in israel, the doves awaken

Since Camp David failed, most Israelis have accepted the slogan "We have no one to talk to." A bold peace initiative has changed that -- and given rise to that rarest of commodities, hope.
By Aluf Benn

Oct. 24, 2003 | TEL AVIV, Israel --

Yossi Beilin has been the most daring and influential political entrepreneur in Israel for more than a decade. The soft-spoken, bespectacled political scientist has managed to set the national agenda time and again, typically setting off with little or no support from his political peers and national leaders, and then steering them in his direction. In a governing culture built on hesitation and the avoidance of tough choices, Beilin has played the role of the daring scout, charting unpaved roads toward peace and reconciliation with Israel's Arab neighbors.

Beilin's modus operandi works like this: He builds a "model" for a solution and then presents it to the decision makers at critical moments, when their policies are going nowhere and need a shakeup. Lacking a credible alternative, they have little choice but to follow Beilin's lead. That is how Beilin laid the basis for the Oslo process with Yasser Arafat's PLO in the early 1990s. Later, he conceived the formula for a final-status deal with the Palestinians, which was eventually discussed at Camp David in 2000. He also created the momentum for Israel's unilateral withdrawal from south Lebanon.

The failure of Camp David and the following negotiations at Taba have plunged the Israelis and Palestinians into the terrible violence that has raged without interruption for the past three years, causing thousands of deaths and injuries. Domestically, the breakdown of negotiations led to the rise of the right wing, bringing Ariel Sharon back from the political wilderness -- where he had been exiled after a government commission found he bore responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacres -- to the national helm. When Ehud Barak, Labor's last prime minister, declared, "We have no partner" on the Palestinian side, the majority of Israelis agreed with him and the political left was devastated. Beilin himself was kicked out of active political life and later abandoned the Labor Party, having lost his bid for a parliamentary seat.

But Beilin never gave up. Along with his small group of peace-seeking devotees, he went on trying to reach a model agreement with a similar group of interested Palestinian politicians. A couple of weeks ago, he scored his latest coup and once again succeeded in turning the national agenda upside down. The "Geneva accord" is a peace agreement reached by a team of left-leaning Israelis -- including several prominent Labor politicians as well as two of Israel's most acclaimed writers, Amos Oz and David Grossman -- and moderate Palestinians, including veteran Camp David negotiator Yasser Abed Rabbo. Lacking any official status, it's a mere theoretical exercise. Despite this, its authors have managed to take the political initiative and put Ariel Sharon's government on the defensive with the public. Beilin's goal was to prove to the skeptical Israelis, devastated by the endless bloodshed, that there is a "who" to talk with" and a "what" to talk about on the other side: to disprove the government's line that as long as Arafat lives and holds power, any diplomatic opening is useless and dangerous.