Ike Seamans
Focus on Israel

Activists join forces to forge peace plan

On a June morning in Aqaba, Jordan, three men stood stiffly behind lecterns pledging their devotion to peace. The body language of President Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas spoke volumes: no emotion, scant eye contact, monotonic voices uttering clichés crafted by the White House. They feigned sincerity. In less than a month, the road map for peace was under violent attack and the United States missing in action.

"The interest of the Bush administration has evaporated", says former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, a key negotiator at the Oslo and Camp David peace talks. "[President] Bush doesn't want to tarnish his presidency or his chances to get reelected... He must twist arms.
Left to their own devices, Israelis and Palestinians will continue fighting. They have no solution."

Activists of all political stripes have joined forces searching for answers. This week, without their governments' cooperation or approval, dovish Israeli politicians and Palestinian Authority moderates signed the complex, 50-page "Geneva Accords". The highlights: two states, Jerusalem the capital for both; Israel withdraws from most of the West Bank and Gaza; Palestinians waive the right of return for millions of refugees.

The plan has ignited hot political debate. An Israeli newspaper poll finds that it is supported by 40 percent of the nation. Sharon charges that it's an attempt to overthrow his government. The Bush administration rebuffs the accords, clinging instead to the faltering road map. Yasser Arafat supports the concept.

"At Camp David, he initially backed a similar plan", says Ben-Ami.
"But when it was suggested we sign, Arafat scoffed, 'It's just words, words, words; it's not binding.' This new one isn't binding either."

Peace strategies vigorously promoted by the two founders of The Peoples' Voice are similar to the Geneva Accords. "We're trying to give the roadmap a destination," Ami Ayalon, retired chief of Shin Bet (Israel's FBI)tells me.
"Sharon and Arafat are old politicians incapable of an agreement without a clear vision, so we're giving them one."

Last month, Ayalon and former Palestinian Cabinet member Sari Nusseibeh, now president of Jerusalem's Al-Quds University, were in Washington lobbying senior administration officials and Congress to support their grass-roots initiative. They've collected more than 160,000 signatures from Israelis and Palestinians who accept their peace terms.

"This is a tall order," Nusseibeh says, "but if leaders sense constituencies really want this, they can't avoid it." However, superannuated leaders must be jettisoned. Drafting a people's mandate One Voice is another movement created by prominent Israeli Arab Mohammad Darawshe and Daniel Lubetzky, an American Jew who runs the PeaceWorks Foundation. Their 20 pillars for peace have been presented to focus groups in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel (www.silentnolonger.com).

"This isn't just an intellectual exercise," Darawshe explains.
"The idea is to have the backing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and Israelis in drafting a real people's mandate."
Last weekend, at the largest peace rally in years, 100,000 Israelis demanded an end to the futile struggle.
"People are tired and scared," writes Hirsh Goodman in The Jerusalem Report.
"They're prepared to support someone of integrity in hopes that a different way may bring a different future."
It is easy for those with no official responsibilities or political constraints to generate peaceful platitudes. However, it's encouraging that courageous people are finally confronting vacuous politicians who pay lip service to peace and, along with the United States, have shown little inclination or ability to decisively negotiate a conclusion to the most ruinous tragedy on earth.