Truth & Consequences

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Israel is slowly clearing the stupor under which it had fallen, in this new worldview, free of illusions, though not free of the US embrace, Israel is faced with difficult decisions, she must not be abandoned by those in Islamiya who have long advocated that israel's rightful place is among it's kin in Islamiya


Olmert: the truth, too late
By Gwynne Dyer


ISRAELI Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was well aware that he resembled the generals who join a peace movement as soon as they retire. “I have not come here to justify my actions over the past 35 years,” he said. “For a large portion of that period, I was unwilling to look reality in the eye.”

Olmert, who has resigned but will stay in office until a new government is formed or an election is called, gave a valedictory interview to the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth on September 29, and said something that no previous Israeli prime minister has said. He declared that if Israel wants peace, it must withdraw from almost all the lands it occupied in 1967. Unfortunately, it’s probably too late.

Not only is it a bit late for Olmert to tell the Israeli public this harsh truth, since he is leaving power now. It’s also too late for Israelis to act on his advice, even if they accepted it, because the situation has changed.

That isn’t Olmert’s own view. What he says is: “We have an opportunity that is limited in time, in which we can perhaps reach a historic deal in our relations with the Palestinians and another historic step in our relations with Syria. In both cases, the decision we must reach is a decision that we have been refusing to accept for the past four decades.”

If Israel wants peace with Syria, he says, it must give back all of the Golan Heights. If it wants peace with the Palestinians, “we must...withdraw from almost all of the (occupied) territories, if not all of them. We will maintain control of a certain percentage of the territories (where the big Jewish settlements are), but we will have to give the Palestinians a commensurate percentage of our land, because without this, there will be no peace.”

Not only that, but Olmert now says that Israel must let go of predominantly Arab East Jerusalem, which the Palestinian Authority wants as the capital of its future state. A “special creative solution” would get around the question of sovereignty over the disputed sacred sites in the Old City.

If Israel had been willing to make such a peace deal in the 1990s, it could have worked, but the only Israeli leader of that era who might eventually have offered such terms to the Arabs was Yitzhak Rabin. Since Rabin was murdered by a right-wing Jewish extremist in 1995, no other Israeli prime minister has been willing to go so far — including Olmert during his two and a half years in power.

But the new reality, which Olmert does not acknowledge, is that no Israeli leader will be free to make that deal in the next five or ten years. It is the right deal to make in Israel’s own long-term interests, but only if the Arab partners can guarantee that Israel will get permanent peace in return for giving back the land. They cannot guarantee that, because they don’t even know if they will survive.

Consider Syria. The old dictator died in 2000 after a mere thirty years in power, and his son still rules there eight years later, but the country is much less stable than it used to be. Many elements in Syrian society have been sharply radicalised by the American invasion of Iraq and the flood of refugees from there. Nobody knows if Syria is heading for a revolution, but the possibility certainly exists.

If there were a revolution in Syria, the winners would almost certainly be Islamists who reject any peace with Israel. So what Israeli leader in the next five or ten years could sell the public on a peace that returned the Golan Heights to Syrian control? A few days of violence in Damascus could turn that peace into a nightmare that sees a hostile Syrian army back on the heights that overlook northern Israel.

In the case of the Palestinians, the Islamists of Hamas are already in control of the Gaza Strip, and there is no single Palestinian authority for Israel to make a peace deal with. The notion of an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement in the current circumstances is purely a fantasy that is maintained to indulge the Bush administration.

Even Egypt, whose peace treaty with Israel is almost thirty years old, is not a reliable partner any more. If there were to be a truly free election in the next five years, the Muslim Brotherhood would probably form the next government — and they have already said that their first act would be to hold a referendum on the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. It would probably be rejected by the voters.

So even if Israeli voters were willing to listen to Ehud Olmert in principle, they would not dare to act on his advice now. Perhaps in time the likelihood of Islamist regimes coming to power in Israel’s neighbours will shrink. Perhaps there will then be a majority of Israeli voters who are willing to back the kind of deal that Ehud Olmert has just outlined. But not this year, not this decade, and probably not this generation.

 

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Notice how this IHT Editorial suggests that Jersusalem can never be compromised on - and note that these charge others with viewing the world through lens of a particular religious belief: Clearly, the enemies of peace between palestinians and Israelis, between jewry and Islamiya are not just in the Middle East, Washingto DC and New York are centers of rejection and an apalling religious chauvanism




Words that came too late
Published: October 5, 2008

Ehud Olmert, Israel's soon to be ex-prime minister, voiced some startling truths last week. He said that in exchange for peace, Israel should withdraw from "almost all" of the West Bank and share its capital city, Jerusalem, with the Palestinians. He also said that as part of a negotiated peace deal with Syria, Israel should be ready to give up the Golan Heights.

It's frustrating that Olmert, who is stepping down as prime minister after being accused of corruption, waited so long to say these things. And it is tragic that he did not do more to act on those beliefs when he had real power.

His statements in a farewell interview with the newspaper Yediot Ahronoth were unlike anything any Israeli political leader had dared to say - at least publicly - before. He also dismissed as "megalomania" any suggestion that Israel should act by itself to destroy Iran's nuclear program.

There always has been far too wide a gap between Olmert's belief that Israel's security and demographic survival depends on a two-state solution and what he has been willing to do to get such a deal. The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, also has not shown enough political courage. The result is that while the two men have been negotiating since the U.S.-led Annapolis peace conference last fall, little progress has been made.

There are, of course, many fraught issues to solve: drawing permanent boundaries that give Israel defensible frontiers and the Palestinians an economically viable state; finding a way for both states to claim Jerusalem as their capital; and compensating and resettling Palestinian refugees in the new Palestinian state.

But Olmert was never willing to take even the tactical steps needed to improve the lives of ordinary Palestinians and give them a real stake in peace: fully freezing the expansion of Jewish settlements and sufficiently reducing the roadblocks in the West Bank that are strangling the Palestinian economy. Although a discredited messenger, Olmert still deserves credit for putting the most sensitive issues on the table and identifying the only viable formula for a peace agreement.

Tzipi Livni, Olmert's designated successor, has been Israel's chief negotiator for the past year. It is unlikely that she will show any candor while she tries to put together a coalition government. But we hope that she takes Olmert's truths to heart. And we hope she is willing to do what is needed to build peace

 

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ISRAEL'S CHOICE
A hard-liner's call for peace
By Uri Dromi Published: October 6, 2008

In a farewell interview he gave to the Yediot Aharonot newspaper on the eve of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert dropped a bombshell. "What I'm telling you now," he said to his interviewers, "no Israeli leader ever said before me: We have to pull out from almost all the territories [in the West Bank], including in East Jerusalem, including in the Golan Heights."

But for those of us who have been advocating these actions for years, his words were not really a bombshell; they simply reveal a coming to grips with reality. In order for Israel to survive as a Jewish and democratic state, the government should not rule millions of Palestinians. It is in Israel's best interests that a viable Palestinian state emerge, a state whose citizens, though forced to give up their dreams of returning to their homes in Jaffa and Haifa, will nevertheless feel that, given the historical circumstances, this was a deal they could live with.

But what was remarkable about this cold, realistic assessment is that it came from the mouth of Ehud Olmert himself.

Thirty years ago, when the Knesset convened to ratify the Camp David accords that were signed by Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel and President Anwar Sadat of Egypt under the auspices of President Jimmy Carter, there was a heated debate. Hard-liners accused Begin of betraying his Greater Israel credo by giving Sinai back to the Egyptians. When the issue came to a vote, 84 Knesset members supported the measure, 19 opposed and 17 abstained. Despite the overwhelming feeling that relinquishing control of Sinai was a tough sacrifice to make, the majority felt that the opportunity to reach peace with Israel's major enemy was not to be missed. Even Yitzhak Shamir, one of the staunchest opponents to any concessions, decided that, rather than saying nay, he should abstain.

Among those who voted against the accords was a young Knesset member by the name of Ehud Olmert. In the recent interview in Yediot Aharonot, Olmert came full circle, praising the courage and leadership that Begin had shown 30 years before.

It seems that Olmert started to change from a right-wing ideologue in the mid-1990s, when he became the mayor of Jerusalem and began to realize that life in this complex region calls for flexibility.

I remember accompanying the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on a visit to the city. We were standing at an observation point facing eastward, to the Judean Desert, when Olmert started explaining to Rabin that Jerusalem needed a ring-road on its east, to ease traffic jams. Rabin dismissed his argument with a smile. We all knew what Olmert had in mind: to physically lock Jerusalem from its eastern side, so that any future partition of the city would be impossible.

But in his farewell words to Rabin at City Hall, Olmert surprised us. These were the days of the Oslo peace process, when Rabin was attacked by Olmert's right-wing colleagues. Yet Rabin and I looked at each other in puzzlement during Mayor Olmert address, as he praised Rabin for the courage and leadership the prime minister had shown by giving peace with the Palestinians a chance. In hindsight, I see that Olmert had already started his transformation.

It's a pity that Israeli leaders can express themselves candidly about the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict only when they are out of office. Maybe Olmert's likely successor, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who is known for her courage, could prove to be the exception.

Instead of trying to form an unstable government, which will be easily paralyzed by its own members, she should call for new elections. Her campaign should be based on Olmert's parting words.

Anyone who wants Israel to be a democracy, predominantly Jewish, should vote for her, realizing that this will mean giving away most of the West Bank and compromising in Jerusalem.

On the other hand, those who vote for the Likud leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, should bear in mind that by not compromising with the Palestinians they will bring about the creation of one, binational state. Then the Arabs, with their higher birthrate, will sooner or later become a majority, thus putting Israel on the horns of the dilemma: Either it loses its Jewish identity in order to remain a democracy, or it remains Jewish, but becomes an apartheid state.

Livni, like Olmert, comes from a hard-line, right-wing family (her father was the operations officer of the underground Irgun movement that fought to establish Israel). If she embraces this path to peace she will win the trust of her countrymen, who like their leaders to be basically tough. If she speaks the truth to the Israeli public, she can win at the polls and go on to lead us in the right direction.

Uri Dromi was the spokesman of the Rabin and Peres governments from 1992 to 1996.

 

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A little too late?
Uri Avnery


At the end of his political career, after resigning from the prime ministership, while waiting for Tzipi Livni to set up a new government, Ehud Olmert said some astounding things in sensational interview to the newspaper Yediot Aharonot — not astounding in themselves, but certainly when they come from his mouth.

For those who missed it, here is what he said:

“We must reach an agreement with the Palestinians, the essence of which is that we shall actually withdraw from almost all the territories, if not from all the territories. We shall keep in our hands a percentage of these territories, but we shall be compelled to give the Palestinians a similar percentage, because without that there will be no peace.”

“...including Jerusalem. With special solutions, that I can visualise, for the Temple Mount and the historical holy places... Anyone who wants to keep all the territory of the city will have to put 270 thousand Arabs behind fences within sovereign Israel. That won’t work.”

“I was the first who wanted to impose Israeli sovereignty on all the city. I admit...I was not ready to look into all the depths of reality.”

“Concerning Syria, what we need first of all is a decision. I wonder if there is one single serious person in Israel who believes it is possible to make peace with Syria without giving up the Golan Heights in the end.”

“The aim is to try and fix for the first time a precise border between us and the Palestinians, a border that all the world [will recognise].”

“Let’s assume that in the next year or two a regional war will break out and we shall have a military confrontation with Syria. I have no doubt that we shall smite them hip and thigh [an allusion to Judges 15:8]... [But] what will happen when we win?... Why go to war with the Syrians in order to achieve what we can get anyway without paying such a high price?”

“What was the greatness of Menachem Begin? [He] sent Dayan to meet with Tohami [Sadat’s emissary] in Morocco, before he even met Sadat... and Dayan told Tohami, on behalf of Begin, that we were prepared to withdraw from all of Sinai.”

“Arik Sharon, Bibi Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Rabin, his memory be blessed...each one of them took a step that led us in the right direction, but at some point in time, at some crossroads, when a decision was needed, the decision did not come.”

“A few days ago I sat in a discussion with the key people in the decision-making process. At the end [I told them]: listening to you, I understand why we have not made peace with the Palestinians and the Syrians during the last 40 years.”

“We can perhaps take a historic step in our relations with the Palestinians, and a historic step in our relations with the Syrians. In both cases the decision we must make is the decision we have refused to face with open eyes for 40 years.”

“When you sit on this chair you must ask yourself: where do you direct the effort? To make peace or just to be stronger and stronger and stronger in order to win the war... Our power is great enough to face any danger. Now we must try and see how to use this infrastructure of power in order to make peace and not to win wars.”

“Iran is a very great power... The assumption that America and Russia and China and Britain and Germany do not know how to handle the Iranians, and we Israelis know and we shall do so, is an example of the loss of all sense of proportion.”

“I read the statements of our ex-generals and I say: how can it be that they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing?”

My first reaction, as I said, was: Good morning, Ehud.

I am reminded of my late friend, the poet who went by the name of Yebi. Some 32 years ago, after dozens of Arab Israeli citizens were killed demonstrating against the expropriation of their lands, he came to me in utter turmoil and exclaimed: we must do something. So we decided to lay wreaths on the graves of the killed. There were three of us: Yebi, I and the painter Dan Kedar, who died last week. The gesture aroused a storm of hatred against us, the like of which I have not experienced before or since.

Since then, whenever someone in Israel said something in favor of peace, Yebi would burst out: “Where was he when we laid the wreaths?”

That is a natural question, but really quite irrelevant. Olmert, who fought all his life against our views, is apparently adopting them now. That is the main thing. Not “Good morning, Ehud” but “Welcome, Ehud”.

True, we said this 40 years ago. But we were not incumbent prime ministers.

True, too, that these things were said and spelled out in detail by many good people, like those who wrote the Gush Shalom Draft Peace Treaty, the Nusseibeh-Ayalon document or the Geneva initiative. But none of them was an incumbent prime minister.

And that is the main thing.

It should not be forgotten: In the period in which these ideas were crystallising in Olmert’s mind, he was allowing the settlements to expand, especially in East Jerusalem.

That gives rise to an unavoidable question: Does he really mean what he says? Isn’t he cheating, as is his wont? Isn’t this some sort of manipulation, as usual?

This time I tend to believe him. One can say: the words sound truthful. Not only the words themselves are important, but also the music. The whole thing sounds like the political testament of a person who is resigned to the end of his political career. It has a philosophical ring — the confession of a person who has spent two and a half years in the highest decision-making office in the land, has absorbed the lessons and drawn conclusions.

One can ask: Why do such people reach their conclusions only on finishing their term of office, when they can no longer do much about the wise things they are proposing? Why did Bill Clinton come to formulate his proposals for Israeli-Palestinian peace during his last days in office, after wasting eight years on irresponsible games in this arena? And why, for that matter, did Lyndon Johnson admit that the Vietnam War has been a terrible mistake right from the beginning only after he himself had brought about the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans and millions of Vietnamese?

The superficial answer lies in the character of political life. A prime minister rushes from problem to problem, from crisis to crisis. He is exposed to temptations and pressures from the outside and stress from the inside, coalition squabbling and inner-party intrigues. He has neither the time nor the detachment to draw conclusions.

The two and a half years of Olmert’s term were full of crises, from the Second Lebanon War, for which he was responsible, to the corruption investigations which dogged him throughout. Only now has he got the time, and perhaps the philosophical composure, to draw conclusions.

That is the importance of this interview: the speaker is a person who stood for two and a half years at the centre of national and international decision making, a person who was exposed to the pressures and the calculations, who had personal contact with the leaders of the world and of the Palestinians. A normal person, not brilliant, not a profound thinker by any means, a man of political practice, who “saw things from there that cannot be seen from here”.

He has delivered a kind of State of the Nation report to the public, a summary of the reality of Israel after 60 years of the state and 120 years of the Zionist enterprise.

One can point out the huge gaps in this summary. There is no criticism of Zionist policy over five generations — but that is something that one cannot really expect from him. There is no empathy with the feelings, the aspirations and the traumas of the Palestinian people. There is no mention of the refugee problem (it is known that he is ready to take back just a few thousand in the framework of “family reunion”). There is no admission of guilt for the disastrous enlargement of the settlements. And the list is long.

The primitive basis of his worldview has not changed. That is made clear by the following amazing statement: “Every grain of the area from the Jordan to the sea that we will give up will burn our hearts... When we dig in these areas, what do we find? Speeches by Arafat’s grandfather, or Arafat’s great great great grandfather? We find there the historical memories of the people of Israel!”

That is utter nonsense. It is totally unsupported by historical and archaeological research. The man is just repeating things he picked up in his early youth, he is simply expressing his gut feelings. Anyone sticking to this ideology will find it hard to dismantle settlements and make peace.

All the same, what is in this testament?

It is an unequivocal and final divorce from “All of Eretz Israel” from a person who grew up in a home over which hovered the Irgun emblem: the map of Eretz Israel on both sides of the Jordan. For him, the Irgun slogan “Only Thus” has turned into “Anything But Thus”.

It gives unequivocal support to the partition of the country. This time, his adherence to the principle of “Two States for Two Peoples” appears much more genuine, not lip service or sleight of hand. His demand for “fixing the final borders of the State of Israel” represents a revolution in Zionist thought.

Olmert has already said in the past that the State of Israel is “finished” if it does not agree to partition, because of the “demographic danger”. This time he does not invoke that demon. Now he speaks as an Israeli who is thinking about the future of Israel as a progressive, constructive, peaceful state.

All this is put forward not as a vision for the remote future, but as a plan for the present. He demands that a decision be taken now. It almost sounds like: Let me continue for another few months, and I shall do it. The unstated assumption is that the Palestinians are ready for this historic turning point.

And he has fixed an Israeli position from which there can be no going back in any future negotiations.

This is the testament of the prime minister, and it is obviously intended for the next prime minister.

We don’t know whether Livni is ready to implement such a plan, or what she thinks about this testament. True, she has lately voiced rather similar ideas, but she is now entering the cauldron of the prime minister’s office. One cannot know what she will do.

I wish her one thing above all: that at the end of her days as prime minister she will not have to sit down and give an interview, in which she, too, will apologise for missing the historic opportunity for making peace.

Uri Avnery is an Israeli peace activist who has advocated the setting up of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. He served three terms in the Israeli parliament (Knesset), and is the founder of Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc