The new Palestinian national unity government, bringing Fatah and independents into the cabinet with Hamas, is but the latest seismic event roiling the Middle East and America. While the Olmert government insisted it would not deal with the new Palestinian administration until it accepted Israel’s right to exist, renounced violence and accepted previous agreements, it affirmed its intent to continue talking only about security and humanitarian issues with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. In other words, Israel will conduct no negotiations even with Abbas over a peace accord, whether interim or final, partial or comprehensive.
Defense Minister and Labor leader Amir Peretz maintained “that not only should Israel not boycott non-Hamas members, but it should start talking to Abbas about final status issues, and in so doing leapfrog over the first stage of the road map that calls for the Palestinians to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure,” reported the Jerusalem Post. “Peretz said Israel was obligated, in light of the upcoming Arab League summit in Riyadh, to take a new initiative to present in the face of the Arab diplomatic proposal.” “Why not say that we are willing to enter into final status negotiations with Abbas?,” he suggested. “If the prime minister presents matters in such a definitive way, it will lead to a substantive debate in Riyadh,” where the Arab League is expected to meet next week to reaffirm its 2002 peace offer to Israel.
Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter (Kadima) also supports Israel speaking to non-Hamas ministers, as does Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh, and other Labor cabinet ministers, including Education Minister Yuli Tamir and Minister Ghaleb Majadle. At the same time, the latest opinion polls showed that more than half of the Israeli public disagreed with the government’s ban on contacts with the new Palestinian government, a fact which seems lost on many American Jewish leaders.
Further, the US Consul General in Jerusalem met today with Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayyad, the first contact between a U.S. official and a non-Hamas minister in the national unity coalition cabinet. And the top EU envoy to the Middle East Marc Otte met today with Palestinian Foreign Minister Ziad Abu Amr, to be followed by foreign ministers from Sweden and Belgium.
Meanwhile, Israeli strategist and Reut Institute CEO Gidi Grinstein told a small break-out session at the AIPAC policy conference last week in Washington that Israel’s policy of isolating Hamas had failed. The consequences for Israel of continuing the freeze on contacts and financial aid, with the possible collapse of the Palestinian Authority, he argued, are far worse than revising Israel’s policy and talking to the new Palestinian government about a political agreement.
While this ferment was bubbling up in Israel, back in Washington AIPAC, “the premier pro-Israel lobbying group,” was urging Secretary of State Rice and the Senate to adopt a comprehensive boycott that put it at odds with the Israeli government, and even more so with the Israeli public and the Bush Administration on dealing with President Abbas and other moderate Palestinian cabinet ministers.
Reviewing worrisome trends between the American Jewish community, AIPAC, and the US and Israeli governments, Dan Fleshler, an Ameinu board member and blogger (Realistic Dove), argues on our main page this week that it is time we redefine the relationship between American Jews and Israel. Complementing Dan’s analysis, I offer a no-holds-barred account of my wild ride on the AIPAC front in Washington last week, where I found overwhelming evidence of AIPAC’s marriage to the neocon right in both America and Israel, belying the group’s persistent claims of bipartisanship (“AIPAC Hijack: With Friends Like These… “). Chris MacDonald-Dennis reveals why he is a progressive Zionist, while Zach Luck excoriates the “organized Jewish community” for the whitewash that passes for education about Israel.
An important new essay has just been published in the New York Review of Books by billionaire progressive political activist George Soros, “On Israel, America and AIPAC.” Soros believes that “The current policy of not seeking a political solution but pursuing military escalation…has reached a particularly dangerous point. There is the growing danger of a regional conflagration in which Israel and the US could well be on the losing side. With the ability of Hezbollah to withstand the Israeli onslaught and the rise of Iran as a prospective nuclear power, Israel’s existence is more endangered than at any time since its birth.”
Soros maintains that “The pro-Israel lobby has been remarkably successful in suppressing criticism” of US policy on Israel and of Israeli policy–not in the media, where there’s plenty, but among elected officials and candidates for public office. “How did Israel become so endangered?,” he wonders. “I cannot exempt AIPAC from its share of the responsibility,” comes the reply.
Soros believes “that a much-needed self-examination of American policy in the Middle East has started in this country; but it can’t make much headway as long as AIPAC retains powerful influence in both the Democratic and Republican parties. Some leaders of the Democratic Party have promised to bring about a change of direction but they cannot deliver on that promise until they are able to resist the dictates of AIPAC.”
We in Ameinu are progressive Zionists and rooted in a century-old tradition of the Labor Zionist movement that built the State of Israel. We have long given voice to Israel’s highest ideals and values of peace, social justice and pluralism as a democratic Jewish state. Soros may not be an avowed Zionist, but he is unmistakably pro-Israel and deeply concerned with the well-being of both America and Israel. “Israel needs the support of the United States more than ever,” he writes. “I am not a Zionist, nor am I am a practicing Jew, but I have a great deal of sympathy for my fellow Jews and a deep concern for the survival of Israel.”
Even if he fudges some details, Soros may just be right on the main points. For example, Sharon’s walk on the Temple Mount did not “set off” the violence of the intifada, which would have come about without the pretext of Sharon’s provocative stroll. Nor did Carter lose financial backers for his center because he criticized “repressive Israeli policy on the West Bank.” It was because he criticized the repression by calling it apartheid, along with Nazism the demon regime of the 20th century. Yet these are quibbles in light of the larger issue that Soros addresses in his important piece.
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Gidon D. Remba, Executive Director of Ameinu: Liberal Values, Progressive Israel, blogs at http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/ where his recent publications are collected.
