Sharon's past as a general and a politician who engineered the first Israeli war in Lebanon. Considering the results, this should have ended his career. But he didn't want to get involved in Leb. again during his tenure as PM. Olmert, as with Labor party leader and coalition partner, Amir Peretz, his defense minister, wanted to prove themselves as competent on this primary issue of Israeli national life-- the question of security. Instead, they did the opposite, and have almost undermined their tenure in office.

But Nasrallah's statement helps them. It says that Hezbollah was hurt more than they are admitting. And Hezbollah very carefully shapes the message it provides the press; reporters know that they have to be careful not to elicit their displeasure. They have not provided casualty reports. A colleague of mine has heard from an Israeli source that they lost at least 20% of their fighting force, 600 out of 3,000 men. He says the Israelis know this because they have their names, probably because they have their bodies and found identification. I don't know if this true or merely a rumor, but I think it's likely that Hezbollah was badly hurt.

II. The second thing I find enouraging is that Israel has sought international help in dealing with its security. It traditionally never does this. It is kind of a Zionist prime directive that it has the last word in its own defense, because Jewish history proves that relying on international protection is not a good idea. Obviously, this is a sign that it didn't win a decisive victory. But it's also a sign of political maturity and realism.

And Israel won one of its war aims that the Lebanese army returns to the border area to exercise sovereignty within its own territory. If a strengthened (as they say, "robust") UN presence bolsters the Lebanese to keep armed Hezbollah elements away from the border, this is a good thing. The boasts or exhortations from Olmert and Peretz during the war that the IDF would smash or destroy Hezbollah were stupid bravado; it set these two gentlemen up for ridicule and the aura of failure when this was not as deserving as at first sight.

But Israel needs to see itself as having limitations. And the world needs to see this too, not maliciously in looking for vulnerabilities to exploit, but to understand that Israel is a very small country with a tragic past and with enemies who have too often been uncompromising and murderously vicious.

The notion that Israel is the fourth major military power on the planet is a form of flattery in a way, for a Jewish people who have been defenseless at the point of repeated assaults and persecutions for most of two millennia. But it's not true. By any rational analysis, Israel ranks somewhere closer to #10 or 15 in some objective ranking of military powers in the world. But it is a major military power.

An ongoing tragedy of Israel is that so small a country (with no more than seven million citizens) must remain a major military power in order to survive. It pays a high price to do so, with most Israeli men spending three years of their youth as regular conscripts and then one month of each year until their mid-40s in active reserve units and subject to unlimited emergency call-up.

Both Israel and its critics need to see Israel for what it is – a small country, forced into an unnatural situation of being the region's most potent military power. The Israeli habit of over-relying upon force is a reaction to those long centuries of oppression and humiliation. But it's not just psychological; Israel has clear vulnerabilities due to its very small population and its long narrow borders.

III. the third and last bit of encouraging news I heard is the denounciation of the Palestinian habit of blaming all their troubles on Israel. This was a bombshell of a statement by a prominent Hamas activist or official.

The Palestinians had an opportunity for a new beginning with Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in August of last year. James Wolfensohn, the former head of the World Bank who was appointed as US envoy to help facilitate the process of transition, had secured funding to purchase greenhouses left over from the Israeli settlements that were evacuated for Palestinian benefit. The ongoing violence from Gaza, aimed at Israel, has created a situation where these businesses have gone nowhere. Produce prepared for export has surely gone rotten, within the harsh closure that Israel has imposed upon Gaza in reaction.

Just as Mahmoud Abbas has differentiated himself from his predecessor Yasir Arafat, in declaring the Al-Aksa Intifada to have been a terrible mistake, there needs to be an acknowledgment by more Palestinians that armed resistance, which is mostly implemented as attacks on random Israeli civilians, brings them nothing but increased grief. Israel must accept blame for much, perhaps most, of the misery in Gaza (especially now as the IDF rampages thru it) and for the misery in the West Bank. But what rational expectation do Palestinian fighters have for how Israel would react to rockets launched against the town of Sderot, next door in the Negev, continually, since before withdrawal and ever since. Or what do they expect when Israeli soldiers are attacked inside Israel, with two killed and one taken prisoner, a few weeks before and almost exactly parallel to the event that sparked the Lebanon war?

Now, I don't support Israel's harshest tactics. Although I don't support an embargo on US arms assistance to Israel, I would support an end to the shipment of cluster bombs. I hope never to see their use again. It is justified that Israel seek the return of captive soldiers, in Gaza and in Lebanon. Negotiations are clearly the way to go, but probably some exercise of force was necessary to get us to this point.

The Israeli party that my group is affiliated with, the Meretz/Social-Democratic Israel party, is a member of the Socialist International and has pioneered efforts to bring about a two-state solution, such as critical agreements in the Oslo Accords and the non-official document known as the Geneva Initiative. We see an opportunity for getting out of the impasse in the north by reaching out to Syria, to again try for a peace treaty involving renewed Syrian sovereignty on the Golan Heights.

We also hope dearly for a renewed effort at peace with the Palestinians. With Pres. Abbas apparently given the go-ahead by Hamas PM Hasniyah, to negotiate, we hope for progress. But Hamas does have to change its stripes. Meretz does not believe in pre-conditions, but we know from recent history that a final agreement cannot be reached unless the use of violence as a tactic to improve one's negotiating hand is totally eliminated. Meretz is very encouraged by the renewed Saudi/Arab League initiative for peace and would like to see it explored and acted upon.

The Strange Politics of Darfur

Along with my khaver, Arieh Lebowitz, and other friends, I attended New York’s rally in Central Park for Darfur, part of an international day of protest. The following thoughts are based upon an e-mail discussion inspired by this event.

Clearly, there should have been more Christian and African-American involvement and there should be more support from the anti-war movement. I met the UFPJ coordinator of Palestinian issues at an event of my own last Friday (more on this tomorrow); he was busy planning their protest Tuesday at the UN, against Pres. Bush. The only visible presence of the UFPJ at the Darfur event was to advertise their rally.

The Darfur cause makes for some strange moments. I can only guess the real meaning of the Harlem-based Muslim cleric who seemed to warn AGAINST action against the Khartoum regime and indicated the evil role of oil interests at the same time that he opposed genocide in Darfur. Actually, there is some cynical role of oil interests in this affair; the Chinese have been blocking an effective UN role because, according to Thomas Friedman's NY Times column of Sept. 27, "the China National Petroleum Corporation owns 40 percent of the Sudan consortium that pumps over 300,000 barrels of oil a day from Sudanese wells."

Still, I guess that the imam was squaring the circle, articulating the kind of excuses the far left uses for their lack of action on Darfur, at the same time that he was raising his voice FOR the Darfuris. All he needed was to mention the sinister "Zionist" presence in the movement (to my relief, he did NOT) to make his troubling and confusing statement complete.

The Jewish presence was substantial – running the gamut from modern Orthodox yeshiva students to Habonim Dror youngsters in their blue shirts with red lace. Our small group holding Jewish Labor Committee placards drew attention and Arieh was interviewed and quoted by a JTA reporter for his article. Arieh also posted on this blog in May with info on the ideological idiocies of opponents of the Save Darfur/anti-genocide movement.

A strength of the Darfur issue is that it is or should be a unifying cause for Jews, Christians and Muslims, whites and blacks, right-wingers and liberals. Theoretically, Bush and McCain are on our side, as are evangelicals.

One of those who opined on e-mail with me proposed:

a ‘national night of bonfires’. We're all aware that the Janjaweed are killing infants and children by burning them alive on bonfires. If this were happening to white European children, the outcries would be deafening. Where is the outrage?

My response was that white European children were burned in huge numbers during the Holocaust, as were other white Europeans slaughtered in Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Neither episode stirred effective "outrage" until the killings were mostly done. What does this tell us? "Never again" remains a slogan and not a successful rallying cry for action.

I'm struck by how in the first half of the last century, nations mobilized millions of soldiers to slaughter each other but still cannot bestir themselves to find a relative handful of a few thousands – a few tens of thousands at most – to safeguard innocents. (I wrote on this for the New Jersey Jewish News, “While Europe Slept...” – the editor’s choice of title.) It's probably past time for the UN to have its own fairly small, professional standing army available for such emergency situations.

Sneh and Avital: Laborites with ambition

On Sept. 14, courtesy of Meretz USA’s ally, Ameinu (formerly the Labor Zionist Alliance), I attended a lunch-time meeting with MK Ephraim Sneh, the head of the Labor party faction in the Knesset. He is also a retired IDF general. My impression is that he has good values on social and economic matters, but is too rigid for my taste on security and peace issues. Along with a number of others, he must be regarded as a contender for the party leadership, now that Amir Peretz has been wounded by the Lebanon War.

By the way, he regards the war as a success — not a “smashing one,” yet a victory nevertheless. At the same time, he sees a “second round” as inevitable, because he sees Lebanon as having really been a proxy war with Iran but does not know where and how the next round will be fought – whether in Lebanon or elsewhere.

His priorities for Israel are threefold:
1) To close the “Palestinian file” – to end the conflict with the Palestinians by making a deal with Abbas. At the same time, and in a way that seems contradictory to this end, he favors continuing the boycott of Hamas. But – very much in line with Rabin’s thinking – as Rabin proclaimed in a gathering I attended with visiting foreign Zionists at the Knesset in the summer of 1995 – both envisioned that Israel’s chief security concern was/is the looming danger of Iran.
2) To rebuild the social services network, which Netanyahu’s budgetary policies have destroyed. A man of commanding presence, somewhere in his 60s, who likes to charm American audiences with a sprinkling of Yiddish and Yiddishkeit, he proclaims that “a country without social solidarity is ‘not Jewish’.”
3) He also declares the necessity to be just and fair to Israeli Arabs, noting that all Israeli governments have stiffed this community, with the limited exception of Rabin’s government in the early ‘90s.

He would like to see a deal with Syria, but is cautious in this regard. He would encourage Syria to cut off the flow of munitions and aid to Hezbollah, to seal its border with Iraq (to curtail the infiltration of terrorists there), and to close Hamas and other terrorist offices in Damascus. But I don’t recall what he would offer Syria by way of payment for these steps, since he explicitly says that he would not trade the Golan Heights for these. Still, he would offer the Golan Heights in return for completely normalized relations.

On the evening of the same day, I attended a program sponsored by the New Israel Fund, which featured Labor MK Colette Avital, a former consul general in New York. She is regarded as a candidate to succeed Moshe Katsav as president of the State of Isreal.

Her charm and diplomatic skills were very much in evidence before a large, friendly and dovish audience. She did not criticize Israel’s conduct of the Lebanon War, but she and her fellow panelist (an official of the NIF in Israel) spoke of the war’s impact as analogous to that of Hurricane Katrina, revealing the deplorable social conditions suffered by Israel’s poorest population in the north, people who could not afford hotels or find relatives to stay with further south and did not have private shelters in their homes.

Israeli-Arab situation in wake of Lebanon

As Prof. Robert O. Freedman indicated (in two postings down) there is an ongoing perception among many Israelis that their countrymen, Arab citizens, are "disloyal" or pose a possible security risk. But there were also some elements of a breakthrough for Arab or Palestinian Israelis toward greater equality and respect. The following is what we recently learned from Mohammad Darawshe.

Our friend from his days at the Givat Haviva Institute, Darawshe has moved on to become director of development for Israel and Europe at the Abraham Fund. A remarkable "change agent" and advocate for equal rights for Palestinian Israelis, he was relatively upbeat in his appearance on September 12, as Meretz USA's guest at Beit Shalom.

Sharing bomb shelters with Jewish Israelis in mixed towns such as Haifa and Acco, and suffering losses where they did not have shelters and sirens (about half of all dead and wounded Israeli civilians were Arab citizens), the country's Arab population attracted an unprecedented amount of sympathetic news media coverage. Darawshe reports that for almost the first time, Arab citizens were presented as individuals with names and faces.

He leveraged this fact to cajole and shame the Jewish Agency and the Israeli government to make unprecedented efforts to include Arab communities in relief services and reconstruction assistance – including the placement of 14,000 Arab children among 40,000 summer camp places funded by the Jewish Agency. Advances are being made for Arab towns to be designated as "frontline" communities for the first time, with the granting of special assistance, equal to that of Jewish localities, associated with that designation

Darawshe indicated that NGOs were working with each other to an unprecedented degree, with partnerships established between the Joint Distribution Committee, the Jewish Agency, the New Israel Fund, Abraham Fund and Givat Haviva. He spoke of "co-existence" organizations becoming more of a "movement" now.

He also spoke of the poltiical dimension, when nine of the twelve Arab Members of Knesset chose not to accept President Assad's invitation to go to Syria (only the three MKs of Bashara's Balad party visited Damascus). Arab community leaders made it clear to them that it would be especially provocative and counter-productive during wartime, for Israeli-Arab political leaders to visit a country allied with Hezbollah. (In his words, the Arab MKs were told to "shut up.")

Mohammad Darawshe's strategy is to use Israel's self-image as a democracy to make it more inclusive and equitable in the treatment of all its citizens. He uses the same formulation as that of the Meretz-Yahad party, that Israel is a Jewish state that must also be the state of all its citizens.

In the Q & A after, he reflected with some bitterness on his efforts in organizing the Arab sector of the population to vote for Ehud Barak in 1999; the Arab voter turnout increased from 63 to 78 percent, with 98 percent of their votes going to Barak. Barak had promised that for the first time there would be an Arab coalition partner in the government, but he immediately reversed himself; and even Meretz, which had insisted that it would not enter into coaltion with Barak without an Arab partner, did not fulfill its pledge. So there is progress, but still a long way for Israeli Arabs to go to achieve full equality.

Israeli Chief Justice Aharon Barak Departs

Another excellent weblog post by Jonathan Edelstein, the Head Heeb, dated Sept. 15, 2006.
>> Arieh

A giant departs
A few months ago, I was asked (among many other things) to name my political heroes. I'm not much of a hero worshiper, but in the end I settled on three: Yitzhak Rabin, Nelson Mandela and Israeli Chief Justice Aharon Barak. At the time, the first of these was a decade in his grave, murdered n the name of ultra-nationalism, and the second had left public life after completing his work. Yesterday, the last of the three stepped down from the bench, with his legacy intact but his work still unfinished.
Aharon Barak is often described as Israel's Earl Warren, and he was that. Under Barak, the Israeli Supreme Court's jurisprudence adopted equality between citizens as a Jewish as well as a democratic value, gave increasing weight to international human rights norms, and issued a series of landmark decisions favoring civil rights for minorities and restricting occupation policies. The Barak Court ruled, along with much else, that the state may not reserve land for Jews only, that the government could not discriminate in granting budget and investment priorities and that the security forces and that foreign workers must be permitted to change employers. During Barak's tenure, the Israeli judiciary came down on the right side of nearly every important civil rights dispute, and on the few occasions when the court was wrong, Barak was almost invariably among the dissenters.
But Barak was more than Israel's Earl Warren. He was also its John Marshall, both in his ability - sometimes to a fault - to command the court, and in his American-inspired conception of judicial review. To be sure, the Israeli Supreme Court has a long tradition of activism, and since the early days of the state, it has shouldered the responsibility of creating a system of fundamental rights in the absence of a single-document constitution. Before Barak, however, the court was hesitant to rule on issues affecting fundamental political questions or the nature of the state. The Barak Court adopted an increasingly broad view of the powers granted to it under the Basic Law: The Judiciary, and extended judicial oversight to political and even security matters. Its ruling that the Israeli security forces are forbidden from using human shields in the West Bank and Gaza, for instance, stands among the very few examples of a national court regulating military tactics on the battlefield.
Barak was, to say the least, not without his critics. On the left, he was castigated for taking years to resolve certain civil rights cases and for not taking a firm stand against the occupation and the settlement enterprise. From the right, his critics accused him of straitjacketing the security forces, interfering excessively in political matters and compromising the Jewish nature of the state with an internationalized post-Zionist conception of human rights. Whether Barak was too activist or not activist enough is in the eye of the beholder, but I believe that most of the criticism of his presidency is substantially misplaced.
Aharon Barak knew, as well as anyone, that a court's power has limits, and that a panel of judges can't singlehandedly solve a political conflict that has resisted half a century of diplomacy. He also recognized that, in the absence of a firm protocol regulating the relationship between the courts and the political branches, the judiciary must be careful in expanding its authority into new areas and respect the authority of the elected government. It was for these reasons that the Barak Court gave the government a chance to resolve social disputes through administrative and legal action before stepping in to rule. It was also this consideration that informed the court's jurisprudence on such matters as the separation wall, in which it chose to render judgments that would actually make a difference rather than issuing grand pronouncements that would only have eroded its moral authority.
At the same time, Barak also realized instinctively that democratic institutions by themselves aren't enough to protect human rights in conflict situations, and that countries in the grip of a conflict are particularly in need of strong oversight by the courts. One of democracy's dirty little secrets is that democratic countries are often little better than authoritarian ones at handling external threats, because the electorate often votes its fears and because time-limited governments think in terms of short-term gains and palliatives rather than permanent solutions. The history of democratic countries in conflict, Israel not least among them, provides all too many examples of excesses driven by nationalism and fear. Preserving human rights and freedoms in these circumstances requires that checks and balances be given precedence over separation of powers, and that the courts not shrink from exercising oversight even where issues have political or security overtones.
I wouldn't recommend many features of the Israeli government as models for other countries. Israel is a functioning state, and there are democracies that have done worse at handling long-term conflicts, but the combined strain of nationalist conflict, corruption and economic adjustment has had a debilitating effect on its politics. Many of the Israeli government's decisions both past and recent - I hardly need to say which ones - have had tragic consequences. The Israeli courts, on the other hand, have with rare exceptions functioned exactly as they should. One has only to compare the Barak Court's jurisprudence with the timidity of the post-September 11 American judiciary to understand what an extraordinary role it has played, and the example it provides for judges in threatened democracies.
Barak's final test will be whether his legacy outlasts him. The work of the Barak Court is necessarily incomplete. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its associated human rights issues are far from settled, and civil rights within Israel proper remain vulnerable to nationalist attack. If anything, the Lebanon war has accentuated the divide between Jew and Arab, rich and poor, center and periphery, and made a strong Supreme Court all the more necessary to protect the rule of law. Dorit Beinisch, who was sworn in yesterday as the court's new president, is a Barak protege and shares his views on human rights and the role of the judiciary, but she may not be able to command the court the way he did or fend off political attacks on its authority.
The mark of a giant, however, is that his work can be carried on by those of lesser stature. Barak leaves a tradition of judicial activism and a decade of accumulated civil rights jurisprudence behind him, and the court countains other judges who have no fear of taking controversial positions or opposing the state. This will not be easy to erode even if a future government is inclined to do so. Because of Barak, the Israeli courts are in a stronger position to protect and advance the rule of law than they would otherwise be. He is one of those who show what Israel can become, and his presence will be felt - and more than that, needed - in the coming years..

Who Won, Who Lost and the Road Ahead Part 2 by Robert O. Freedman

The following is the concluding installment of this essay by Prof. Robert O. Freedman. Readers are reminded that, as with all pieces posted on the Meretz USA blog, opinions are the writer’s and do not necessarily represent the views of Meretz USA unless specified as such. We will post a different view soon on the situation of Israeli Arabs. – R. Seliger

Israeli -Arab Community's Loyalty Is Questioned

Yet another impact of the war is a further weakening of the tie of Israeli Arabs, who form 20 percent of Israel's population, to the Israeli State, and the growing feeling on the part of Israel's Jewish population that the Israeli Arab community is a "Fifth Column" security risk. In a poll reported in the Israeli newspaper HAARETZ on August 24, 2006, 18 percent of the Israeli Arabs polled stated that they supported Hezbollah, an organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel – despite the fact that Hezbollah rockets were falling on Arab towns and villages as well as on Jewish and mixed-population localities.

At the same time, most Israeli Arab Members of the Knesset were vocal in their support of Hezbollah and saw the war against Hezbollah as "unjust." This type of political behavior can only strengthen the position of Israeli politicians such as Yisrael Beiteinu's Avigdor Lieberman and Efie Eitam the National Religious Party-National Union bloc who wish to oust as many Arabs as possible.

Palestinians: The Big Losers

While Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah stated the purpose of his kidnapping operation was to free Palestinian prisoners, as well as Lebanese, such as the terrorist Samir Kuntar who murdered two Israelis, one a four year-old girl, in Nahariyah in 1979, the war worked to the disadvantage of the Palestinian cause. While Palestinian babies are being named Nasrallah and a Palestinian song-writer wrote a song commemorating his "victory", an objective analysis of the war's outcome indicates that the Palestinians have lost badly. First, world attention, the Palestinians' main weapon in their conflict with a militarily superior Israel,was diverted from the struggle in Gaza to the fighting in Lebanon, enabling the IDF to carry out ever more punishing attacks against Hamas and Islamic Jihad operatives in Gaza and the West Bank without much public scrutiny.

Second, Olmert's postponement of the withdrawal of Israeli settlements from the West Bank, and his apparent accompanying unwillingness to take action against the illegal outposts there, is not only a victory for right -wing forces in Israel, it also deprives the Palestinians of the additional land and freedom of movement that would have come with “realignment.” Third, many Palestinians, in my view correctly, feel that Olmert, smarting from his failures in Lebanon, might take out his anger at the Palestinians who don't have the kind of weaponry Hezbollah possessed to challenge the IDF. Meanwhile, the prospects of international help to the Palestinian Authority remain limited so long as Hamas controls the government,and the growing chaos and lawlessness in Gaza, reflected in the 13-day kidnapping of two Fox News journalists, reveals the growing impotence of the Palestinian government.

Were Chances for an Israeli-Palestinian Peace Enhanced?

The Israeli-Hezbollah war appears to have presented Palestinians with a stark choice. Their first option is to form a national unity government with Fatah, accept Israel's right to exist, return the kidnapped Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, and stop firing rockets into Israel. While this would mean a definitive split between the Khalid Mashal wing of Hamas in Damascus, and the Ismail Haniyeh wing in Gaza, such a choice would appear the only way to entice Olmert into peace negotiations, something that would enable him to replace his now abandoned realignment strategy with a new initiative that most assuredly would have the backing of the United States and the European Union.

If Haniyeh either is not strong enough to make such a choice, or chooses not to do so, the prospects for the Palestinians are grim. While they may continue to fire rockets into Israel and hold onto Shalit, there would be increased suffering by the Palestinian people, a continued economic boycott by the U.S. and the EU (if not Russia), and the possible dissolution of the Palestinian Authority that would lead to further chaos in Gaza and the West bank, and a further crack-down by Israel. It will be interesting to see which choice Haniyeh makes.

Israel's Post-war Strategy

In the weeks and months ahead, there are several things that Israel is likely to do. First is the revamping of military doctrine, involving better tank-infantry coordination and the use of the air force, with bunker-busting bombs, for close-in air support of the tank and infantry forces for the almost inevitable next round with Hezbollah – assuming that the new UN force in South Lebanon is no better at stopping Hezbollah attacks than the old UNIFIL was. Second, there must be a total revamping of Israeli air-raid shelters throughout the country. Third, Syria must be put on notice that the next time there is sustained Hezbollah rocket fire against Israel, Syrian cities, first and foremost Damascus, will be put at risk.

Finally, because there was clear Iranian support for Hezbollah during the war – indeed an Iranian-Syrian- Hezbollah command center was established in Damascus – Israel must consider a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities a growing imperative. Without the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon backing them, Hezbollah and Syria would be politically weakened, enhancing Israel's deterrence capability. Given the fact that the Bush Administration is bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is unlikely to launch such an attack, despite its anti-Iranian rhetoric (something which the Iranian leadership understands and hence has stonewalled Western attempts to stop its nuclear enrichment activities), Israel will have to do the job itself. While an Israeli attack is likely to bring Iranian rocket attacks on Israel in response, and Israel must prepare for them, it is far better for Israel to deal with conventionally armed Iranian rockets than with nuclear-tipped ones – something that appears likely in the near future unless the Iranian nuclear enrichment program is stopped.

Dr. Robert O. Freedman is Peggy Meyerhoff Pearlstone Professor of Political Science at Baltimore Hebrew University and Visiting Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. His most recent book is THE MIDDLE EAST ENTERS THE 21ST CENTURY.

Who Won, Who Lost and the Road Ahead by Robert O. Freedman

This is part 1 of a comprehensive analysis on the Israeli-Hezbollah war, by our khaver, Dr. Robert O. Freedman, professor of political science at Baltimore Hebrew University and a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University.

A Hezbollah Victory?

In the aftermath of Israel's month-long war with Hezbollah, there have been an eruption of hyperbolic claims of "victory" by Hezbollah and its supporters. Some, especially in Iran, have gone so far as to claim that Israel's "defeat" in the war means that the Jewish state is collapsing, and that the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which paved the way for the establishment of Israel, is being reversed. The reality, however, is quite different.

To be sure, Israel did not succeed in achieving the two war aims stated by its Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert: the destruction of Hezbollah and the return of the two kidnapped soldiers,Udi Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. Nonetheless, the war ended with Israeli forces occupying Hezbollah territory in Southern Lebanon, where they have been blowing up Hezbollah bunkers and underground storage facilities, not Hezbollah occupying Israeli territory. In addition, while Israeli cities and towns were hit by an estimated 3,700 rockets and hundreds of thousands of Israelis were displaced or seriously inconvenienced, Lebanon suffered massive infrastructure damage,as Israel sought to prevent the resupply of Hezbollah forces and the movement of the kidnapped soldiers out of the country.

The destruction, which Lebanon's Interior Minister, Ahmad Fatat, termed a "catastrophe" angered many Lebanese, including members of the Shiite community, who complained that Hezbollah, acting as an agent of Syria and Iran, had brought devastation to Lebanon.Indeed, following the war, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was forced to admit that had he known the way Israel was going to react to the soldiers kidnapping, he never would have launched the kidnap operation in the first place. This means that however much Nasrallah may be praised in the Arab world for "standing up to Israel," and no matter how many babies are named Nasrallah or songs are written about him, other Arab states and Iran, may think twice before attacking Israel lest similar devastation happen to them.

Hezbollah suffered other losses as well. Many Hezbollah fighters were killed (the exact number is not known because Hezbollah, unlike Israel, does not release casualty figures) and much of the Hezbollah infrastructure in Southern Beirut was destroyed. Finally, if the admittedly weak Lebanese Army and the international forces to be stationed in Southern Lebanon below the Litani River , as stipulated by UN Security Council Resolution 1701, are sufficiently aggressive---a very big if---Hezbollah may lose the ability to attack Israel from that region as it has repeatedly done since the Israeli withdrawal from Southern Lebanon in May 2000. Similarly, in the case of an Israeli or American attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, an increasingly likely possibility, Hezbollah may be constrained by the international forces and the Lebanese Army from launching rockets against Israel at Iran's behest, thus weakening Iran's deterrent power against Israel.


Israeli Military Mistakes

If Hezbollah can not really be credited with "victory" in the war, neither can Israel, despite Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz's claim that Israel "won on points". Indeed, there has been harsh criticism in Israel for the way Olmert, Halutz, and Defense Minister Amir Peretz managed(or mismanaged) the war. While most of Hezbollah's long range rockets which that had the capability of reaching Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem were quickly destroyed by the Israeli Air Force, the short range missiles that harassed Israeli cities in the north of the country from Kiryat Shemonah to Haifa were not stopped. While it is too early to give a definitive military account of the war--hopefully an Israeli State Commission of Inquiry will soon undertake this task--it appears that five major mistakes were made, which contributed to the failure of Israel to achieve its war aims:

1. A mistaken belief that air power alone would cause Hezbollah to surrender or compel other sectors of the Lebanese population to pressure it to surrender. This misconception may have been influenced by the success of NATO air power in bombing Serbia into submission during the Kosovo war of 1999, and the fact that Halutz was the first Israeli Air Force officer to become Chief of Staff. What was forgotten in this context was that the air attacks in the Kosovo war were backed up by the threat of a massive land invasion, and it appears that was the decisive factor which convinced Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic to surrender.

2. The delay in mounting a major ground offensive. When it became clear after the first two weeks of the war that air power alone was not getting the job done, Israel should have launched a major ground invasion. This was not done until almost the very end of the war, after the cease-fire agreement had been reached at the United Nations(although not yet agreed to by either Lebanon or Israel) and then in a very sloppy manner.

3. Inadequate intelligence. Israeli land forces were apparently not prepared for the extensive underground bunker system which Hezbollah had constructed in Southern Lebanon, or for the advanced anti-tank weaponry which it possessed, and the Israeli Navy was not prepared for the anti-ship missiles which Hezbollah used against one of its patrol boats.

4. Improper training and supply of the reserve forces. Many of the Israeli reserve troops who were mobilized for the war, had not had sufficient training, as much of their time had been spent in police duties in the West Bank, and, until September 2005, in Gaza. Even worse, and probably a case of criminal negligence, there were troops sent into Lebanon without sufficient flak-jackets and even without food and water.

5. Improper preparations for the Hezbollah's rocket attacks. Here there were two problems. First, there were an insufficient number of adequately stocked and prepared air raid shelters, especially in Israeli Arab towns. Second, the Israeli Defense Ministry had not put a high priority on developing a system to stop Katusha rockets. Two explanations have been given for this, one budgetary and the other technological. Thus there were claims that other defense systems had greater priority and that such anti-Katusha systems as the "Nautilus" laser weapon defense system proposed by the American firm Northrop-Grumman were still to be proven technologically.

Polititical Ramifications

While it can be expected that in the near future these mistakes will be corrected (the anti-Katyusha rocket system may take a bit more time to develop), it is an open question whether the team of Olmert, Peretz and Halutz will be trusted by the Israeli people to implement the needed changes. Not only have all three men dropped precipitously in Israeli opinion polls, there are now major disputes within the ruling Kadima-Labor coalition, and within both Labor and Kadima on the conduct of the war.

The RAISON D'ETRE of Kadima, and the platform on which it ran in the recent Israeli elections, was an additional unilateral withdrawal from the West bank, on the model of the withdrawal from Gaza, and the removal of most of the Jewish settlements there in order to consolidate Israel as a Jewish State. This strategy, which Olmert called "realignment" has been so discredited by the Hezbollah war and the Kassam rockets being fired at Israel from Gaza, that Olmert himself, who foolishly had announced mid-way through the war that the conflict would facilitate realignment, announced its postponement so he could concentrate on reconstruction in Northern Israel. In any case, given the almost six billion dollar cost of the war, including $1.3 billion for damage repair, it is questionable where Olmert would have gotten the money for his realignment policy which was estimated at $11 billion.

In addition, members of Kadima have openly questioned Olmert's competence in running the war, although he is relatively safe from the criticism of former Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz who bears much of the blame for the lack of intelligence and training of the IDF so evident in the recent war. Within Labor, the criticism of Amir Peretz is considerably sharper. Former IDF generals such as Efraim Sneh and Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, never happy with the election of Peretz as Labor Party leader, have openly attacked him for his incompetence in running the war, and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has also been maneuvering to regain party leadership. Howerver, Barak's decision to unilaterally withdraw from Lebanon in May 2000 continues to be criticized.

Given their weakened positions within Kadima and Labor, Olmert and Peretz have every reason to keep their coalition together to preclude party leadership votes in case of a new election. Nonetheless, a number of Labor Party members are openly unhappy at the planned budget cuts in social welfare expenditures to pay for the reconstruction in Northern Israel, and this could bring down the coalition. Olmert, of course, has the option of bringing in right-wing parties such as Likud (12 seats) and Yisrael Beiteinu (11) if Labor (19) leaves the coalition. With the realignment plan off the table, there are no ideological barriers for Likud or Yisrael Beiteinu from entering the government. However, whether Likud Leader Binyamin Netanyahu and Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman wish to associate themselves with the "loser" Ehud Olmert, is an open question although they might wish to play a role in the rebuilding of the IDF for which they would take credit in the next Israeli election. To be continued....

Al-Awda: "Jews are our dogs"

Al-Awda is a hardline pro-Palestinian organization that rejects compensation and resettlement outside of Israel and in a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza as a solution for their refugee problem. This is from a left-wing blog by Bill Weinberg, posted 9/02/2006:

Once again, the idiot left delivers up propaganda ammo to the reactionary New York Sun ["Jews Are Our Dogs" by Jospeh Wahed, below, in the Aug. 22 edition of the NY Sun] on a silver platter. Are these claims true? If they aren't, Al-Awda should sue. If they are, Al-Awda should be generally repudiated by the American left. But they won't be. The left seems incapable of grasping that incessant intonation of the "anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism" mantra is utterly meaningless if we fail to oppose real anti-Semitism.

"Jews Are Our Dogs" by Joseph Wahed

A man brazenly shoots his way into the Jewish Federation of Seattle, kills a woman, and wounds four others, three critically. As he opens fire, the alleged assailant shouts, "I am a Muslim and I'm angry at Israel," as if to indicate that his religious affiliation gives him permission to kill Jews.

In a second incident, Mel Gibson, a Hollywood director and actor, is arrested in Malibu on suspicion of drunk driving. He allegedly screams at the officer, "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world," not realizing that nearly all today's wars are Islamic wars. He also asks his arresting officer, "Are you Jewish?"

While Jew hating is not a new phenomena, it has recently become the insult de riguer in many parts of our society. And it isn't just gun-toting rampagers or drunk celebrities — the hatred is evident in the streets. Nowhere is that clearer than in a third recent incident, in which Palestinian Arabs in the streets of San Francisco chant proudly in Arabic and without fear of being castigated, "The Jews are our dogs."

It happened at an anti-Israel demonstration in front of the Israeli consulate in San Francisco on Thursday, July 12, organized by a Palestinian group called Al Awda. The demonstration was loud, boisterous, and passionate. Suddenly, demonstrators began chanting in Arabic "Al Yahud Kelabna," "the Jews are our dogs."

As troubling as it is to hear such sentiment voiced on a street in America, it was even more distressing for me since it conjured up terrible memories of when I was a young boy growing up in Egypt. These memories included Egyptian mobs descending upon the Jewish quarter of Cairo chanting "Al Yahud Kelabna," followed by violence that left some Jews dead and injured and the community dazed.

Egyptian Muslim mobs no longer do this, but only because there is no longer an Egyptian Jewish community to speak of. We once were over 80,000. Today there are fewer than 50 Jews remaining in Egypt, according to one official tally. Indeed, once thriving Jewish communities in 10 Arab countries were likewise cleansed. Today, only about 5,000 Jews remain in the Arab Muslim world, mostly in Morocco and Tunisia. Arab sympathizers blame the creation of Israel, but in reality Middle Eastern Jewry began to deteriorate years before Israel was established.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Egypt was a much more cosmopolitan place than it is today. Whatever the broader ills of colonialism, Egypt under British rule was at least a place where Muslims, Jews, and Christians got along fairly harmoniously. But all this began to change as the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamic group two of the offspring of which are Hamas and Al Qaeda, began agitating against both the British and the Jews.

Along with the rise of Arab nationalism and Arab independence, life for Jews in Egypt and other Arab countries became intolerable. All this started happening years before Israel was established. Within a 20-year period starting in 1945, nearly a million Jews were forced out of Arab countries. Being Jewish was criminalized in Egypt in the late 1940s. Other Arab states such as Iraq, Libya, and Syria, passed similar laws. Jews began facing iron walls of discrimination and harassment by the authorities. Most of us were dispossessed. Our schools, homes, synagogues, businesses, farms, and hospitals, were all confiscated by Arab governments. Our rich, 3,000-year-old culture and heritage was decimated. No trial, no jury, no justice.

The demonstrators in San Francisco last week attacked Jews, not Israel. They did it in Arabic, perhaps thinking that only they would be in on the "joke." They didn't count on a group of indigenous Middle Eastern Jewish "dogs" being present at the counter rally across the street. In Arab culture, dogs are considered filthy, dirty beasts, and negotiating with "dogs" is not an option. Jews were often identified this way because for centuries we were living as a subjected people under the dominant culture of Islam.

We were a "protected" minority living under a religious caste system where we had to wear identifiable clothes, pay a special tax, were not allowed to ride horses, were forced to live in ghettoes, and were subjected to other indignities. Our fortunes fluctuated with the benevolence of whoever was ruling at the time. When the ruler was fair and just, Jews prospered. Otherwise, watch out. Massacres of Jews by Arab Muslims were not unknown. While most people know how European Jews suffered, little is known of the Jews of the Arab world.

Today, the Middle Eastern Muslim world is the most anti-Semitic of any region. Much of their media — television programs, cartoons, editorials — promote the kind of anti-Semitism not seen or heard since the time when Hitler walked the earth. In many mosques, too, throughout the region, religious leaders who are quick to take offense over such matters as cartoons about Islam regularly teach the vilest anti-Jewish defamation.

The effects of this "education" are seen and felt even in San Francisco, where a crowd of young Arab men and women feel perfectly free to chant "Al Yahud Kelabna." As long as Palestinian and other Arab children are taught such dehumanizing hatred of Jews, there is no hope for them, and there is no hope for us. Peace in the Middle East will not come with the next ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, but only when tolerance, compassion, understanding, and respect for religious freedom become the dominant value in Arab society. When Arab young people honestly feel too ashamed to chant about Jews being "our dogs," then there will be real hope.

Mr. Wahed is a co-founder of Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa.

Lurie: Can Palestinians make peace?

The following is another column for the South Florida Jewish Journal by our khaver, J. Zel Lurie:

Cpl. Gideon Shalit was kidnapped by Gaza gunmen, who are probably connected to Hamas, on June 25. Will he be freed before this column appears in print on September 12, two and a half months later? The Egyptian Foreign Minister, whose intelligence service has been the intermediary, says it could happen “in hours or days.”

I don't believe it, The kidnappers are not “normal” terrorists. They will not accept Israel’s promise to release prisoners after Shalit is returned, which was the procedure in previous exchanges. I hope I’m wrong. I hope that Shalit will be freed and Israel will end the killing in Gaza.

While the Israeli and American media and public were occupied with the war in Lebanon, over 200 Palestinians were killed and over a thousand wounded in Israeli raids since the kidnapping on June 25. Not a day goes by without the killing of one to seven Palestinians, some armed, some not.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Jerusalem keeps a careful count. It issues weekly briefing notes which are largely ignored by the media. Its weekly briefing notes for August 23-29 lists 21 Palestinians killed including one woman and two children, and 104 wounded.

In the same week a dozen homemade rockets and three antitank missiles were fired into Israel from Gaza. Two Israelis were injured.

In the same week five Palestinian homes were demolished by the Israeli air force. In three cases the families were warned by phone to get out an hour before the bombing,

The carnage continues while the poor Israeli soldier remains a prisoner. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported on September 6: “Israeli forces killed five suspected Palestinian terrorists in the southern Gaza Strip (today).”

Meanwhile, Bitter Lemons, an Arab-Jewish Internet service run by two veteran peaceniks, Yossi Alpher and Ghassan Katib, revives the question they used to wrestle with years ago: Is peace possible? Can the Palestinians follow the example of Egypt and Jordan and sign a peace treaty with Israel?

Yossi Alpher, the former director of the Jafee Center for Strategic Studies at the Tel Aviv University, takes up the question of the vast difference between the Jewish and Arab narratives.

Jews and Arabs have contradictory histories. The Jewish War for Independence is the Nakba, the catastrophe, to the Arabs. Moreover, the Arabs deny that there was ever a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount/Harim al-Sharif. They call the Jews colonialists, denying them national roots in Jerusalem and in the Land of Israel/Palestine.

Likewise, whether or not the descendants of the circa 750,000 Arabs who left or were expelled in 1948, who now number about four million, will actually return to Israel, “Israel must acknowledge at the level of principle the right of return,” Alpher writes.

He continues: “If the descendants of those expelled in 1948 have, in perpetuity, the right of return, this is because Palestinians’ link to the land is eternal, whereas Jews’ link to the land is not.”

While the last Camp David summit meeting six years ago broke up over the lack of common ground on Jerusalem and the right of return, Alpher says that “a considerable majority on both sides appears today to agree broadly on issues like borders, settlements, security and economic arrangements between Israel and a Palestinian state.”

Agreement on basic issues of borders and settlements in a two state solution is possible, but they will not lead to peace, says Alpher, unless Palestinians can “adjust their narrative to accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state in the Land of Israel/historical Palestine -- and I see little likelihood of this happening in the foreseeable future.”

Alpher concludes with a plea for conflict management instead of conflict resolution. “We should find ways of coexisting with one another and with our conflicting narratives… We can reach partial agreements and solutions. But we cannot truly end the conflict.”

Ghassan Khatib, former Minster of Housing for the Palestine Authority does not disagree. He writes:
“The differences in the two narratives are deep and serious.”

On the Palestinian side, certain narratives need a lot of revision and debate. But the weakness of the Palestinian leadership “restrict the possibilities for debating and revising these narratives,” Katib writes.

He recommends that civil society institutions on both sides try to establish areas of debate on aspects of the respective narratives.

My conclusion from this debate: The Egyptians and Jordanians share the Palestinians view of their history. But they were able to make a cool peace with Israel. The Palestinians have gone the other way and have voted Hamas into office. That leaves the ever-present problem of the large Palestinian minority in Israel as distinct from the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. One out of five Israeli citizens is a Palestinian.

Twenty years ago, the J. Zel Lurie Family Foundation I funded the first bilingual, binational school for Jewish and Arab kids in Neve Shalom/Wahat al Salam, the Oasis of Peace. There are now three others in Jerusalem, the Galilee and Wadi Ara run by Hand in Hand.

I said at the time that a Palestinian state is a far off vision. But Israeli Jews must learn to coexist with the minority of Palestinians who are citizens of Israel. We must educate the Jewish and Palestinian kids together. Each must become fluent in the other’s mother tongue. Each must recognize the humanity of the other. And each must accept the legitimacy of the other’s narrative and live with it in peace and dignity.

September 11 with Gila by R. Seliger

One of my many Israeli-born cousins, Gila, whom I am especially close to, spent a few months with me in New York in the fall of 2001. As it happens, September 11th is her birthday. Family and friends called early that day to express birthday greetings; within a couple of hours,we started getting a different kind of call, communicating their concern.

The train station at Nahariya, the town neighboring her Galilee kibbutz, was struck by a suicide bomber two days before. I remember her tears at the shock of it – undermining her previous feeling that her area was immune from the ravages of the Intifada.

She’s very dovish – more so than I am. After returning home in December, she joined the ranks of Women in Black, protesting the occupation and Tayyush, the Israeli Arab-Jewish group that tries to ameliorate the worst effects of the IDF clamp downs on Palestinians that resulted from the Intifada. And, after voting Labor all her life, she joined Meretz following a campaign visit by Yossi Beilin in 2003.

Almost all of my Israeli relatives live in the north – from Haifa and its suburbs to Gila in the Galilee. She, like they, lived under the arc of Hezbollah’s rocket attacks. Her son was called to active service with his combat reserve unit, returning safely after the final push of the war. She refused to give the IDF his cell phone number, when he was not at home when they called for him; this bought him at least an extra day.

Gila represents for me the hardiness and humanity of what is best in the Israeli experience. I have not located the article I published about Sept. 11th at another anniversary, but the following is what I found from an e-mail that I sent out the day after the attack:

I am just fine. My work location is exactly at the 14th Street line that Mayor Giuliani proclaimed to cut off normal vehicular traffic today, tomorrow, and....?
I'm actually on 13th St. between 5th & 6th Avenues. On the corner of 13th & 6th, one used to have a straight view to the Twin Towers. Now one sees an eerily flattened, hazy vista. And when I came to work today, the area of 14th St., a good two miles or so north of the World Trade Center, was still infested with a veil of stinging smoke.
This smoke followed me home to 98th Street where, although invisible up here, it at least partially stank of this formless stuff.
I did not get to work Tuesday. On an impulse, I clicked on my TV at 8:50 AM to check on the weather. Instead, my cousin Gila (from Kibbutz Kabri) and I were captured by the dramatically evolving terrorist drama. I was emotionally sickened much of that day, but I'm better now.
When the two towers collapsed, Gila came close to panicking that the fire somehow would sweep through Manhattan toward us. I had to assure her that New York buildings are not so flammable. This veteran Israeli kibbutznik was rattled by terrorism in New York, just days after terrorism had struck in Kabri's backyard at Nahariya!
Here's wishing you all a Shana Tova, and a profound hope that God and humankind not let us down in the ways they have in the year now passing.

Meretz Debates Direction: Gal-On vs. Beilin?

Our Israeli colleague, Susie Becher, writes, in the Sept. 7 issue of Ynet News, of a new Arab League peace initiative:

The London-based al-Hayat was the first to report on the plan, which calls for convening an international conference under the aegis of the UN Security Council to launch negotiations between Israel and Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinians with the aim of reaching peace agreements with all three within a year.

But Becher, a member of the Meretz-Yahad party national executive, fears that Israel under Olmert will not respond. Meretz-Yahad chair Yossi Beilin advocates such a conference, which he calls “Madrid II,” after the Madrid conference convened under the auspices of the first President Bush in 1991, which paved the way for the Oslo peace process of the 1990s. Moving toward peace is the one thing that Meretz and others of the peace camp do agree upon, but not the strategies required. The following is most of an analysis that appeared in Haaretz on September 6 (“One big bang was apparently not enough”):

Members of the peace coalition, who gathered for the first time since the end of the war last Thursday in Tel Aviv, harbor an abiding sense of frustration and bewilderment. Anyone who assumed that the bungled administration of the war, the protests that came in its wake, and the passing of Olmert's plan to withdraw from West Bank territories would create a less equivocal "voice of the left" and breathe new life into a political camp that has a difficult time finding itself and its leaders - was disappointed.

Ministers Yuli Tamir and Ophir Pines-Paz of the Labor Party, who used to be leading figures in the peace coalition, did not even show up. In Meretz, strong differences of opinion were voiced between those calling for the wartime leaders to resign – headed by Knesset member Zahava Gal-On – and those claiming there was no need to do so.
The latter group believes that Olmert and Peretz's weakness should now be exploited to pressure them into establishing a new diplomatic initiative, and includes party chairman MK Yossi Beilin and MK Haim Oron.

The executive director of Peace Now, Labor Party member Yariv Oppenheimer, incensed some of those at the meeting when he said they should not call for early elections now.

"If we go into elections against the background of the war," said Oppenheimer, "we will be hit hard. We would bring about the rise of Bibi and Lieberman." Oppenheimer also angered the audience when he came out against the protest of the IDF reservists, calling it an "orange protest" and saying that it was largely a "nationalist political protest" of those who felt "the Israeli army wasn't given the opportunity to win. We mustn't cooperate with them."

"That is a defeatist approach," responded Gal-On. "We must not wait for the results of the commission of inquiry to demand that Olmert and Peretz draw the proper conclusions. Maybe some people are afraid that the people who would replace them would not be from our political camp. But I say to them that this worry is dangerous to us. How can they not see that this is the last opportunity to take control of the agenda and propose an alternative? Large segments of the left are disappointed that Meretz did not take a clear stand against the war. I don't know that it would be worse with Bibi and Lieberman. Because there are two people in power who calmly and coolly failed when it came to making life-and-death decisions. What could be worse than that?"

"Besides which," added Gal-On, "there are other options. An alternative coalition could form for the purpose of governmental continuity. Kadima could select another candidate in place of Olmert. It wouldn't be the first time. In 1974, Golda resigned and Rabin and Peres formed a caretaker government."

The left's bewilderment and confusion was summed up by former MK Mussi Raz, who noted: "Hold on, I want to understand something. If there is a vote of no-confidence, Meretz would vote against it?"

Only five seats

The differences of opinion at the meeting reignited criticism of Yossi Beilin's leadership and the leadership crisis in the left in general. Beilin was not present at the meeting, but he is thoroughly familiar with the criticism voiced by Gal-On, who has already made it clear she plans to run against him for the party leadership. "We're going to call on Olmert to resign, and he's going to resign? You shouldn't forget that we only have five seats," says Beilin, dismissively.

Now, as well, after the death of Olmert's "convergence plan," Beilin believes that Olmert can be made to undertake a diplomatic initiative. This was his approach during the Sharon era, as well. "Olmert is not a lost cause," he says. "He is looking now for an agenda. If he doesn't go in a direction suited to us, we will vote no confidence. I am not afraid of Bibi with his twelve seats taking over tomorrow."

Beilin's sentiments, well known in Meretz, only deepen criticism of his passive brand of leadership. Off the record, party sources say that Beilin is doing damage to the party, because under his leadership the public cannot distinguish between Meretz and Labor. "This is not the leadership of Aloni and Sarid, of strong positions, of diplomatic uniqueness and struggle for human rights. This is a leadership that is dragged into the lap of the consensus. There is a leadership failure here, because on the bottom line, Beilin is a Mapainik. And when he was tested, he became a Shimon Peres. Which is how we found ourselves with five seats."

This criticism doesn't ruffle Beilin's feathers, either. "Maybe it's true," he says, "and by the same token, it may be that if I wasn't me, we wouldn't get even five seats. My type of leadership does not force a position."

Dr. Gary Sussman of the Tel Aviv University School of Government and Policy, a former member of the academic staff of the Economic Cooperation Foundation (the research institute run by Beilin and Yair Hirschfeld) and who has been on the inside of political processes in the Israeli left, claims that Meretz has not succeeded in digesting Beilin, and that Beilin has not succeeded in digesting the party. "It may be that Beilin made a mistake when he left the Labor Party, because his advantage and his strength lay in behind-the-scenes activity. As a party leader, he has a hard time generating power."

In Sussman's opinion, the process that Meretz and the Israeli left has undergone in the past few years has a great deal to do with Ariel Sharon. "Sharon adopted a few parameters of the left and sowed confusion," he says. "Beilin believed that he was all set to put the right wing on the right path. When Sharon demonstrated seriousness with the disengagement, Beilin believed that eventually the process would be bigger than the man, and that it would not end in Gaza. This is largely a passive approach. It caused a loss of self-confidence of a large share of the left, and Beilin is a prime representative of it. It is also part of the approach that has in recent years characterized the left - let others do the work. It is an avoidance of taking responsibility."

Sussman also believes that the left has stumbled across an opportunity to lead, but he is afraid it will again miss the boat, partly due to a leadership problem. "Beilin has good conditions, but I'm not sure he can lead the struggle. On the one hand, there is demand right now for Beilin's approach, because the unilateral paradigm has collapsed. But I'm not sure there is demand for Beilin. After Oslo, the public isn't about to buy the goods from him again. Beilin is the man who is most identified with Oslo."

On the plus side of Beilin's leadership, says Sussman, "at least he is consistent and diligent in his mission. If you take a look at the political landscape, he is still a man of ideas." Beilin himself believes that the political establishment and the left could surprise the public, by effecting structural changes to the system. He of course rejects the notion of going back to the Labor Party, but does see a possibility of MKs from Labor and Kadima making their way into a new left-wing body in which Meretz would form the center.

"How could anyone think of my joining Labor? With whom would I join? With the great social leader [Peretz]? The Labor Party is history. Peretz has turned his back on the two agendas, the diplomatic and the social, and through its long partnership with Sharon, the Labor Party has liquidated itself. The time has come to construct a new framework with people from Labor and from Kadima."