ISRAEL

1

Peaceniks' Dilemma

Faced with a war and the Palestinians' implacable hatred,
Israeli doves find themselves mired in paradoxes.

INA FRIEDMAN

Special to The Jewish News

I

t's almost in the nature of
things that wartime is
the heyday for peace
movements. Certainly this is
true in Europe these days.
But in Israel, quite the oppo-
site has happened. And
perhaps in this weird war, in
which the population is
under attack but the army
isn't fighting back, that is
how things should be.

Not that Israel's
"peaceniks" have retreated
into silence. What some of
them have had to say,
however, is almost a collec-
tion of paradoxes. They
begin with the fact that, in
contrast to their counter-
parts in Germany, Italy, and
Spain, the majority in the
Israeli peace camp supports
the war against Iraq, which

has proved a prime threat to
Israel's security.
At a recent news con-
ference such prominent
members of the Center for
Peace in the Middle East as
novelists Amos Oz, A. B.
Yehoshua, and Yael Dayan
even appealed to peace
movements the world over to
back the forces fighting
Saddam Hussein, whom
they characterized as an
"enemy of peace."
The minority view, repre-
sented by a small new
movement called "Dai"
("Enough"), opposes the war
and has claimed, like
leading Palestinian spokes-
men, that it could have
been avoided had Israel
been willing to negotiate a
solution to the Palestinian
problem.
Needless to say, that ap-
proach has not won any real
following in Israel, and
"Dai" is not expected to

make much of an impression
even on the peace camp
itself.
The characteristic of this
war for the "peaceniks,"
perhaps even more than the
scars left on the national
psyche by Saddam's Scuds,
is the utter breach it has
wrought between Israelis
and Palestinians, and
primarily between the
moderate Palestinian
leadership and sectors of the
Israeli Left.
Reports of Palestinians
cheering on their roofs each
time a missile has swooped
down on Tel Aviv and of
Feisal al-Husseini welcom-
ing the Scud attacks as a
"blessing" (which subse-
quently proved to be a mis-
quote) have only aggravated
the tension that has existed
since August, when Saddam
invaded Kuwait and the Pa-
lestinians championed his
cause.

Back then Yossi Sarid, the
sharpest tongue and pen on
the Israeli Left, published an
article washing his hands of
the Palestinians and snapp-
ing that if they were still in-
terested in a dialogue with
Israelis, "Let them come
looking for me."
Last week he reprinted the
gist of that piece, rekindling
the anger of fellow-leftists
who accused him of acting
childishly in taking the Pa-
lestinian attitude so per-
sonally.
"That's not the talk of a
political figure grappling
with problems in a difficult
situation," sniffed freelance
leftist Uri Avneri. "That's
how the hero of a novel
talks."
For the most part,
however, the Left has not
even expressed its anger —
either at the Palestinians or
at Yitzhak Shamir for ex-
ploiting the situation to br-

ing ultra-right-winger and
"transfer" advocate Rehavam
Ze'evi into his government.
Instead, the members of
the movements and parties
lumped together as the
"peace camp" seem to have
hunkered down in their
sealed rooms waiting for the
worst to pass.
Even the Women in Black,
who have demonstrated
against the occupation every
single Friday since the start
of the intifada, have
deserted their post in
downtown Jerusalem — a
barometer of how difficult
the situation is for the forces
advocating reconciliation.
There has been no outcry
from the Left against the
prolonged curfew in the ter-
ritories. The protest against
the administrative detention
of Palestinian moderate Sari
Nusseibeh was little more
than perfunctory. And even

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