Peace Now at the Checkpoint

Tuesday, 16 October 2007
Written by Yossi Bartal for the Alternative Information Center (AIC)
Peace Now and their male oriented leadership have always attacked the refuseniks movement and kept on proudly committing war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories in the name of national unity and obedience to the law. One can just hope that they will stop being seen by the world as a part of the peace movement in Israel.

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Peace Now. Now?! Well, Maybe Later - How the Peace Camp 'Vanished'
Ran HaCohen - February 8, 2002

WHAT IS THE PEACE CAMP?

There are two Israeli peace camps. One peace camp wants peace with the Palestinians, without occupation and without settlements. The other "peace camp" – I'll be using quotes to refer to it – wants peace with the settlers, not with the Palestinians. The issue of refusal is the very Shibboleth dividing the two camps.

HOW DOES PEACE NOW FIT IN?

Maybe because of its memorable logo, maybe because of good things it may have done when I was a child, Peace Now is still considered, especially in the US, as the incarnation of the Israeli peace camp. Peace Now is a non-parliamentary movement, whose supporters are more-or-less identical with the Meretz constituency.

Now it is high time to tell the truth: Peace Now is a marginal mainstream movement, far from any dissent, not part of the Israeli peace camp, but the very essence of the "peace camp". During the last eight years, Peace Now has been virtually absent from the Israeli public sphere. Its only activity worth mentioning is monitoring the expansion of the settlements, a documentation project issuing a communication to the press every few months.

A mass demonstration planned for this Saturday (9 February) can clarify the issue. The rally – postponed from last Saturday for technical reasons – is organised by an ad hoc "coalition for peace" comprising an unprecedented large number of bodies.

Among the speakers invited in the rally are signatories of the refusal petition and others public figures who support refusal. Though it was invited, Peace Now not only refused to participate, it is now trying to sabotage the rally by publishing big ads in the Israeli dailies announcing a demonstration a week later and signing "coalition for peace", in an obvious attempt to confuse demonstrators and tempt them to believe the rally was postponed once again.

If Peace Now's donors wonder where their money goes, here is an answer: to pay for expensive whole-page ads aimed at splitting and breaking the resistance to the Occupation and to Israel's war crimes from within.