Archive for the ‘Israeli Greens’ Category
From the Friends of the Earth Middle East newsletter
Good Water Neighbours and a Model Water Agreement – see FoEME’s May 09 newsletter.
Israeli Green Gershon Baskin: will Israelis ever accept the Arab peace initiative
Gershon Baskin is a former parliamentary candidate for the Israel Green Movement / Meimad and co-director and founder of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI). He recently revealed that he had been involved in back-channel negotiations with Hamas before Kadima opted for an Israeli incursion into Gaza. He persistently puts up political alternatives to military activity.
In this Open Democracy piece he makes the case for the Arab peace initiative, for which he is a strong advocate, and explains the intensely security-minded world view which is preventing ordinary Israelis from engaging with it.
“Since the initiative has been widely overlooked by Israeli politicians it is certainly worthwhile pointing out its primary advantages and reasons why Israel should accept it quickly before it is no longer relevant. The Arab Peace Initiative was accepted unanimously by all of the member states of the Arab League in March 2002. On the day that it was presented thirty people were killed and 140 injured – 20 seriously – in a suicide bombing in the Park Hotel in the coastal city of Netanya, in the midst of a Passover holiday seder with 250 guests. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. This attack was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back that led to the ‘Defensive Shield’ Israeli offensive leading in turn to the full re-occupation of the West Bank and the placing of Palestinian President Arafat under siege in the muqata’ in Ramallah. The Israeli mindset, at that time when suicide bombing were a daily event and under the leadership of Prime Minister Sharon was hardly in any mood to consider an Arab peace initiative.
But the initiative was once again unanimously ratified at the meeting of the League of Arab States in Khartoum in May 2006 and again in 2007 in Riyadh.”
This piece is good at articulating the circumstances but is as challenged by the task of “bridging this gap in consciousness” as the peace camp is in general. From the middle of the piece:
“This [Arab peace initiative] is almost too good to be true and had it been presented 20 years ago, it might have been received much more positively in Israel. But today, there is no peace camp in Israel anymore. Israeli society has lost its faith in peace. Israelis no longer dream of getting into their car and having humus for lunch in Damascus. Israelis do not want to visit Cairo or Amman and do not particularly care if Jordanians or Egyptians come to visit Israel. If President Mubarak and King Abdallah II don’t want to come to Jerusalem, so be it. Israelis no longer believe that giving up territory will bring peace. The general Israeli interpretation of the ‘territory for peace’ scheme is that we withdrew from areas in the West Bank and created the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat which then attacked us with weapons that we provided for them. In Gaza, which Israel left entirely – withdrawing both settlements and military, we got qassam rockets in exchange. Whether this reflects what really happened and why is not relevant. This is the way that the overwhelming majority of Israelis understand that reality. So, in this context, the Arab Peace Initiative is not particularly attractive.”
How to go about building a sense of hope and commitment to pursuing a peaceful solution in a population which perceives existential danger? Put up a different narrative of opportunity and hope.
Michael Green on West Bank settlers who want out
A substantial piece in the Jerusalem Post by Michael Green who blogs at Green Prophet (and incidentally grew up down the road from where I now live).
“His motives for leaving are explicitly political: “We have to make peace with the Palestinians and to do that we have to leave. I understand that our place isn’t here.”
Raz and others want their homes in the West Bank to be handed over to the Palestinian Authority in the framework of a peace agreement, but aren’t prepared to rely on a peace process which has yielded meager results in the last 15 years. “We’re already living in two states, the State of Israel and a dictatorial state in the territories,” he says.
Izzy echoes a similar view: “I feel like I’m in the state of Palestine when I travel to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. It’s not nice for me to say that.”
“You won’t find a place like this in Tel Aviv or Kfar Saba,” Raz says proudly of his seven-room house, which originally cost him $130,000.
“It’s the greatest place on Earth. I live on top of a mountain and see goats each day,” says Roi Raz. “But I want to leave because it could be the solution to this conflict; it’s a bone stuck in our throats.”
Gershon Baskin: Gaza wasn’t a “war of no choice”
This is a few days old now, but it is worth knowing. Gershon Baskin is the CEO of the Israel/Palestine Centre for Research and Information a candidate for the Israel Green Movement-Meimad party. On the eve of the Israeli elections he revealed that he had been involved with secret government-approved back-channel talks, to which Hamas eventually consented two weeks before the war, about renewing the ceasefire.
His is a voice for political negotiation rather than military action – and a Green Movement voice.
Environmental Studies students from the Middle East: “Where do we go from here?”
Anxiety about the environment cuts across all local and national conflict, and environmentalists in the Middle East understand that it is simply not possible to isolate each other. Such a sense of a shared existence is the bedrock of a peaceful resolution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
At the Arava Institute of Environmental Studies in Israel’s Negev Desert, Palestinian, Israeli, Jordanian and American Environmental Studies students consider coexistence and ask “Where do we go from here“? These students give some of the most powerful arguments for peace that I have read in a while.
“The recent violence in Gaza and southern Israel has weighed heavily on the students here – possibly the only place in Israel where Palestinian and Israeli students continue to look each other in the eye day-to-day and ponder their common present and future. Needless to say, their studies, as in the rest of Israel and Palestine, have been disrupted directly and indirectly by tragic current events. But here, uniquely, we are trying to use the event to strengthen our collective vision, rather than further divide.
Within the context of our pre-scheduled lecture on regional environmental policy (with guest lecturer, Green Movement-Meimad candidate Dr. Shmuel Brenner), I asked the students three questions regarding their vision of the future for the region, and how we we get from where we are now to where we want to be.”
Read the whole thing on Greener Israel, the unofficial blog of Israel’s new political party, the Israel Green Movement – Meimad.
Israel Green Movement Q&A
The Israel Green Movement is a vibrant new organisation which is launching as a political party in advance of the upcoming Israeli elections.
With British Green anti-Israel strategists’ arguments in mind (and consequently with apologies for this very singular British welcome to the political scene) I sent the following questions to Daniel Orenstein, a volunteer in the Israel Green Movement. He was good enough to find the time to answer them for Greens Engage.
1) Arabic is the joint official language of Israel. How come there is a link to an English version of your site, but not Arabic?
2) How would you respond to the statement “Zionism is incompatible with true Green values, because it is nationalist”?
Zionism as a movement for the creation of a Jewish national state in the Land of Israel is no longer relevant since such a state already exists. In Israel and most Jewish discourses, Zionism usually refers to support and loyalty to the State of Israel, although not necessarily support of its government’s actions. Naturally, a political party working within the state’s political system supports and is loyal to the national entity.
Green Zionism in this sense does not contradict and in fact strongly supports equal rights and involvement for all citizens (and residents, for that matter). Israel is usually defined as Jewish and democratic – this raises challenges and obligations, which include an imperative to full democracy and equal rights – which the Green Israel Movement will continue to demand.
3) You are a “social environmental movement” – what is your programme for the welfare and engagement of minority social groups in Israel?
See above.
4) What are the particular challenges of an Israeli Green movement, and how do you meet them?
We understand that the roots of environmental problems lie in broader societal ills – our fundamental relationship with the earth and our fellow citizens, our economic systems and priorities, our consumption patterns, political conflict, social and economic disparities. In my opinion, our challenges are to refocus our priorities on people’s well being, invest in education/primary research/health care, protect the commons (coastlines, water sources, urban public space, natural landscapes) from damage and privatization, close economic disparities, eliminate political and economic discrimination, encourage environmentally sound modes of energy production and transportation… The list goes on.
