Israeli opposition to Sharon

[Resistance]

The new found voice of the Israeli left may represent a last hope for peace, writes Ibrahim Nafie

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/662/op1.htm

The Geneva Agreement, reached by prominent Palestinian and Israeli political and intellectual figures outside official channels, has sparked heated controversy in Israel. It appears that the Israeli left is awaking from years of slumber since the aborted Camp David II talks, and the right is not taking this lying down.

The very fact that two groups of Arabs and Israelis could get together and hammer out an agreement of this sort has delivered a powerful blow to the many spurious claims of the Israeli right.

The ripples that are finally moving the stagnant waters of the Israeli left bring to mind the climate that prevailed in Israel at the time of the signing of the Oslo Accords. Then, too, opinion was sharply divided over how to handle the Arab- Israeli conflict. But, just as it seemed the controversy was to be settled in favour of the camp advocating a peaceful settlement a member of the extreme right stepped forward to assassinate Rabin. As of 4 November 1995 the peace process effectively ground to a halt, in tandem with the rising fortunes of the political right in Israel and the rightward shift of the traditional left. 11 September 2001 gave impetus to this trend, to the extent that it seemed that there were no dissident voices left in Israel to counter right-wing bellicosity. Even Labour, under Barak and then Ben Eliezar, began to sound like another mouthpiece for Likud.

Recently, however, such figures as Yossi Beilin and General Amram Mitzna have surfaced to reassert the principles they feel their party had betrayed. Beilin, who had left Labour in order to found a new movement, and Mitzna, forced to resign as Labour leader for being "too moderate," were two of the architects of the Geneva Agreement. They, along with their fellow participants in this effort, have inspired peace activists to action against a government that is relentlessly pushing the region ever closer to the brink of war.