{"id":23351,"date":"2012-11-26T12:00:55","date_gmt":"2012-11-26T12:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=23351"},"modified":"2012-12-03T11:53:26","modified_gmt":"2012-12-03T11:53:26","slug":"one-of-israels-great-leftist-warriors-wants-peace-with-hamas-and-gaza-but-does-the-knesset","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2012\/11\/one-of-israels-great-leftist-warriors-wants-peace-with-hamas-and-gaza-but-does-the-knesset\/","title":{"rendered":"Uri Avnery, One of Israel’s Great Leftist Warriors, Wants Peace With Hamas and Gaza – But Does the Knesset?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our correspondent meets the legendary Uri Avnery, who roars out against Netanyahu and his government and foresees growing ethnic strife in Israel.<\/em><\/p>\n

Old [TRANSCEND member] Uri Avnery is 89 but he\u2019s still a fighter. In fact, the famed writer is still one of the great old leftist warriors of Israel, still demanding peace with the Palestinians, peace with Hamas and a Palestinian state on the old \u201967 borders \u2013 give or take a few square miles. He still believes Israel could have peace tomorrow or next week. If Netanyahu wanted it. \u201cThe misfortune of being an incorrigible optimist,\u201d is how he describes his predicament. Or perhaps an illusionist?<\/p>\n

He\u2019s still the same guy I last came across 30 years ago, playing chess with Yasser Arafat in the ruins of Beirut. White hair and white beard now, and roaring his words \u2013 he\u2019s a wee bit deaf these days \u2013 with the same rage and humour as ever. I ask Avnery what Netanyahu and his government are doing. What was this Gaza war meant to achieve? The eyes sparkle and he spits out his reply.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are presuming you know what they want and you presume they want peace \u2013 and therefore that their policy is stupid or insane. But if you assume they don\u2019t give a damn for peace but want a Jewish state from the Mediterranean to the Jordan river, then what they are doing makes sense up to a point. The trouble is that what they do want is leading into a cul de sac \u2013 because we already have now one state in all of historic Palestine, three quarters of it the Jewish state of Israel and one quarter the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.\u201d<\/p>\n

Apartheid in Israel<\/strong><\/p>\n

Avnery speaks in perfect sentences and my pen skids over the page until it runs out of ink and I have to steal one of his.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they annex the West Bank as they have annexed East Jerusalem,\u201d he says. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t make much of a difference. The trouble is that in this territory which is now dominated by Israel, there are about 49 per cent Jews and 51 per cent Arabs \u2013 and this balance will become larger every year because the natural increase on the Arab side is far greater than the natural increase on our side. So the real question is: if this policy goes on, what kind of state will it be? As it is today, it is an Apartheid state, a full apartheid in the occupied territories and a growing apartheid in Israel \u2013 and if this goes on, it will be full apartheid throughout the country, incontestably.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Avnery argument goes bleakly on. If the Arab inhabitants are granted civil rights, there will be an Arab majority in the Knesset and the first thing they will do is change the name \u2018Israel\u2019 and name the state \u2018Palestine\u2019, \u201cand the whole exercise of the past 130 years has come to naught.\u201d Mass ethnic cleansing is impossible in the 21st century, he says \u2013 or hopes \u2013 but there is no discussion about the demography.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a suppression. We are supposed to push this out of our consciousness. Not one single political party speaks about this problem. The word \u2018peace\u2019 does not appear in any election manifesto, except for the little Meretz party \u2013 neither the Opposition or the Coalition. The word \u2018peace\u2019 has completely disappeared.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd The Left in Israel? They have been more or less hibernating \u2013 since the Left was killed off by Ehud Barak in 2000. He came back from Camp David \u2013 as self-proclaimed leader of the \u2018peace camp\u2019 \u2013 and told us \u2018we have no partner for peace\u2019. This was a death blow. It was not Netanyahu who said this, but the leader of the Labour Party. This was the end of Peace Now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hope<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then the optimist resurfaces as the clouds darken the sea beyond Avnery\u2019s seventh floor apartment in Tel Aviv. \u201cWhen I met Arafat in 1982, the terms were all there. The Palestinian minimum and maximum terms are the same: a Palestinian state next to Israel, comprising the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem as a capital, small exchanges of land and a symbolic solution to the refugee problem. But this lies on the table like a wilted flower. It is looking at us every day\u2026 we have already given up the Gaza Strip \u2013 but in order to take hold of the West Bank \u2013 the same way (Menachem) Begin gave up all of Sinai in order to get all of Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Avnery is convinced that Hamas would accept the same \u2013 he lectured to them in Gaza in 1993, \u201cstanding there, facing 500 black-bearded sheikhs, speaking to them in Hebrew \u2013 I was applauded and invited to lunch.\u201d<\/p>\n

He has met other Hamas delegates since. For them, Palestine is a \u2018waqf\u2019, it cannot be handed over, but a truce can be sanctified by God. \u201cIf they offered a truce for 50 years, that is personally enough for me.\u201d Sure, says Avnery, the Hamas manifesto wants to destroy Israel. \u201cBut abolishing a manifesto is a very difficult thing to do \u2013 did the Russians ever abandon the Communist manifesto? The PLO did theirs.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so it goes on. Peace groups, small but hard-working \u2013 Gush Shalom, the Peace Now project monitoring the settlements, the Fighters for Peace (ex-Israeli soldiers and ex-Palestinian fighters) and bereaved parents \u2013 are preparing for the January elections. Interestingly, Avnery believes that the damning \u2013 but very damned \u2013 Goldstone report on the bloodletting of the 2008-2009 Gaza war was what prevented a ground invasion this time round.<\/p>\n

\u201cGoldstone can be very satisfied \u2013 he really saved a lot of lives.\u201d There are more than a few liberals in Israel who hope that Uri Avnery lives for another 89 years.<\/p>\n

______________________<\/p>\n

Robert Fisk is a multiple award-winning journalist on the Middle East, based in Beirut.<\/em><\/p>\n

Uri Avnery is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment. He is an Israeli journalist, writer, peace activist, a former Knesset member, and the founder of Gush Shalom.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 independent.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Join the BDS-BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS<\/em> <\/strong><\/span>campaign to protest the Israeli barbaric siege of Gaza, illegal occupation of the Palestine nation\u2019s territory, the apartheid wall, its inhuman and degrading treatment of the Palestinian people, and the more than 7,000 Palestinian men, women, elderly and children arbitrarily locked up in Israeli prisons.<\/p>\n

DON’T BUY<\/strong> PRODUCTS WHOSE<\/strong> BARCODE<\/strong> STARTS WITH<\/strong> 729<\/strong>, which indicates that it is produced in Israel. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0DO YOUR PART! MAKE A DIFFERENCE!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

7 2 9: BOYCOTT FOR JUSTICE!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Old [TRANSCEND member] Uri Avnery is 89 but he\u2019s still a fighter. In fact, the famed writer is still one of the great old leftist warriors of Israel, still demanding peace with the Palestinians, peace with Hamas and a Palestinian state on the old \u201967 borders \u2013 give or take a few square miles. He still believes Israel could have peace tomorrow or next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-transcend-members","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}