Learning from others in conflict - CAIN

first Palestinian uprising, the first Intifada, which in my eyes was a hugesuccess: by primitive means the Palestinians made the whole world and theIsraelis understand that there was a problem which must be solved. This led tothe 1993 Oslo Agreement, the immediate results of which were tremendous andmost Israelis felt that the reconciliation process was reaching the point of noreturn. You had the Israeli Army withdrawn from the cities; you had thePalestinian police created and co-operating with Israel. You had an amazingincrease in tourism to both Israel and the Palestinian Territories, and the start ofmajor financial investment. The factthat atrocities still continued didn’tchange the general belief in Israel thatthings were going in the right direction.Then you had suicide bombings in busesand public places. Friends of mine lostrelatives or were wounded, and therewas a fear of travelling anywhere bybus. But somehow we went on believingthat everything was going to be okay.I think this optimism ended in 2000, not because of Sharon’s visit to the Al-Aqsa mosque, but because of the failure of the second Camp David summit.Israel had negotiated with the only accepted leader of the Palestinian population,Arafat, and he didn’t deliver. I believe this was a tragic turning point in thehistory of our conflict because disillusionment then set in and pretty mucheverything collapsed. As a result, the second Intifada began, and, most recently,the Palestinian elections were won by Hamas, an organisation which does notrecognise Israel’s right to exist.What opportunities were lost? Israel failed to negotiate with Arafat’s successor,Mahmoud Abbas, who in Israeli eyes has one big advantage over other Palestinianleaders – his strong stand against violence. On the other side, Palestinians failedto respond to a unique Israeli initiative – the unilateral withdrawal from theGaza Strip. Not a single Israeli soldier or settler remained and there was a returnto the 1967 border. And yet the only response we got from the Palestinian sidewas Qassam rockets fired at towns in southern Israel. Where do we stand rightnow? For the last six years there has been total stagnation. At a governmentlevel nothing has changed and in this kind of conflict stagnation effectivelymeans going backwards. This is what drove me and others to join the initiativewe represent today, because I believe this is the golden hour of people-topeopleinitiatives; maybe we can establish a form of second-track diplomacy, totry and overcome the failure of the political leadership on both sides.[Isr] I would like to pick up from there, and talk about how civil society canreact vis-a-vis this conflict, and how we as an organisation are trying to empowera new young leadership and are reaching out to our Palestinian partners andinternational bodies in our efforts to resolve our conflict. We can see two kinds19I believe this is the golden hour ofpeople-to-people initiatives;maybe we can establish a form ofsecond-track diplomacy, to try andovercome the failure of thepolitical leadership on both sides.