A Peace Agreement?

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Posted earlier on the golB:

There is quite a bit of evidence of increasingly determined support by people / outfits that may count for an Israeli – Arab / Palestinian peace agreement that would put a prompt end to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza by formation of a new Palestinian state there. Whatever could be done to the Left to have some of it oppose such an agreement, it is very unlikely to work as smoothly as (in Canada or at least) in Vancouver, where suddenly no public voice can be heard in its favor; not through the Library Left and surely not the CanWest Right. Could the latter be a reaction to that determined support? Or vice versa?

Among the people and groups standing up for real action to end the occupation now were new Jewish groups forming for the purpose in various countries of Europe and elsewhere and both Jewish and other prominent artists, writers, scholars etc worldwide, not least Israeli ones. The right wing defamation machine's attacks against progressive Jewish critics of Israeli ocupation policies and practices seemed to lose effectiveness. The attacks against Lobby critical professors Walt and Mearsheimer as antisemites backfired; as had the earlier similar attacks on former president Jimmy Carter for his book calling for the right choice between peace and apartheid-like conditions in the occupied territories. Unlike some of the Stop Peace Left, he had been careful not to label Israel itself as an apartheid state.

As significant a role as any in advancing imminent peace prospects has been played by Henry Siegman. He spoke up with straightforward courage himself in the London Review of Books, and has now been instrumental in publication of the October 10 letter to George Bush amd Condoleezza Rice ; signed by pretty influential "mainstream" people like former Democratic and Republican National Security advisors Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, by Lee Hamilton, co-chair of the commission to evaluate the Iraq war , et al.

The Annapolis "Conference", at least in part a result of these efforts, did not overachieve its limited expectations. But there seems to be some hope left for the mechanisms set up for intensive negotiations to get an agreement within a year. Whether that is so or not, and whether that can lead to gradual reconciliation adequate for peaceful changes toward federation or unification will not be seriously influenced by action on my part. In what is as likely as not to be the last year or two I have left now, I ought to be more involved again with the no less important (and not really unrelated) matters that preoccupied me for the past decades , where I may still be able to make a real contribution.