Uri Avnery:
8.7.00
If Ehud Barak will come back from Camp David without an agreement, he can go straight home.There is no sense in his returning to his office in Jerusalem.
He repeats constantly that he was elected “by the people” in order to make peace. Indeed, thatwas the one task that was on the public’s mind. Everything else was secondary.
But during all his first year in office, Barak has not made one single step towards peace. Notone.
On the contrary, he has destroyed the confidence that the Palestinians initially had in him.He has broken nearly all his obligations towards them. He has intensified the building ofsettlement beyond the record of Netanyahu. Even now he is building “by-pass roads”, whoseonly purpose is to cut off great slices of Palestinian territory and annex them to his”settlement blocs”. The saga of the return of Abu Dis has become a joke. He has not set free thePalestinian prisoners-of-war. He continues to use the old language of war. (For example, henever uses the term “the Palestinian people”, always speaking of “Palestinians” instead. Henever uses the word “peace” in connection with the Palestinians, speaking instead of a”permanent status”.)
Already at the very beginning of his term, his decisions were odd. He took into his coalitionthe Mafdal, the party of the settlers, sworn enemies of peace, and the racist band ofSharansky. He left the Arab parties out. Some saw in this a brilliant machiavellianmanipulation. Today one sees what it was: a stupid gimmick.
The bulk of his secular voters, who shouted on election day “Only Not Shass!” were ready,nevertheless, to have Shass in the government, in order to ensure a big majority for peace.Many (including myself) were ready to pay the orthodox a huge bribe for their support of a peacepolicy. Now it appears that Barak paid them a whore’s reward without getting anything inreturn. As in the old joke, the orthodox sold their grandmother but refuse to deliver thegoods.
Throughout the year, Barak has pampered the settlers, who are spitting in his face now, whiletreating the peace movements with contempt. Now he complains that the streets are floodedwith anti-peace posters without any peace posters in sight. The peaceniks have gone home.(The radical peace movements, like Gush Shalom, who have continued to act in spite ofeverything, were ignored by the so-called “leftist” media, which gave big publicity to everydemonstration of a handful of right-wing settlers.)
The whole strategy of the famous general has come crushing down. He has no government, there isno mobilized force of peace activists, neither is there any confidence that he can bringpeace. There is no enthusiasm for peace, no vision of peace. Barak, too, has no such vision. Hegoes to the summit in order to induce President Clinton to compel Arafat to accept an Israelidiktat, an agreement that no Palestinian can accept. His foreign minister, David Levy, aserial peace-killer, complains that “Arafat wants everything”. “Everything” means all theterritories beyond the Green Line, which constitute a mere 22% of the territory of Palestineunder the British mandate. What Palestinian impertinence!
If the summit comes to nothing, it is clear that Barak will put on Arafat all the blame for thebloody confrontation that will surely follow. What next? Either Barak will invite ArielSharon into a National Unity government, in which Sharon will be dominant and Barak himselfwill be superfluous, or the government will fall and Netanyahu will be elected again. Therewill be no obvious reason for electing a man who has failed in making peace, turned the stateover to the orthodox and empowered the settlers, a Prime Minister who has not succeeded inanything, except a tiny improvement in the economy and the quickly forgotten withdrawal fromSouth Lebanon.
There is, of course, another possibility. Barak can go to Camp David, throw into thewaste-paper bin all the plans he is taking with him and do as Begin did there 22 years ago: Returnall the territories beyond the June 4, 1967 border, dismantle all the settlements and make apeace based on mutual respect between the two peoples and the two states.
If Barak returns from Camp David with such an agreement and exhibits it with courage andconviction, at the helm of a government devoted to peace and including Meretz, the Arabfactions, Amir Peretz, the Center and perhaps Lapid, supported by the United States, all ofEurope and most of the Arab states – he will regain his lost public and get a big majority in areferendum.
But for this, Ehud Barak has to overcome Ehud Barak. Let’s hope he can do this.