[Peace-discuss] Fw: Israeli Peace Activists Return to Streets

[unionyes]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <moderator at PORTSIDE.ORG>
To: <PORTSIDE at LISTS.PORTSIDE.ORG>
Sent: Saturday, April 24, 2010 12:18 PM
Subject: Israeli Peace Activists Return to Streets


> Israeli Peace Activists Return to Streets
> 
> By Tobias Buck in Jerusalem
> Financial Times
> April 23, 2010
> 
> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/81ec01c2-4ee9-11df-b8f4-00144feab49a.html
> 
> One Friday last October, a group of 24 young Israelis
> marched through the streets of Jerusalem to protest at
> the eviction of several Palestinian families in the
> city's occupied east.
> 
> Maya Wind, 20, one of the demonstrators, recalls: "We
> felt a bit silly. But we said, `Let's each bring along
> two friends next week and it will be better'." Week
> after week, their numbers grew. Soon, both the police
> and the media took an interest.
> 
> Six months, dozens of arrests and hundreds of newspaper
> headlines later, the small band of Israeli peace
> activists has surprised itself by taking on the
> appearance of a full-blown political movement.
> 
> The regular demonstrations have broadened into protests
> against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land in
> general. Some Israelis also come to register their
> disapproval of police action against the gatherings,
> adding freedom of speech to the other grievances.
> 
> As a result, the protesters' ranks are now studded with
> some of Israel's most prominent intellectuals and
> writers, notably David Grossman, the author. The Friday
> demonstrations are attended by hundreds of people every
> week, with one rally in March drawing almost 5,000.
> 
> These numbers may still be small, even in a country of
> Israel's size, yet the rallies have attracted
> disproportionate attention. Israel's once powerful
> peace camp was struck silent by the bloody campaign of
> suicide bombings in Israeli cities during the second
> Palestinian intifada, or uprising, after 2000. With
> casualties and fury mounting on both sides, many
> leftwing Israelis gave up hope of peaceful co-existence
> and their views shifted towards the right.
> 
> With a few exceptions, Israelis have blamed the
> collapse of the peace process squarely on the
> Palestinians. Their perception was fuelled by Yassir
> Arafat's negotiating tactics when he joined Ehud Barak,
> then a Labour prime minister, at the failed Camp David
> summit in July 2000.
> 
> Leftwing and centre-left parties, notably Labour and
> Meretz, have fared badly at every election since. Avner
> Inbar, 30, another leader of the protest movement,
> says: "Since the outbreak of the second intifada, the
> spirit of the left was depressed and the peace camp was
> completely fragmented."
> 
> But that depression may be starting to fade as a result
> of the Friday protests: "We are not standing there as
> losers - there is a winning spirit," says Mr Inbar.
> 
> Ms Wind also looks to the future with optimism. "In six
> months, we have managed to bring a lot of people out
> into the streets who wouldn't have been there
> otherwise," she says. "I don't know whether we are
> creating a new left, but we are reviving the left that
> died in the second intifada."
> 
> The tone of the Friday demonstrations is more
> confrontational than those staged by the Israeli peace
> camp in the 1990s, when hundreds of thousands gathered
> to support the Oslo accords. This time, the protesters
> find themselves at odds with the government under
> Benjamin Netanyahu and the general mood of the Israeli
> public.
> 
> The movement is hailed in some quarters, probably
> prematurely, as a new Israeli Left, yet it was born in
> opposition to what the protesters saw as a local
> injustice: in August last year, several Palestinian
> families were evicted from their houses in Sheikh
> Jarrah, an Arab neighbourhood of East Jerusalem, to
> make way for nationalist Jewish settlers.
> 
> The evictions, says Mr Inbar, exposed a "grave
> injustice" - namely that Israeli courts allow Jews to
> claim property in the West Bank and East Jerusalem,
> while the descendants of Palestinians who fled or were
> expelled from Israel during the 1948 war are barred
> from returning to their homes.
> 
> Soon, however, the protests took on a different
> character: "What we really try to do is to draw the
> connection: this is not just about Sheikh Jarrah, it is
> about all of East Jerusalem and it is about the
> occupation in general," says Ms Wind.
> 
> Bernard Avishai, a professor at the Hebrew University
> in Jerusalem and a supporter of the protests, says one
> factor in the movement's appeal is the absence of a
> clear set of demands. Some protesters favour a two-
> state solution to the conflict; others want
> Palestinians and Israelis to share a binational state.
> 
> "There are all kinds of views at this point," says Mr
> Arshavi. "But they know they are against the
> occupation, and they know they are against the Israeli
> right."
> 
> Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010.
> 
> _____________________________________________
> 
> Portside aims to provide material of interest
> to people on the left that will help them to
> interpret the world and to change it.
> 
> Submit via email: moderator at portside.org
> Submit via the Web: portside.org/submit
> Frequently asked questions: portside.org/faq
> Subscribe: portside.org/subscribe
> Unsubscribe: portside.org/unsubscribe
> Account assistance: portside.org/contact
> Search the archives: portside.org/archive

-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.