Labour’s winner can now win peace

Published in the Jewish Chronicle 25 November 2005

According to the old joke, our default response to any new development — local or global — is to ask: “Yes, but is it good for the Jews?” After a turbulent week in Israeli politics, I have a variation on that question: “Yes, but is it good for peace?”

Israel has been through a double ma’hapach — a revolution, an upending of the natural order. The word was famously deployed by Israel’s leading TV news anchor in 1977 to describe Menachem Begin’s toppling of Labour after nearly three decades in power — and the word has been le mot juste in the last few days.

The first ma’hapach came with Shimon Peres’s defeat in the contest for the Labour leadership. Peres is now the undisputed champion of losing. He lost general elections in 1977, 1981 and 1996; even when he won, in 1984, he lost — by failing to secure enough votes to rule outright. He has lost ceremonial contests (for the Israeli presidency) and internal party ones. In Israel, they say that Shimon Peres would lose an election in his own family.

This time he was beaten by Amir Peretz and, even though Peres has built up a worldwide reputation as a dove and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, this development is good news for all those who yearn for peace. That’s because Peretz is no less doveish than Peres. A long-standing member of Peace Now, an advocate of the Oslo accords, his record has been consistent. (And, unlike Peres, he is not compromised by a past which includes quiet encouragement of the West Bank settlers.)

Speaking straight after his victory, at a memorial rally for Yitzhak Rabin, Peretz called for a return to the Oslo path, seeking a negotiated peace with the Palestinians. He went further, demanding a “moral roadmap” that would lead Israel out of an occupation that has corroded the ethics of the country from the inside.

He did not leave this point abstract, but grimly concrete — daring to condemn the current, grotesque policy which sends Israeli military jets to break the sound barrier over the Gaza Strip, deliberately causing sonic booms which terrify the population on the ground. (A recent petition filed to the Supreme Court says children are especially traumatised by the tactic, while doctors report a rise in the incidence of miscarriages.) It was as wrong for Palestinian kids to live with such fear, said Peretz, as it was for Israeli kids to fear Palestinian attacks.

So, Peretz is talking a humane language of peace. Bet-ter still, he looks like someone who can connect with the Israeli electorate and get results. The early polling has shown Labour getting its biggest bounce in five years — with Peretz even drawing level with Ariel Sharon, according to one survey. The combination of Peretz’s own Miz-rachi background, plus his record as a fighter on the long-neglected social issues — serious business now that one Israeli child in three lives below the poverty line — gives him a rare political potency.

Still, all that was overshadowed by the even greater ma’hapach: Sharon’s decision to break from the Likud, form his own party and trigger early elections. At first glance, this looked like a setback for the peace camp: Sharon was surely more beatable when he was at the head of a divided Likud. But closer inspection reveals a rosier picture.

For one thing, the traditional right vote is now split — which can hardly hurt Labour. More importantly, Likud risks being marginalised, identified from now on, most likely under Bibi Netanyahu, as a narrow, ideological party of the settler right. For a long time, the Likud brand brought in voters who were to the left of Likud itself — pragmatic nationalists, ready to compromise, who simply calculated that Likud would do a better deal with the Arabs than too-soft Labour. That kind of Israeli voter now has a new home: Sharon’s party.

And this is precisely what Sharon is offering. If he planned to make no more unilateral acts to follow Aug-ust’s pull-out from the Gaza strip, then he would not have bothered to make this latest move. He would either have retired altogether or set about mending fences with the Likud. By creating a new party, he has demonstrated that he means to act — and no longer wants to drag a reluctant Likud party behind him.

That’s not because Sharon has become some hippy-dippy peacenik with flowers in his hair. It’s rather that he sees a historic opportunity to complete the work of 1948 and draw Israel’s final borders. He believes he can do this to Israel’s advantage, without consultation with the Pal-estinians and with the blessing of the US and the world.

The sheer scale of this ambition is what has led some Israeli commentators to say that, should he succeed, Sharon will be on a par with David Ben-Gurion himself.

That’s not how I would put it. The truly great achievement will be to reach a negotiated agreement with the Palestinians and to end, for all practical purposes, the conflict. Sharon is not playing that game — and yet the steps he is taking now are ones peaceniks can welcome. For he looks set to win the election, with Peretz his most likely partner, the two of them forming a centre-left, “concession coalition,” one expressly set up to make further Gaza-style moves. In other words, Sharon is poised to roll back the occupation a bit further.

Ending it completely, and ending the conflict itself, will be the task of a future leader. But, after a long wait, the peace camp can dare to hope: things are finally moving in the right direction.

Posted on November 25, 2005 05:47 PM

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