February 8, 2002	Friday	Ziqa’ad 24, 1422

TEL AVIV: When Ariel Sharon swept to a landslide victory in last February’s general election with the promise to restore Israelis’ security, the voices of the country’s peace camp fell silent.

But a year after the former general became prime minister, and 16 months into a bloody Palestinian uprising, Israelis are feeling even less secure and prominent “peaceniks” are starting to turn up the volume.

“The peace camp...is waking up,” former Labour government minister Yossi Beilin, an architect of the 1993 Oslo peace accords, told Reuters. “It is clear to all that Sharon and the right have nothing to offer but more bloodshed.”

Peace Now, a movement which used to draw hundreds of thousands of leftists to the streets but recently has been hard pressed to muster more than a few dozen at a time, is rolling out its first big protest campaign since Sharon took office.

Parliamentary speaker Avraham Burg, a dovish leader of the centre-left Labour Party, says he will accept an invitation to address the Palestinian legislature despite Sharon’s efforts to isolate Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

And Sharon has been further rattled by dissent within Israel’s most revered institution, the army.

At least 200 reservists have signed a petition refusing to serve in the occupied territories, a move which the army’s chief of staff has said could be treated as incitement to rebellion.

But while the silence of the doves seems to be ending, peace activists still face an uphill battle to win back Israelis whose faith in peacemaking has been shattered by the violence.

A wave of suicide bombings inside Israel and the widespread belief among Israelis that Arafat has turned his back on peace has splintered and demoralised the left wing.

“At this point, you have to wonder whether there’s any left left,” one Western diplomat said.

LABOUR PARTY IN DISARRAY: The once-dominant centre-left Labour Party, Israel’s traditional standard-bearer for peacemaking, has sunk to the lowest point in its history. Analysts say it could be years before it can really challenge Sharon’s right-wing Likud party.

After voters unnerved by the Palestinian uprising voted incumbent Ehud Barak out of office on Feb 6, 2001, Labour joined Sharon’s national unity government. The party now finds itself bitterly divided over whether to remain or pull out.

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, a Labour Party leader who shared the 1994 Nobel Peace prize with Arafat for the Oslo accords, sees his party’s presence in the coalition as a way to moderate Sharon’s policies and keep peace hopes alive.

But Beilin, a one-time Peres protege, says it serves as a political “fig leaf” for Sharon’s military campaign that has included raids into Palestinian areas and killings of militants.

Many on the left felt betrayed by Arafat’s rejection of Barak’s offer of a state on more than 90 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East War, and sovereignty over parts of Arab East Jerusalem.

Palestinians say it would have relegated them to a series of cantons subject to Israeli security controls. They deny Arafat has turned his back on peace and blame Barak, and now Sharon, for the failure to reach a peace agreement.

Palestinians have also been disappointed with Israel’s left, saying it has turned to the right and is hypocritical.

After two decades advocating a negotiated settlement based on Oslo’s land-for-peace formula, Peace Now wants an immediate withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the most isolated West Bank settlements.

The slogan of the campaign of rallies, marches and posters being launched this week by Peace Now and a coalition of leftist groups is: “Leave the territories, return to ourselves”.

Other leaders, on the left as well as the right, are prepared to go even further. They propose total disengagement from the Palestinians, complete with walls and razor wire.

PEACE CAMP: Palestinian moderates dismiss any separation that would keep much of the West Bank under occupation as unrealistic, but they welcome signs of revival in the Israeli peace camp.

“Sharon is strong because he has no viable opposition,” said analyst Ghassan al-Khatib. “That creates a dangerous dynamic that needs to be countered.”

Even some Israelis still loyal to the peace cause are increasingly skeptical about the prospects for coexistence.

Anat Balint, a 29-year-old leftist, wrote in the daily newspaper Haaretz about her disillusionment when reunited recently with a Palestinian friend she met during an Israeli-Arab youth seminar in Jerusalem in 1998.—Reuters