MK Colette Avital spoke with the Ameinu board of directors about the challenges facing Israel from her home in Jerusalem on Yom Hazikaron—Israel’s Memorial Day—the day before Israel Independence Day, Sunday, April 22, 2007.
The following is a summary of her remarks by Ameinu Executive Director Gidon D. Remba.
The ceremonies and sirens will start in a few minutes. It’s a difficult day for everyone. People keep wondering whether all the sacrifices will help bring peace to the country.
The government seems to be in a state of paralysis. The Finance Minister has taken a “leave of absence” pending the resolution of a corruption investigation; the Israel Police are investigating Deputy Prime Minister and Strategic Threats Minister Avigdor Lieberman for possible financial improprieties. The Attorney General may order one or more criminal investigations against the Prime Minister for fraud and “breach of trust,” while the State Comptroller has accused the Prime Minister of corruption. Everything is on hold.
Israel stands at the threshold of many opportunities, yet the government has pushed everything onto a backburner. Prime Minister Olmert will be meeting in Jericho with Palestinian President Mahmoud Aabbas next week. This meeting, part of a series of encounters between Olmert and Abbas, are an American idea to keep talks alive. Olmert is prepared to discuss security and financial issues but is unwilling to engage in substantive political negotiations at the moment.
The Labor Party adopted the Arab League Beirut proposal five years ago and issued a statement endorsing it as a basis for negotiations in our 2002 platform. The government rejected it due to the language on the Palestinian refugees, among other reasons.
The original Saudi proposal made by then Crown Prince and now King Abdallah differs from the resolution adopted by the Arab League in Beirut in 2002, recently endorsed again by the Arab League in Ryadh. The original proposal made no reference to UN General Assembly Resolution 194, while the final version adopted by the Arab League referred to an agreed solution based on 194. But there isn’t an unequivocal legal interpretation of UN General Assembly Resolution 194. Hebrew University law professor and Israel Prize laureate Ruth Lapidoth maintains that 194 is not binding on Israel. It does not require Israel to accept the return of Palestinian refugees. It gives Israel a choice as a sovereign state to accept them or not. For this reason, the authors of the Geneva Initiative did not see a problem in including a reference to 194 as a basis for the negotiated solution it proposed to the refugee issue.
The Jordanians accept this position. I was at the Madrid Plus 15 conference, convened 15 years after the original Madrid Peace Conference. The Jordanian delegation, represented by four former Jordanian prime ministers, said precisely the same thing about resolving the refugee issue.
The Arab League peace initiative offers two new points:
First, the allusion to an “agreed solution” reflects the wish of many Arab states that the refugees should receive compensation in lieu of return to former homes in Israel. The Jordanians would like to create an international fund to facilitate this process, under which Israel will not be obligated to accept refugees.
Second, for first time there is a collective guarantee for security for all the states in the region. The Arab states are willing to undertake the creation of a security umbrella to guarantee the security of Israel. For these and other reasons, the Arab League peace initiative should be explored. Another benefit of the Arab peace initiative is that it provides broad Arab backing to the Palestinians to negotiate compromises with Israel which they might find it more difficult to accomplish on their own (think of the pan-Arab and pan-Muslim ramifications of achieving a compromise solution regarding the holy sites in Jerusalem and the refugees, who reside in many Arab countries). At the same time, Israel must work to resolve its problems directly with the Palestinians, taking advantage of the added resources available within the wider Arab framework.
The Syrians have been saying for months that they want to discuss peace with Israel, but we’ve refused. Now the Prime Minister is no longer hiding behind the Americans. I’m not convinced that the US would object so strenuously if Prime Minister Olmert were to initiate talks with Syria. But Prime Minister Olmert now says that we cannot afford the price of peace with Syria at the moment. If the Syrians want all of the Golan Heights, Olmert believes that the “current political situation” does not allow him to strike a deal on that basis. So he has decided not to embark on negotiations with Syria that will only lead to disappointment and possibly a new war. However, today Olmert made a new statement saying he is ready to pursue negotiations with Syria.
In reality, the Prime Minister won’t embark on any substantive negotiations until the leader of the Labor Party is decided. Moreover, the government is simply too weak. We will therefore see only cosmetic measures for now. Nothing fundamental will move at this point. The government is incapable of making a decision now on such momentous matters; but behind the scenes there may be exploratory contacts.
Labor decided to endorse the Saudi/Arab League plan. Knesset Member Ami Ayalon, who is, along with former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, the front-runner for the leadership of the party and Defense Ministry, says that Israel should not issue any statements until after the Labor party election. Ayalon has accused Barak of having hastily left Lebanon, thus bringing about the current situation. Barak, for his part, is campaigning on the premise that Israel needs an experienced leader. Polls suggest that the two are neck and neck.
Ophir Pines-Paz has declined recently in the polls. Danny Yatom is not considered a serious candidate. Amir Peretz is working hard and should not be discounted. Getting people to turn out on election day is difficult, and he has some advantages in this arena.
With regard to the presidential race, I am running against Shimon Peres. He is a person with a great political experience; he knows every trick in the book. Every day there’s something new. He wines and dines the power brokers. He dispatched Michael Bar Zohar to run against me. He draws good press and thinks it looks promising for him. But in fact we still don’t know will actually run. It’s quite possible that Peres won’t run. It depends on what the Winograd Report concludes about last summer’s Lebanon War and the responsibility of various leaders. Another possibility is that Peres will assume the prime ministership for a while if Olmert is forced to resign. Peres is flirting with all the possibilities. The presidential race will likely take place in June. Another contender is Likud MK and former Knesset Speaker Reuven (Ruby) Rivlin. I believe I have a good shot at the presidency.
The overriding sentiment in Israel now is that people are fed up with all the investigations of wrongdoing among Israeli leaders.
We don’t know what the Bush Administration really wants to achieve with regard to Arab-Israeli peacemaking. They will become more involved with the Iranian issue in the next month. But Bush needs to rack up some kind of success, given his gross failure in Iraq. There are tensions between Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and President Bush over Syria. She is much more forthcoming than he is. He was not terribly happy with what she said or did this past year on this score. We meet with our Palestinian colleagues every couple of weeks. In their first meeting with Rice, she was much more assertive about pushing for Israeli meetings with Abbas. By her the second meeting with them, her enthusiasm may have been eroded by resistance from both Bush and Olmert.
We should try to persuade the Bush Administration to move forward with the Saudi/Arab League initiative to prompt some movement between us and the Palestinians. There could have been no Arab League endorsement of the peace offer in Ryadh without the Mecca meeting that brought Fatah and Hamas together into a national unity government. Both PA President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), who is also the leader of Fatah, and Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas went to Mecca. By being there, Haniyeh accepted the Saudi peace plan, which represents an opportunity for Israel that should be exploited.
The Israeli government won’t recognize the Palestinian government. The government is holier than thou. They want pressure on the Hamas-led national unity government. I favor a dialogue with the Palestinian government, and even with Hamas.
There is no debate in the Labor Party over the Saudi peace initiative. Ayalon is in favor of pursuing it; he thinks it’s a good framework. Danny Yatom thinks we should talk to Syrians and to no one else. Ayalon has just said that we should try to talk to the Syrians but it should be clear that we are not going to remove the settlements from the Golan. Excuse me, but this is crazy! There’s simply no way the settlements can remain there if we want a peace treaty with Syria. Suddenly Ayalon discovered the idea of leasing the Golan for 99 years, an idea which was rejected during Rabin era. Defense Minister and Labor Party chief Amir Peretz favors negotiations with the Palestinians, and the Syrians and the Saudis. The irony is that today we might get somewhere in Arab-Israeli peace talks davka because the government is so weak.
As for Iran, a preemptive American or Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities is not going to happen. The bombing of Iraq is not going to be repeated next door. Israel must not stand alone on this issue and we must not be the people who push for such steps. In any event, Iran will not go nuclear for another few years.
Former Foreign Minister (Labor) Shlomo Ben Ami has been among those who contend that this business of making negotiations with Syria conditional on their dismantling the infrastructure of the terrorists, and stopping the arms flow to Hezbollah, is folly. Much the same is true with regard to the demand of Hamas that it recognize Israel and dismantle the terror infrastructure before Israel will negotiate with the Palestinian government. This way will lead us to naught. Those who point out that Sadat and Hussein did not recognize Israel prior to our peace talks with them are well taken. Recognition normally follows a peace treaty, and should not be a prerequisite to even discussing it.
The Oslo Declaration of Principles that we signed with Palestinians in 1993 provided for mutual recognition. There was full recognition; we recognized the PLO, we gave them territory. If the Palestinian government accepts previous agreements signed by the PLO then they implicitly accept Oslo. Some Palestinians say that the statement made by the new national unity government that it will respect previous agreements suggests that Hamas implicitly recognizes Israel.
As for the failure of the national and municipal governments during last summer’s Lebanon war: Everyone sees Amir Peretz as partly responsible for that failure. The perception of the public is that we, Labor, share the blame.
If the Winograd Commission decides that it’s impossible to saddle with the blame for all the errors of years past a man who came to the Defense Ministry five weeks before the war, then perhaps Labor will be better off. Peretz reminds the public that he was not the only one who decided on the war; 24 ministers voted in favor. But our chances are not great. The only way to do well in the election is to have new leadership. Either Ayalon or Barak could change the image of the Labor party for the better. But we are unlikely to win the election.
It took a year before we got the Ministry of Social Welfare. If balloting were held tomorrow, the right and Likud leader Benyamin Netanyahu would return to power. That’s precisely why we don’t want elections and why we prefer to remain in this government.
Some say that Labor should stay in the coalition in order to make a difference in other areas like education and social welfare. Education Minister Yuli Tamir is doing a very good job, but it will take time before she can change anything. The destruction in that ministry under Likud is unbelievable. But we won’t get credit for fixing it or for improving the social welfare. The Prime Minister will take credit for whatever we propose, legislation on pensions, for example. We won’t gain anything by staying in the government. The Labor party won’t gain any points and be able to say: this is what we accomplished. It will take time before we get back on our feet.
