From the vantage point of June 1998, the fact that Mordechai Bar-On
chose to conclude his history of the Israeli peace movement with a
description of the famous September 13, 1993 Rabin-Arafat handshake
on the White House lawn is problematic, to put it mildly. That
moment of psychological breakthrough, the handshake between the two
national leaders who had been demonized by large segments of the
respective opposing community, served as a vivid, graphic
expression of mutual recognition between the two national movements
which had fought over the Land of Israel/Palestine for at least a
century. In Israel, many viewed that moment as the ultimate
vindication, even triumph, of the Israeli peace movement.
Yet nearly five years later, two years into the reign of Binyamin
(Bibi) Netanyahu, the peace process is facing a severe crisis, and
much of the confidence which had been built between Israelis and
Palestinians during the initial phases of the Oslo process has been
undermined.
Despite this incongruity, Bar-an's In Pursuit of Peace; A
History of the Israeli Peace Movement is definitely worth
reading. It is the most comprehensive and inclusive description and
analysis of the Israeli peace movement that has been written to
date.
Dr. Bar-On is not a "new historian" who is reinterpreting the
history of Zionism and the Israeli-Arab conflict. However, he is an
activist/scholar whose own evolution from senior army officer to
Zionist functionary to peace activist makes him particularly
well-suited to write a mainstream history of the Israeli peace
movement.
Before and After 1967
Bar-On's chapter headings reflect the chronological nature of his
approach. In "Zero-Sum: The First Two Decades," he notes that "what
one might generally refer to as 'peace forces' were neither
significant... nor influential... The price Israel was asked to pay
for peace was viewed by most Israelis as too high to be seriously
considered, and the bellicose rhetoric that emanated from Arab
capitals made peace sound unattainable ... " He focuses on three
pioneering initiatives: Uri Avnery and his Ha'olam Hazeh magazine,
Simha Flapan and New Outlook, and World Jewish Congress functionary
Joe Golan's involvement in Florence Mayor Giorgio La Pira's
Mediterranean encounters. He ignores the fact that between 1956 and
1966, much of the small Israeli peace movement's energies was
devoted to the struggle against the military government over the
Israeli Arabs.
"The Debate over Peace Options in the Labor party, 1967-70," and
"Professors for Peace," focus on the 1967 Six-Day War and its
aftermath. Bar¬-On describes the paralyzing post-war euphoria
on the Israeli side, characterized by the creation of the Greater
Israeli Movement, Defense Minister Dayan's famous "waiting for a
telephone call from King Hussein" statement, and Golda Meir's
intransigence. He describes the beginnings of soul searching within
the Labor party and intellectual circles, and his description of
General Secretary Arieh (Lova) Eliav's evolution from mainstream
establishment leader to a gadfly peace activist is of particular
interest.
"Soon after the 1967 war," he writes, "Eliav resigned his post as
deputy minister and received the permission of [Prime Minister]
Eshkol and Dayan to spend half a year exploring the new territories
with the explicit intention of 'learning the problem of the Arabs
of the territories.'" At the end of six months, Eliav reported to
Eshkol that he had "discovered in the territories an evolving
Palestinian nation with all the trappings which make for a
national movement and people." .
In a booklet published in Hebrew in 1968, he wrote that during the
years of struggle between the Zionist movement and the Arabs, "the
nucleus of a Palestinian Arab nation, a twin to the Jewish people
in the Land of Israel, started to appear ... We have to view the
Palestinian nation as an evolving fact," he said, and proposed that
the Israeli government unequivocally declare that if the Arabs were
ready for peace, Israel would be ready to relinquish territory.
"The Arab people must know that we shall never suppress the right
of the Palestinians for self-determination." This was the first
time that such thoughts were uttered by an Israeli leader from the
heart of the establishment. While Eshkol and his successor, Golda
Meir, did not act on them, Eliav eventually developed his ideas in
the influential 1972 book Land of the Hart, formed the Israeli
Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace together with Avnery, Matti
Peled and others in 1975, and became the leader of the pro-peace
Sheli party in 1977.
Bar-On devotes significant attention to The Movement for Peace and
Security, founded by leading Israeli intellectuals, such as
Professor Yehoshua Arieli and Professor Jacob Talmon in 1968, who
wanted to promote a public debate and challenge "the government's
decision not to decide." In June 1969, Arieli said that "We must
seek peace in every possible way, and refrain from taking roads
which may prevent us from achieving peace. Continued occupation
creates a situation which must inevitably corrupt the image of the
society.... "
Unfortunately, Bar-On either ignores or underplays the role of more
radical individuals and groups during this period, such as
Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who warned against the dangers
inherent in prolonged occupation almost immediately after the war,
the small anti-Zionist Matzpen group who became the first Israeli
interlocutors with the PLO, the Siah (New Israeli Left) group that
was active in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and such early
pro-peace political initiatives as Dr. Gadi Yatziv's Ness party in
1969, and Dr. Meir Pail's Moked party in 1974. The reader
frequently has to scour the excellent 85 pages of "Notes" at the
end of the book to find even the slightest reference to them.
A Grassroots Peace Movement Emerges
The chapter devoted to the October War (the 1973 Yom Kippur War),
the accompanying national trauma and the post-war protest movement
initiated by Motti Ashkenazi, sets the stage for the end of the
Labor party hegemony in Israeli politics and the emergence of a
mass grassroots peace movement following Egyptian President Sadat's
visit to Jerusalem in 1977.
The strongest part of Bar-On's book coincides with his own personal
entrance into peace activism in 1978. In successive chapters, he
describes the emergence of the mass Peace Now movement in 1978, the
struggle against the 1982 Lebanon War, the problematic relationship
between the peace movement and the Sephardi Jews, and the peace
movement's reaction to the Intifada. Despite Bar-0n's personal
involvement in Peace Now and the International Center for Peace in
the Middle East, he doesn't shy away from criticism of these two
groups. He also devotes a fair amount of attention to other,
frequently more radical movements, such as Dai La' Kibbush (Enough
of the Occupation), Yesh Gvul (There's a Limit), the religious Oz
Ve' Shalom (Strength and Peace), the East for Peace, the 21st Year,
Gush Shalom (The Peace Bloc), Women in Black and other expressions
of the women's peace movement. His list of interviews (pp. 419-421)
indicates that he spoke with a broad cross-section of activists
from all of these and other movements.
A small though insightful chapter on "The Israeli-Palestinian
Dialogue" sets the stage for the development which led to the
post-Gulf War Madrid Conference in 1991 and the Oslo breakthrough
in 1993.
In his thought-provoking conclusion, Bar-On notes "three peaks in
the development of the Israeli peace movement: the first, during
1978 and 1979, in which peace with Egypt was the focus; the second;
during 1982 and 1983, in which protest against the Israeli military
involvement in Lebanon took center stage; and the third, during
1988 and 1989, when the call for the recognition of the rights of
the Palestinians to self-determination, for negotiations with the
PLO, and for an end to the cruel suppression of the Intifada led a
majority of Israelis to welcome the beginnings of a process of
reconciliation." At its peak, the movement has been able "to
mobilize more than 200,000 participants" in its demonstrations, a
very impressive percentage of Israeli society.
As for the influence of the movement, Bar-On cites Prime Minister
Menachem Begin's comments in 1978 that he was haunted in Camp David
by the image of over 100,000 Israelis demonstrating for peace back
in Tel Aviv and the 400,OOO-member demonstrations in Tel Aviv,
following the massacre at Sabra and Shatila in 1982, which was "a
significant factor in the government's decision to establish the
Kahan Commission of Inquiry that eventually led to the dismissal of
Ariel Sharon as minister of defense. He also cites the remarks of
Dr. Haidar Abdel Shafi, the official Palestinian spokesperson at
the opening of the 1991 Madrid Conference, concerning contacts with
the Israeli peace movement that "opened the hearts and minds of
many Palestinian leaders to the possibility, indeed the
advisability, of a compromise solution."
Three Phases
Bar-On identifies three distinct phases in the Israeli-Egyptian and
the Israeli-Palestinian peace processes. During the first phase,
most of the efforts are undertaken by NGOs and third-party
mediators. In the second phase, official negotiations begin,
accompanied by additional third-party mediation efforts and NGO
activities aimed at "creating popular support for the prospective
conciliation." "In the third phase," he writes, "agreements begin
to take shape on the ground," and "the role of NGOs and third-party
mediators diminishes."
Since "the Oslo agreement and the signing of the Declaration of
Principles between the Israeli prime minister and the chairman of
the PLO have ushered in the third phase," how did we arrive at the
current gloomy state of affairs?
Bar-On's third phase of implementation of the Oslo accords was
based on the premise that both partners to the agreement, the
Rabin-Peres government on the Israeli side and the Yasser
Arafat-led PLO on the Palestinian side would remain in place.
Netanyahu's victory in the 1996 elections undermined the equation.
Apparently we needed four more years of a Labor-Meretz dominated
government to realize the potential of the Oslo accords and to
solidify the Israeli-Palestinian agreement.
Does the Israeli peace movement bear responsibility for the loss?
To some degree, but I believe that the primary responsibility lies
with the political leadership, particularly that of the Labor
party. The 1996 elections were winnable, but all of the pro-Oslo
forces underestimated the alienation felt by many Sephardi Jews in
the poor neighborhoods and the development towns from the fruits of
the peace process, and the general alienation from Israeli society
felt by large segments of the Russian immigrants. And Shimon Peres
and his team ran a poor campaign, making too many mistakes - the
assassination of Yihya Ayyash which produced a wave of Hamas
suicide bombers, the bombing of the Lebanese village of Kufr Qana
which alienated many Israeli Arabs, the removal of Rabin's
assassination from the campaign, a poor performance in the
Peres-Netanyahu TV debate, etc ....
A Lack of Clarity?
So how is the Israeli peace movement confronting the new situation
created by the rise of Netanyahu's right-wing coalition? At a
recent conceptual art exhibition in Tel Aviv entitled Dapei
Yamin (Right-Wing Pages), Professor Moshe Zuckerman filled
a notebook with a searing critique of various right¬wing
manifestations within Israeli society. He then wrote that "the next
few pages will be devoted to the left's response to these
developments," Those pages were totally blank.
This, of course, is an exaggeration.
Yet even Bar-On, following Rabin's assassination and before
Netanyahu's victory, wrote in his conclusion that "the peace
movement appears to the Israeli public, and especially to the
Palestinians, to lack resolve and clarity of purpose."
Today, while Peace Now, Gush Shalom and the new Dor Shalom (Peace
Generation) and other movements are continuing their activities,
most observers believe that the defeat of Netanyahu in the next
elections is the key to a revival of the peace process. Yet the
Israeli peace movements' achievements should not be discounted.
They include the fact that Israeli governmental dialogue with PLO
leaders, once taboo, is now an axiomatic factor in Israeli
politics, even on the right, and the fact that all public opinion
polis consistently indicate that a clear majority of the Israelis
believe that a Palestinian state will eventually be established
alongside the State of Israel.
One methodological problem with Bar-On's book is that it focuses
almost entirely on the Israeli peace activists. It would have been
enlightening to have sought out the views of Israeli politicians,
Egyptians, Palestinians, Americans, etc., as to the impact of the
Israeli peace movement.
The book also contains a number of mistranslations and factual
errors that should have been avoided. For example, Bar-On calls the
influential soul¬searching book Sinh Lochamim, written by
kibbutznik-combatants following the 1967 war "Chats of Combatants."
Anyone looking for the book under that title will be totally
stymied, since it was published in English under the title "The
Seventh Day." As for the origins of New Outlook, he writes that
Simha Flapan and other colleagues went to meet Martin Buber in
1958, and the noted philosopher encouraged them to found a monthly
journal which would "reach out to the other side." Since the first
issue of the magazine was published in July 1957, something is
wrong with chronology.
Despite these and other inaccuracies, this book is a valuable
addition to the library of anyone concerned with the quest for
Israeli-Arab peace.