The architects of a groundbreaking peace initiative, denounced by Ariel Sharon as akin to treason, are distributing copies of the document to every Israeli home this week in an attempt to exploit eroding public confidence in the government and to force negotiations with the Palestinians.
Three-million copies of the Geneva Accord are being delivered before a ceremony in Switzerland in a fortnight at which former US presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, and Nelson Mandela, have been invited to endorse the fledgling pact.
Sharon’s office refused to accept a hand-delivered copy of the draft agreement, which includes an unprecedented Palestinian renunciation of the right of refugees to settle back in Israel in return for a state on most of the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital. Advertisements urging the public to read the agreement had been banned from the radio but yesterday the Israeli supreme court ordered the broadcasting authority to run the adverts.
The initiative, led by former Israeli and Palestinian cabinet ministers Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo, has been bolstered by a slump in public confidence in Sharon’s ability to bring an end to the conflict and after stinging criticisms of his strategy from the security establishment, including the army chief of staff, who warned that the prime minister was leading Israel to catastrophe.
Beilin said that the mass distribution of the initiative, which will be sent to Palestinians next month, is aimed at building a ”majority that will put pressure on the government from within to change its policy and negotiate seriously”.
”Our task is to convince public opinion and to ask the government of Israel: what is your alternative? Because in reality there are only two options. One is unilateral withdrawal with borders determined by the government, and the other is an agreement like this one,” he said.
Debate about the initiative among Israelis has centred on Beilin’s credibility as the initiator of the failed Oslo peace accords and whether the Jewish negotiators are committing a form of treason by talking to the Palestinians. Some members of Sharon’s Likud party are seeking to outlaw such unofficial talks.
”My problem is that they are attempting to act as if they are the government,” said Moshe Kahlon, one of the MPs behind the legislation.
The government’s denunciation of the accord and its attempts to discourage foreign support for the deal have strengthened the credibility of the negotiations.
Despite Israeli pressure, the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, and British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, have written to the leading negotiators praising their efforts. The accord’s sponsors believe the government’s response reflects its fear that the public mood is again opening up to negotiation and compromise after three years of violence.
The accord is landing on the doorsteps of Israelis who are questioning Sharon’s tactics and his failure to deliver ”peace with security”.
Opinion polls show that the public’s faith in the prime minister’s ability to handle the conflict has dropped from close to 70% when he was re-elected earlier this year to just half of that today. The doubts have been compounded by a wave of criticism within the military establishment.
The army chief of staff, Moshe Ya’alon, warned a fortnight ago that Sharon’s treatment of Palestinian civilians was fuelling terrorism. Last week, four former heads of the Shin Bet security service compounded the sense of crisis when they said that the prime minister was leading Israel to catastrophe.
Moral doubts have also been sown by 28 elite fighter pilots who said they would no longer bomb Palestinian civilian areas because it was a war crime.
Although the Israeli negotiators publicly say their aim is to change government policy, they privately recognise that Sharon is unlikely to give the kind of ground agreed in the pact and so their best hope is a change of government. Beilin describes Israeli voters as ”short-term hawks and long-term doves”, and believes that most of the public want a negotiated and fair peace, not what he portrays as Sharon’s attempts to impose a one-sided solution by force.
The latest opinion polls show a solid base of support for the accord, with about a third of Israeli voters welcoming the initiative. But the Israeli negotiators concede they face a credibility problem with many voters, who view them as naive at best, and the Palestinians as having spurned peace in favour of terror.
”I admit trust is our biggest problem,” said Beilin. ”What we are doing is saying: look at the other side. They took the decision which was a very difficult one because they were the formal party, we were the informal party. And they were criticised in their society for creating just a threshold for future negotiations which might commit the [Palestinian] authority while we are committing nobody.”
Palestinian negotiators include Abed Rabbo, who is close to Yasser Arafat, and three men who are ministers in the Palestinian government. Beilin has turned public opinion round before, when he sponsored the withdrawal of troops from Lebanon in the face of overwhelming hostility and secured the pull-out two years later after voters supported it.
”This is a much more complicated issue but I attribute much importance to public opinion because I believe this is our biggest asset,” he said. ”It’s not very convenient when public opinion turns against you but you know that it is open, it’s democratic, and it’s not stupid.” – Guardian Unlimited Â