In the first part of this article published yesterday, I said that when Israeli writer David Grossman warns us that “a peace of no choice” is inevitable and that “the land will be divided, a Palestinian state will arise,” we should not be lulled into false hopes. Grossman’s state is almost certainly as “hollow” as his audience’s idea of peace. He and the other gurus of Israel’s mainstream peace movement, writers like Amos Oz and A B Yehoshua, have failed in their duty to articulate to Israelis a vision of a fair future and a lasting peace.
So what is the way out of the impasse created by the beatification of figures like Grossman? Can we look to other members of the Israeli left for inspiration?
Uri Avnery again steps forward. He claims that there are only two peace camps in Israel: A Zionist one, based on a national consensus rooted in the Peace Now of David Grossman; and what he calls a “radical peace camp” led by ... well, himself and his group of a few thousand Israelis known as Gush Shalom.
The bottom line in any peace for Avnery is the continued existence and success of Israel as a Jewish state. That rigidly limits his ideas about what sort of peace a “radical” Israeli peace activist ought to be pursuing.
Like Grossman, Avnery supports a two-state solution because, in both their views, the future of the Jewish state cannot be guaranteed without a Palestinian state alongside it.
However, unlike Grossman, Avnery not only supports a Palestinian state in the abstract but a “just” Palestinian state in the concrete, meaning for him the evacuation of all the settlers and a full withdrawal by the Israeli Army to the 1967 lines. Avnery’s peace plan would give back east Jerusalem and the whole of the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinians.
Avnery believes that a lasting peace will hold only if the Palestinian state meets the minimal aspirations of the Palestinian people. In his view, the Palestinians can be persuaded under the right leadership to settle for 22 percent of their historic homeland — and in that way the Jewish state will be saved.
Of itself, there is nothing wrong with Avnery’s position. He has taken a courageous stand against the separation wall, facing down Israeli soldiers alongside Palestinian, Israeli and foreign peace activists. But there is a serious danger that, because Palestinian solidarity movements have misunderstood Avnery’s motives, they may continue to be guided by him beyond the point where he is contributing to a peaceful solution or a just future for the Palestinians. In fact, that moment may be upon us.
During the Oslo years, Avnery was desperate to see Israel complete its supposed peace agreement with the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. He believed that Arafat alone could unify the Palestinians and persuade them to settle for the only two-state solution on the table: A big Israel, alongside a small Palestine.
In truth, Avnery’s position was no so far from that of the distinctly unradical Oslo crowd of Rabin, Peres and Yossi Beilin. All four of them regarded Arafat as the Palestinian strongman who could secure Israel’s future.
Now with Arafat gone, Avnery and Gush Shalom have lost their ready-made solution to the conflict. Today, they still back two states and support engagement with Hamas. They have also not deviated from their long-standing positions on the main issues — Jerusalem, borders, settlements and refugees — even if they no longer have the glue, Arafat, that was supposed to make it all stick together.
But without Arafat as their strongman, Gush Shalom have no idea about how to address the impending issues of factionalism and potential civil war that Israel’s meddling in the Palestinian political process are unleashing. They will also have no response if the tide on the Palestinian street turns against the two-state mirage offered by Oslo. If Palestinians look for other ways out of the current impasse, as they are starting to do, Avnery will quickly become an obstacle to peace rather than its great defender.
In fact, such a development is all but certain. Few knowledgeable observers of the conflict believe the two-state solution based on the 1967 lines is feasible any longer, given Israel’s entrenchment of its settlers in Jerusalem and the West Bank, now numbering nearly half a million. It is only a matter of time before Palestinians make the same calculation.
What will Avnery, and the die-hards of Gush Shalom, do in this event? How will they respond if Palestinians start to clamor for a single state embracing both Israelis and Palestinians, for example?
The answer is that the “radical” peaceniks will quickly need to find another solution to protect their Jewish state. There are not too many available:
• There is the “Carry on with the occupation regardless” of Binyamin Netanyahu and Likud;
• There is the “Seal the Palestinians into ghettoes and hope eventually they will leave of their own accord,” in its Kadima (hard) and Labor (soft) incarnations;
• And there is the “Expel them all” of Avigdor Lieberman, Olmert’s new minister of strategic threats.
Paradoxically, a variation on the last option may be the most appealing to the disillusioned peaceniks of Gush Shalom. Lieberman has his own fanatical and moderate positions. to some, particularly in the diplomatic arena, he suggests a formula of territorial and population swaps between Israel and the Palestinians that would create a “Separation of Nations.” Israel would get the settlements back in return for handing over some small areas of Israel, like the Little Triangle, densely populated with Palestinians.
A generous version of such an exchange — though a violation of international law — would achieve a similar outcome to Gush Shalom’s attempts to create a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel. Even if Avnery is unlikely to be lured down this path himself, there is a real danger that others in the “radical” peace camp will prefer this kind of solution over sacrificing their commitment at any price to the Jewish state.
But fortunately, whatever Avnery claims, his peace camp is not the only alternative to the sham agonizing of Peace Now. Avnery is no more standing at the very edge of the abyss than Grossman. The only abyss Avnery is looking into is the demise of his Jewish state.
Other Zionist Jews, in Israel and abroad, have been grappling with the same kinds of issues as Avnery but begun to move in a different direction, away from the doomed two-state solution toward a binational state. A few prominent intellectuals like Tony Judt, Meron Benvenisti and Jeff Halper have publicly begun to question their commitment to Zionism and consider whether it is not part of the problem rather than the solution.
They are not doing this alone. Small groups of Israelis, smaller than Gush Shalom, are abandoning Zionism and coalescing around new ideas about how Israeli Jews and Palestinians might live peacefully together, including inside a single state. They include Taayush, Anarchists Against the Wall, Zochrot and elements within the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions and Gush Shalom itself.
Avnery hopes that his peace camp may be the small wheel that can push the larger wheel of organizations like Peace Now in a new direction and thereby shift Israeli opinion toward a real two-state solution. Given the realities on the ground, that seems highly unlikely. But one day, wheels currently smaller than Gush Shalom may begin to push Israel in the direction needed for peace.
— Jonathan Cook is a freelance writer, based in Nazareth, covering the Middle East since September 2001. He Founded the Nazareth Press Agency in February 2004.
