For the Israeli Peace Movement, Barak’s Election Has Turned Into a Bittersweet Victory

By Roni Krouzman

As Prime Minister Ehud Barak approaches the end of his first half-year in office, leaders of the tens of thousands of left-wing Israelis who poured into Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square on the evening of May 15 to celebrate his election victory by more than a 15-point margin have lost their exuberance. Many of the same leaders of the Israeli peace movement who expressed the most enthusiasm for the One Israel candidate during his campaign are realizing that Barak’s victory presented them with problems far more subtle than did his openly anti-peace predecessor.

During the election campaign most Israelis viewed Barak, representing the mainstream political left, as the “peace” candidate. He pledged to withdraw from Lebanon within a year, make peace with Syria, and resolve Israel’s decades-long conflict with the Palestinians. As a result, “everyone looks at the government as a peace government, but it’s still not a ‘Peace Now’ government,” complains Mosi Raz, general secretary of Peace Now, Israel’s largest peace group.

Raz fears that Barak’s incumbency has put many dovish Israelis, who were easily mobilized to turn out to oppose Netanyahu’s hawkish policies, off guard, leaving peace groups with a diminished voice in national debate.

“It’s more difficult to get heard,” says Raz, “because people say, ‘What do you want? Your guys are in power.’”

And though Raz is optimistic about prospects for peace under the new government, he says Barak’s ambiguity regarding controversial issues like settlement expansion and the character of any future Palestinian state worries him.

Activists further to the left within Israel’s broad-based peace movement are concerned as well. Many, like Susan Mordechay, a member of the Israeli Coalition Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD), see little difference between Labor and Likud. Unlike Raz, she was not excited about Barak’s victory, and now is concerned that he is putting a friendlier face on the same unjust policies.

According to ICAHD, settlement expansion, land confiscation, and home demolition in the occupied territories have continued at virtually the same pace since 1967, regardless of which political party has been in power. The group points to statistics compiled by organizations like B’Tselem, Israel’s leading human rights group dealing with the West Bank and Gaza, and LAW, the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment, which demonstrate that mainstream left and right differ little when it comes to policies in the occupied territories and its treatment of political prisoners.

For example, LAW reports that of 513 Palestinian homes demolished since the signing of the Oslo accords, 268 have been destroyed under Labor governments and 245 under Likud. And Barak’s September visit to the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, one of several towns built in territories conquered in 1967 to extend the boundaries of “Greater Jerusalem,” hasn’t helped either.

“My impression is that this government, like the previous one and Rabin’s government, is not ready for a real reconciliation,” Mordechay says. “Maybe Barak won’t encourage the settlers to grab land like [former Defense Minister Ariel] Sharon and Netanyahu did, but he hasn’t said anything to the contrary.”

The disgust of many peace activists with Israeli government policy, whether initiated by the left or the right, has led many on the movement’s more radical wing to propose a new step in Israeli politics: civil disobedience. And groups like ICAHD aren’t just talking. Since ICAHD formed in 1997, the group has defied Israeli authorities on numerous occasions, by blocking roads, sitting in front of bulldozers, and rebuilding Palestinian homes that were demolished by the military.

During Madeleine Albright most recent visit to the region to promote the peace process, ICAHD brought 40 Israelis, Palestinians, Europeans, and Americans of various religious beliefs to a West Bank hilltop about a mile from Ma’ale Adumim. There on Sept. 4 the group helped rebuild the house of the Halaseh family, Bedouins whose home has been demolished four times in two years by Israeli authorities.

More prominent groups like Peace Now also have committed recent acts of civil disobedience. Raz says, however, that his group is unlikely to plan or engage in any action that disrupts the lives of average Israelis.

“We try to think about what is the best tactic now. We don’t want to turn Israeli public opinion against us,” Raz explains.

That has increasingly become the dilemma for many peace activists here: how to get their point across in a way that attracts the majority of Israelis, especially under a labor government that claims to be dovish but whose commitment to a just peace remains to be seen. While prominent groups like Peace Now are taking a largely “wait and see” approach, more radical groups like ICAHD are engaging in increasingly aggressive forms of nonviolent protest, and they hope more on the Israeli left will join them.

“The peace movement has voted for Barak,” Mordechay says. “Now I hope it doesn’t sit still.”

Roni Krouzman is a San Francisco-based writer who has written extensively about the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy.