ENGLISH DEYEA NEWS

(photo: AP / Hatem Moussa)

Uri Avnery / Arab News | Today, 15 and a half years after Yitzhak Rabin held out his hand to Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn, one can only look back with longing at the passion for peace that possessed all of us then. Nothing has remained of that fervor, that hope, that zeal for reconciliation. All these have now been replaced by a poisonous mix of hopelessness and dejection.

If you stop any 10 random passers-by in a Tel Aviv street and ask them what they think about the chances of peace, nine of them will shrug their shoulders and answer: It won’t happen. They will not say: We don’t want peace, the price of peace is too high. Some will say: The Arabs don’t want it. Others will say: Our leaders can’t do it. But the conclusion is the same: It just won’t happen. A similar poll of Palestinians would probably yield the same results: We want peace. But it won’t happen.

This mood has produced the same political situation on both sides. In the Palestinian elections, Hamas won, not because of its ideology but because it expresses the despair of peace with Israel. In the Israeli elections, there was a general move to the right: Leftists voted for Kadima, Kadima people voted for Likud, Likud people voted for the fascist factions.

But among the despairing there are still those who hope that an intervention by foreigners - Americans, Europeans, even Arabs - will impose peace on us. This week, that hope was severely shaken. On TV we were shown a uniquely impressive conference, a huge assembly of world leaders, who all came to Sharm El-Sheikh. Hillary Clinton was the star. Hosni Mubarak celebrated his achievement in getting them all together on Egyptian soil.

And for what? For little, poor Gaza. It has to be rebuilt.

It was a celebration of sanctimonious hypocrisy, in the very best tradition of international diplomacy. First of all, nobody from Gaza was there. As in the heyday of European imperialism, 150 years ago, the fate of the Natives was decided without the Natives themselves being present. Not only Hamas was absent. Egypt did not allow even a delegation of Gaza businessmen and civil society activists to pass the Rafah crossing. This turned the conference into a farce. Hamas rules Gaza. Nothing will happen in the Gaza Strip without the consent of Hamas. The worldwide decision to rebuild Gaza without the participation of Hamas is sheer foolishness.

The war ended with a fragile cease-fire that is collapsing before our very eyes. When there is no cease-fire, another even more destructive war will destroy what has not yet been destroyed. So what is the good in investing billions to rebuild schools, hospitals, government buildings and ordinary homes, all of which will be demolished again anyhow?

Mubarak spoke about the exchange of prisoners. Sarkozy spoke with much pathos about the soldier “Jilad Shalit”, a French citizen who all French people want to be freed. Interesting. There are 11,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. It doesn’t interest Sarkozy. The participants of the conference promised Mahmoud Abbas nearly $5 billion. How much will actually be paid? How much of this will reach Gaza? According to a Gaza woman who appeared on television, a homeless mother who lives in a small tent in the middle of a huge mud puddle: Not a cent.

Was the political part of the performance more serious? Hillary spoke about “two states for two peoples”. In his poem “If”, Rudyard Kipling asked whether “you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken / Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools.” This is now a test for all those who stood at the cradle of the “two state” idea some 60 years ago.

This vision was - and remains - the only viable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The sole realistic alternative is the continuation of the present situation - occupation, oppression, Apartheid, war. But the enemies of this vision have smartened up and pretend to support it on every occasion.

Avigdor Liberman is in favor of “two states”. Absolutely. He spells it out: Several Palestinian enclaves, each of them surrounded by the Israeli military and by settlers like himself. These Bantustans will be called “a Palestinian state”. Benjamin Netanyahu has a similar vision: The Arabs will govern their towns and villages, but not the territory, neither the West Bank nor the Gaza Strip. They will have no army, of course, and no control of the airspace over their heads, neither will they have any physical contact with neighboring countries. Even Hillary Clinton ridiculed this idea publicly before meeting with Netanyahu.

Ehud Olmert speaks about the “political process.” How long must the “Process” go on? Five years? Fifty? Five hundred?

Meanwhile, an extreme right-wing government is about to be set up. Labor party’s Ehud Barak is looking desperately for a way in.

And why not? In 1977, Moshe Dayan deserted the Labor Party in order to serve as foreign minister and fig leaf for Menachem Begin, who forcibly prevented the establishment of a Palestinian state. In 2001, Shimon Peres got the Labor Party to join the government of Ariel Sharon, in order to serve as foreign minister and fig leaf to the man whose very name made all the world shudder after the Sabra and Shatila massacre. So why should Ehud Barak not become a fig leaf for a government that includes outright fascists?

Who knows, perhaps he will even represent us at the next conference in Ophira - sorry, Sharm-el-Sheikh - the one that will be convened after the next war, in which Gaza will be razed to the ground. After all, a lot of money will be needed to build it up again.