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IPCRI In The News From Akiva Eldar, Haaretz, March 13, 2003 |
Abu Mazen's test
With Arafat breathing down his neck and Sharon flanking him, Abu Mazen
will need to take a deep breath to bring the situation back to where it
was before October 2000. His first test of the balance of power between
the new premier and the old president, will be the appointment of a new
interior minister. Abu Mazen doesn't hide his desire to get rid of the
current interior minister, Hanni el Hassan, who is considered an Arafat
loyalist. Hassan doesn't hide his disappointment that Arafat didn't name
him as prime minister.
His second test will be imposing an end to the violence against Israel in
exchange for renewal of dialogue with it. Practically from the start of
the intifada, Abu Mazen has not hidden his negative view of the use of
force to achieve political goals. Since Oslo and the Yossi Belin-Abu Mazen
talks, the refugee from Safed has not ceased believing that the
negotiating table is for talking around and not throwing around.
A member of the old generation, Abu Mazen was imposed on Arafat by the
middle generation of Mohammed Dahlan and the Fatah youths. They all agree
the intifada has done its bit and can be done with. They also agree that
the intifada's greatest damage to the Palestinian cause was the
dissolution of the Israeli peace camp and they believe that the
rehabilitation of the Israeli peace camp is an important step on the way
to a Palestinian state.
Even in the bloodiest days of the intifada, Abu Mazen kept his channels
open to Israelis. His experts, mostly lawyers who prepared working papers
for the talks with Ehud Barak's administration, kept working under fire.
Former defense minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer filled in Abu Mazen on his
peace plan from last May, before the Labor primaries, and Abu Mazen
encouraged Yasser Abed Rabo, who is not one of his favorites, to keep
meeting with Yossi Beilin, whose Economic Cooperation Foundation holds
ongoing meetings with Camp David and Taba alumni from the Palestinian
Authority.
Amram Mitzna's refusal to join the Sharon government gave the Palestinians
back the hope there is someone to talk to on the Israeli side. Peres'
departure from the government, even if it was forced upon him, gave back
the Peres Center's lost honor among the Palestinian neighbors and the
donors from Europe. The center's director, Ron Pundak, who once said Peres
had become a burden to the center, now points proudly to a new flowering
of its activities. Other peace
groups, like the Israel Palestine Committee for Research and Information,
the Middle East Children Project, the Nusseibeh-Ayalon group, Adam, the
human rights group, the Truman Center's peace project, and other
organizations are all reporting hunger on the Palestinian side for talks
with Israelis.
Peres' work
The Peres Center conducts a broad range of activity through working groups
and forums. There's the Gilo-Beit Jalla dialogue and the Jerusalem forum,
headed by Jerusalem city councillor Yehoram Gaon and Al Quds University
president Sari Nusseibeh. The center brings together young political
leaders from both sides, and holds mayors meetings, with the latest in
Rome in mid-December 2002. Last November, a forum of peace and dialogue
groups met in Rome; farmers met in Jordan recently, and youth groups met
in Oslo and Malta. Diplomats met in October 2002, and students in November
2002 met in Tel Aviv, with Gaza's Movement for National Change.
Businessmen met in Istanbul with the cooperation of the Industry Ministry
and the Israel Chambers of Commerce, while economists met in France in
October 2002. Senior officials and academics from Ben-Gurion University
have met, and there have been theater and film meetings with the
cooperation of Adam - in January a 100-seminar series began. There was a
journalists' meeting in Berlin in December and a joint football team, the
Peace Team, played an exhibition game last October.
The Peres Center has instituted cooperation between Hadassah University
Hospital and the premature infant ward at the Red Crescent's Women's
Hospital in Gaza, and the center is working on a cancer ward at Augusta
Victoria Hospital in Jerusalem. The center initiated a team from TAU and
Al Quds University to work together on a nutrition project, with 20
doctors and teachers from the West Bank, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The team
has already held joint trips and working sessions at Sheba Medical Center
and the TAU medical school.
IPCRI also conducts working
sessions, trying to hammer out working models for solutions for five
issues: arrangements in Jerusalem, water, economic relations and
agriculture, third party intervention, and monitoring the situation on the
ground. They also plan a working group on the "road map" and one for
business people. IPCRI is also very active on the Internet. Due to travel
restrictions, their school-to-school projects have moved their activities
to the `net.
http://www.our-shared-environment.net