May 31, 2002	Friday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 18,1423

NETANYA (Israel): It’s a slow day at the market in the Israeli seaside town of Netanya, a week after a Palestinian suicide bombing killed two shoppers.

Standing amid piles of fruit and vegetables, vendors chew the fat over a 20-month-old Palestinian revolt as they await the rare customer. Much of what they say about war and peace defies conventional wisdom about Israeli politics and society.

“The classical division between left and right has blurred,” explained Tamar Hermann, a public opinion expert from Tel Aviv University, who has conducted a peacemaking poll since the interim Oslo accords were signed in 1993.

“People of the left have adopted many of the ideas of the right about the bad intentions of the Palestinians — that they intend to destroy Israel — and many from the right have adopted ideas of the left regarding resolution of the conflict.”

Supporting a Palestinian state, a withdrawal from all the Gaza Strip and West Bank and dismantling Jewish settlements were once the hallmarks of a left-wing Israeli.

But Kapur, who says he has never voted left in his life and never intends to, supports all of the above on condition there is “a real peace agreement”.

The qualified expressions

of support for a Palestinian state by a self-declared right-winger is no aberration, Hermann said.

Israelis have taken a step to the right since the uprising against occupation began and large numbers of leftists have moved to the centre or right of the political spectrum, Hermann said.

But in a strange contradiction, the ideals of Israel’s fading peace camp have become consensus among right-wingers.

THE PILLARS OF OSLO: Israelis have internalized the concessions needed for an eventual peace agreement with the Palestinians, mapped out at the US-brokered Camp David peace summit that ended in deadlock shortly before the revolt began in September 2000, Hermann said.

Recent results in Hermann’s monthly peace index have found that 75 per cent of Israelis favour dismantling at least some Jewish settlements and around 70 per cent accept a Palestinian state as a fait accompli.

A majority of Israelis also favour a unilateral withdrawal from parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a proposal that is gaining support as the violence shows no signs of abating.

They say Israelis have become sceptical as numerous attempts to revive peacemaking fail as regularly as they begin and Israeli military operations make little headway in trying to stamp out suicide bombings launched by Palestinian militants.—Reuters