Haaretz today carries a short video showing Rabbi Menachem Froman and close-to-Hamas Palestinian journalist Khaled Amayreh meeting in the garden of the Cave of the Patriarchs /Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron to sign the ceasefire-plus Accord that, as I had noted here, they recently finished negotiating.
It is a delightful short clip and shows the two men dealing in friendly and cooperative fashion with each other. It was shot, according to the voiceover “last Tuesday”. On the clip, they sit at a picnic table near the Mosque/Cave with the Koran and the Torah on the table in front of them, and sign their Accord.
Amayreh says he spoke with the Hamas caretaker government in Gaza Monday night “and they gave me their total agreement for this document.” He says that Hamas head Khaled Meshaal himself “accepts the document completely.” He adds that the obstacle is the Israeli government, and in particular Defense Minister Ehud Barak. “I am ready to meet with Barak to discuss this with him,” says Amayreh.
Froman says that the documents promises the end to all Palestinian violence including rockets and kidnappings. Amayreh says he cares about the people of Sderot, and he feels the pain of the Israeli boy there who lost his leg to a Palestinian rocket attack earlier this week. “All kids are kids, whether Israeli or Palestinian,” he says.
Watch the video. Spread the word about this important initiative. This is some great news out of the Holy Land; and the ceasefire-plus Accord negotiated by these two very serious men deserves the world’s strongest support.
8 thoughts on “Video of Froman and Amayreh discussing Accord”
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So strange that Helena is cheerleading an interim steps agreement with a remarkably vague timetable (“only God will bring peace”). It’s also disturbing that Helena continues to serve as essentially a propagandist and does not even acknowledge the bigoted rhetoric that comes from Amayreh outside this peace (which she remarkably denied even existed, despite her claim to be knowledgeable about such matters).
In the meantime, I would hope that Helena would be as enthusiastic about measures such as the One Voice Initiative and the Geneva Accords, particularly since they work out a final agreement and are much more detailed (particularly Geneva).
In the meantime, it is disappointing that Helena has not uttered a peep about other peacemakers, such as the settlers of Hebron and local area leaders. And it is appalling that Helena has done nothing to speak out against the DEATH THREATS that the Arab leaders of this initiative have received.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/952855.html
Pity that Helena seems to be falling behind on the peace initiatives in the region. Or perhaps its just selective promotion. I wonder why?
Joshua, thanks for bringing that Hebron reconciliation meeting to my attention. I can’t speak for Helena but this is the kind of grass-roots peacemaking effort she has supported on other occasions in the ME and elsewhere.
I can’t help wondering how much good it will do, though. The Israeli side was represented by a local council head, and the radical criminal element among the settlers is known for not listening to their nominal elected leaders. The clan chiefs on the Palestinian side have been losing authority for decades (although Hebron is still one of the more conservative cities in the WB) and have little or no authority over members of the militias. And of course the overall political backdrop will keep producing friction. I don’t think this conflict really lends itself to piecemeal solutions, and local grass-roots movements will run up against a wall unless they lead to something bigger.
I guess Barak was tied up in debriefing sessions.
I guess Barak was tied up
“Ehud Barak must prepare Israelis for territorial concessions by publicly acknowledging what most Israelis already know in their hearts. We took their land. The occupied territories are not Israel’s to keep.”
Barak was tied up
“Ehud Barak must prepare Israelis for territorial concessions by publicly acknowledging what most Israelis already know in their hearts. We took their land. The occupied territories are not Israel’s to keep.”
“I argue [in the book] that Serbia and Israel are equivalent types of countries; they are both fiercely nationalistic and ethnocentric, and they both have a preoccupation with ethnic purity and ethnic cleansing. I ask why did the Israelis not ethnically cleanse the Palestinians, when the Intifada erupted in 1988, whereas Serbia did engage in ethnic cleansing in Bosnia in 1992.”
Sociology professor James Ron is committed to issues of human rights and refugees, not just as a researcher but also as a volunteer with humanitarian
Ron, who arrived this semester from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, spent much of his childhood in Israel before moving to the U.S. “Living in the Middle East shaped the direction of my research, and my political and ethical commitment to humanitarian work.
I have many good friends who have worked hard with the Geneva Initiative, the One Voice, and many other Track Two peacemaking efforts. (I actually worked for two years for one such effort back in the early 1990s.) I certainly applaud the efforts all the Palestinian and Israeli participants in such ventures have made to transcend hatreds and stereotypes and to build bridges of understanding. However, I note a few things about most of these efforts, including but not limited to Geneva, Nuseibeh/Ayalon, etc:
(1) They were built on a total or near-total abnegation of the claims of the refugee populations who make up at this point a clear majority of the Palestinian people. This, above all, has been the reason for the wariness with which most Palestinians have viewed such proposals.
(2) Israeli participants in such ventures never succeeded in winning the support of their compatriots or their national government for their proposals. The Palestinians did. Abu Mazen himself was always the big force behind Geneva. But having attained political power within the PA, was he then able to win the cooperation of the Israeli government in implementing Geneva? No. So unfortunately he ended up looking to his people like a sucker. The weakness within the Israeli polity of the “peace movement” that was involved in these initiatives has thus far doomed them all. I don’t see that changing any time soon.
(3) Many of these initiatives– including the one I worked with, which was the reason why I resigned in 1993– involve a completely disproportional amount of power of the Israeli participants over crucial aspects of their internal decisionmaking including WHO gets to set the agenda; WHO gets to determine the invitation list; etc. They thus often end up as power plays within the hands of small factions within the Israeli political elite, in which the Palestinians end up playing bit parts while having to provide “therapy” to Israelis over a whole host of issues. Not even Geneva was immune from this.
I believe strongly that all attempts to transcend stereotypes and build bridges on a basis of mutual respect, compassion, and above all a fierce attachment to the concept of human equality should be applauded. Many participants in all those initiatives displayed such constructive qualities. Some did not.
I should note, too, that there is a whole, not insignificant “peace-processing business” that has grown up among well-meaning westerners who get large amounts of funding to sponsor “getting to know you” type encounters between Israelis and Palestinians; and then the lavishly illustrated reports of these encounters are used by the organizations and individuals involved to raise huge additional amounts of funding to keep their organizations (and their own hefty salaries and pension schemes) well funded.
Western participants in such schemes often develop a strong attachment to their approach, which has strongly “integrationist” underpinnings perhaps drawn from the US participants’ own past history. They find it hard even to get their heads around the idea that doing “getting to know you” encounters might be useless or even counter-productive, which I can assure you on occasion it is. And they have no respect, and often even a politically driven antipathy, for proponents of the very different “parallel unilateralisms” approach. I think it’s time they became more tolerant of PU, in general, and tried to engage calmly with its ideas. Even if– heaven forfend!– the implementation of those ideas might lead to fewer encounter group meetings being held in lovely European resorts but more, actually, real improvements of living conditions on the ground for millions of hard-pressed Israelis and Palestinians…
“They were built on a total or near-total abnegation of the claims of the refugee populations who make up at this point a clear majority of the Palestinian people.”
Nonsense. Refugees would be allowed to return to their country, Palestine, and also were eligible for compensation under the various plans.
“Israeli participants in such ventures never succeeded in winning the support of their compatriots or their national government for their proposals. The Palestinians did. Abu Mazen himself was always the big force behind Geneva. But having attained political power within the PA, was he then able to win the cooperation of the Israeli government in implementing Geneva?”
Abu Mazen was a proponent of Geneva before he had full executive power. Once in power, he found himself politically constrained just like those in the Israeli government. Both initiatives had people who were at various levels of government as proponents. So your typical refrain “The Palestinians were ready, the Israelis weren’t” is once again rubbish.
As for the rest of your complaint (as usual, blaming Israeli power), the key is to look at the substance of those proposals and to then work on convincing the relevant constituencies. You don’t think Palestinians are adequately represented? Then perhaps try to convince Palestinians on the outside of the dialogue to demonstrate their goodwill.
As an example, suppose Hamas said that they would be willing to negotiate along the lines of the Geneva initiatve? There would certainly be more pressure for the parties to give them a seat at the table.
The bar has been set so ridiculously low for Hamas. All they had to do was recognize Israel, forswear violence, and agree to abide by existing agreements. Given their history and their outright racist and genocidal charter, it would be perfectly legitimate for Israel or anyone else to just say that Hamas should be banned just like Israel banned the Kach party. Still, they’ve been given a chance, and they still can’t take advantage of it.
What Israel is Hamas or anyone else being asked to recognize and where are its borders, and by borders I mean lines that Israeli Jews cannot continuously breach at will for reasons of Jewish suffering, belief, fear, or desire for security? Also, does recognizing the “state” of Israel mean publically stating that Israel is a “Jewish” state with different and unequal policies for Jews and non-Jews? No Palestinian leader can recognize this Israel without simultaneously denying the full and equal rights of Palestinians inside the Green Line. More importantly, it is neither desirable nor practical to recognize ethnic states to the exclusion of the rights of those inside their boundaries who are not of that ethnicity. That’s a recipe for inciting Jews to treat non-Jews inside the state of Israel in a discriminatory manner and to be “legally” pushed out of the state.
I think it is clear that the two state solution in which Israel does not withdraw to the Green Line died long ago. It is time to consider the possibilities of democracy and binationalism as the only practical framework in which to have dialogues at the level of civil society.