The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : Revolutionary in Israeli politics

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Nov 17, 2005

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Revolutionary in Israeli politics

Jonathan Freedland

THE LAST few days have brought an optimism to the Middle East that is hard to resist. The chief cause of the current, unfamiliar burst of optimism is a man who, in less than a week, has revitalised the Israeli peace camp. His name is Amir Peretz, a Moroccan-born trade-union leader who has dedicated his life to fighting poverty — and last week he defied every poll and pundit in the land to become the new leader of Israel's Labour party.

Already people are speaking of a revolution in the country's politics, a new "Peretzstroika" according to the veteran peace activist Uri Avnery (who also noted that the Hebrew word peretz could be read as "breakthrough." The beleaguered Israeli Left is hailing the new leader's arrival as the best news since the collapse of the Camp David peace process five years ago.

Why the excitement? Start with Mr. Peretz's position on the central question, the conflict with the Palestinians. For two decades — long before it was fashionable — he has advocated a Palestinian state. He calls now for an end to Ariel Sharon's unilateralism and a renewed pursuit of a negotiated peace, engaging with the Palestinians directly. He dares to speak of a return to the "path of Oslo," brave in a country where the architects of the 1993 accords are routinely referred to as the "Oslo criminals."

There is immediate politics in this, marking a clean break with the outgoing Labour leader, Shimon Peres — the grand old man who has moved in Israel's ruling circles since before Mr. Peretz was born in 1952. While Mr. Peres was prepared to let Labour serve as Likud's hind legs in a national coalition, barely questioning Mr. Sharon's unilateralist approach, Mr. Peretz wants out. He is pushing for Labour to bolt now, triggering early elections by next spring.

But there is more to Mr. Peretz's stance than electoral calculus. In his speech to the rally that gathered on Saturday to mark the 10th anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Mr. Peretz called for a "moral road map, whose guiding star is respect for human dignity," arguing that Israel's continued rule over the Palestinians was exacting a moral cost on Israelis themselves. "A moral road map is ending the occupation and signing a permanent agreement," he said, before invoking Martin Luther King to declare that he too had a dream — that Palestinian and Israeli children would one day "play together and build a common future."

Mr. Peretz is from what used to be known as "the Second Israel," Jews with roots in the Muslim or Arab world: in today's argot, Mizrachim. Fifty years after their arrival in the country, they are disproportionately poor, often living in so-called development towns — and many harbour great resentment at the condescension and discrimination meted out to them by the then rulers of the state, the mainly European Jews, or Ashkenazim, of the Labour party.

Likud tapped into that anger in 1977, when it finally wrested power from Labour, and has relied on it ever since. The result has been a strange paradox. In Israel, the Left party, Labour, has won the votes of the well-to-do, educated elites — while the poor and disadvantaged have rallied to the party of the Right, Likud. In the process, "peace" has come to seem the preserve of latte-sipping, Ashkenazi Tel Aviv — not of hard-working, Mizrachi Sderot.

Mr. Peretz upends that logic. He is himself a working-class man from Sderot, one who can speak to the millions lost to Labour for so long. He is no token, but an authentic grassroots leader, one who has fought hard for workers' rights and equality, eventually running the Histradut, Israel's TUC. All this cracks open Israeli politics, reopening a Left-Right divide that had closed in the post-Camp David period of glum consensus. Suddenly Mr. Peretz presents a clear alternative to the Thatcherite, neoliberal economics pursued under Mr. Sharon — which have exacted a desperate social cost, casting huge numbers of Israelis into poverty. At the same time, he sets out a stark choice between himself and Mr. Sharon on the conflict with the Palestinians: a negotiated deal or more of the same.

And Mr. Peretz links the two. He argues that defence spending and the occupation have drained too much money for too long. He wants the cash currently spent on settlements to go towards Israel's poor instead: for him economic security is part of national security. Will he succeed?

He faces, in Mr. Sharon, a master strategist who has colonised the centre ground and held on to it. The odds are against him. But Mr. Peretz has defied the odds before — and all those who yearn for peace in the Middle East should pray he defies them again.

— © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Opinion