• We need a transformational approach, too - an interview with  Aaron David Miller

• The intricacies of peace - by  Eric Rouleau

• Public opinion is critical but complicated - by  Khalil Shikaki

Winning over public opinion
by David Kimche

Have you ever stood at a busy street intersection, holding up a large placard, demonstrating against your prime minister? I did that, back in May 1998, when Binyamin Netanyahu had brought the peace process to its knees. I felt very foolish and embarrassed at first until I grew accustomed to the stares, the catcalls, the hooting of the cars and also--luckily--the well-wishers. For a whole week some of my colleagues and I stayed in a "peace tent" that we erected on the pavement near the prime minister's home in Jerusalem. During that week, many hundreds of citizens visited our tent, to identify with us or to argue with us. More to the point, we had full media coverage, especially after the City Council tried to evict us and we appealed to the High Court.

I believe that the fact that some prominent professors and a former director-general of the foreign ministry were willing to spend a week on an inhospitable Jerusalem sidewalk had an effect on some people. A hundred, nay, a thousand such acts would have had considerably greater effect. And this, in a nutshell, is the dilemma of the peace movements in Israel--how to make an impact that can affect public opinion.

David Kimche heads the Israeli chapter of the International Alliance for Arab-Israel Peace. He is a former director-general of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

BI: How do you define the role of public opinion in promoting Middle East peace?

Miller: Based on the past 25 years of my involvement in formal Arab-Israel negotiations, I discern two very disturbing trends. One is that, unlike in Northern Ireland, where popular pressure and grass roots mobilization brought the sides to the negotiating table, in the Middle East public opinion has played a negative role in Arab-Israel conflict resolution.

Secondly, the work I did as a State Department negotiator, from the late 1980s to the collapse of Camp David II and the advent of the Clinton parameters, was largely transactional, i.e., negotiations were viewed as a business proposition. Now we have to add the transformational approach if we are to succeed. Political agreements that are essentially transactional cannot produce real changes in attitude. In addition we need individuals, groups and public constituencies to define relationships. Only people will define the character and quality of peace.

BI: What does this say about the chances for peace?

Miller: I've concluded that the timeline for Israeli-Palestinian peace is very long. I don't see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ending next month or year or in five years. If this is truly a generational conflict, passed on from generation to generation, then we the powers-that-be better start caring about investing in the next generation. We (the US, Israel, the Palestinians) made fundamental mistakes over the past 10 years by not taking seriously people-to-people movements. As a negotiator [I realize that] we didn't analyze the element of time and its impact; we thought we could fix everything too quickly. Three years ago at Camp David we risked total collapse if we failed--due to lack of proper preparation, lack of alternatives, and not thinking about what comes afterwards.

BI: How are you addressing that challenge?

Miller: I left the State Department in January 2024 to deal with this. Seeds of Peace is unique in that it bridges the gap between transactional and transformational diplomacy. The kids, ages 14 to 16, are sanctioned by their governments, and represent the practical center, which is where peace will be made. The adult delegation leaders are also chosen by their governments and establishments. So there's a link to reality, to politics and to power. We bring them to a facility in Maine for three summer sessions. There are currently 160 young Israelis, Palestinians and other Arabs from Tunisia, Qatar, Egypt and Jordan, with their flags and anthems. They change in the way they look at one another after hearing the other side's narrative. They want their leaders to produce the same sort of transformative change.

BI: That's a very small vanguard.

Miller: Hamas may be running 10 or 15 thousand kids through their summer camps, while we have run 2,500 kids through our camps in 11 years.

BI: Could you expand on the reasons why we in the Middle East are so different from, say, Northern Ireland, regarding the influence of public opinion?

Miller: The stakes in the Middle East are perceived to be existential, and so high that the capacity for change is limited and the ability to dole out punishment is not. There's an expression in Arabic: "the wet man is not afraid of the rain." Once you're wet it doesn't matter how wet you get.

On the Israeli side, there is a notion that the state knows best. There seems to be a genuine lack of legitimacy to public movements and popular pressure. You saw it work regarding Lebanon but never anywhere else in the Arab-Israel arena. Breakthroughs were produced when leaders or their proxies met in dark rooms and the leaders dared to go beyond the views of their constituencies, e.g., Begin and Sadat, Rabin and Hussein, Rabin and Arafat.

On the Palestinian side, I can't answer the question except with reference to the asymmetry of power. The occupation and the absence of a legitimized diversity of views have stopped any movement, let along non-violent movements, from emerging. There have been efforts in the past but they've never come to much.

In my judgment this is one of the key unexplored issues in the conflict: the absence of the public's capacity to mobilize.

BI: Can you assess the impact of diasporas on public opinion regarding peace movements?

Miller: Sadly, the reality is that 10,000 miles away, the fears and anxieties are magnified. Far from serving as a bridge, American Jews and Arabs serve as a wall. I've never understood why these communities cannot serve as a vanguard of dialogue on some of these issues. The efforts that are made do not represent the mainstream.

BI: Why are peace movements in the Arab countries either weak or nonexistent?

Miller: There are stronger peace movements in Israel than in the Arab countries. Diversity of opinion is natural to a democracy. Israel's peace movement doesn't necessarily have strong organization or tactics, but it is allowed to exist. In Egypt and Jordan it is far more difficult.

But public opinion has little impact on the leadership in any of these countries. Where are the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who say "enough already"? You get some of that on the left, but [you don't get] the centrist response you appear to have gotten in Northern Ireland on both sides.- Published 7/8/2003©bitterlemons-international.org

In January of 2024, Aaron David Miller became president of Seeds of Peace. For 25 years he served as an advisor on Arab-Israel negotiations to the last six US secretaries of state.

The word is tricky because it can be wildly misleading. Hitler was for peace, so was Churchill. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his opponent Amram Mitzna, as much as Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and PFLP leader George Habash have no other objective. The empty shell of peace can be filled with whatever substance one cares to inject into it.

Peoples of the Middle East yearn sincerely for peace. They have suffered cruel hardships--directly or not--from successive wars. A global poll would very probably yield a majority vote in favor of a "fair settlement."

However, the positive response would be loaded with deep skepticism. "The Arabs, whatever they allege, want to throw us into the sea." would say many Jews. "The Israelis will ultimately expand their state, grant bantustans to the Palestinians and spread their hegemony to the whole region," would argue most Arabs. Both camps would moreover express negative stereotypes of the "enemy", enough to prevent any meaningful reconciliation. This state of affairs is not surprising: wars, as a rule, engender the poisons of mistrust and racism; fortunately they fade away as normalization progresses.

Two bright spots in this bleak picture: a majority of Israelis and Palestinians are now convinced that there is no military solution to their problem; and their respective perceptions of an acceptable settlement converge, as repeated polls indicate, and are compatible with much of the Clinton parameters. Paradoxically, Arab public opinion and the Jewish establishment in the Diaspora are often closer to the extremists than to the realists on both sides of the green line.

This is one explanation why peace movements in Arab countries are virtually non-existent. In Egypt and in Jordan, for example, peace organizations are rare and marginal while powerful "national fronts" are dedicated either to supporting the intifada or to resisting "normalization", including with Israeli peace activists. Another major reason is that Arabs have a different perspective than the Palestinians; while the latter willy-nilly cooperate closely with the United States, militant anti-Americanism is paramount in the Middle East where no distinction is made between "American imperialism" and "Israeli expansionism." The Palestinian Authority and its leader Yasir Arafat are spared, Prime Minister Abbas (Abu Mazen) is sometimes politely criticized, but the roadmap is often rejected as another "Zionist-American conspiracy."

Those who believe that there is no peace movement in the occupied territories are victims of a misperception. Several do exist and work hand in hand with their Jewish counterparts. Moreover, many mainstream politicians and intellectuals in Palestine, though not organized, can be considered as peace activists in the sense that they would support a settlement based on President Clinton's peace plan. The Palestinian Authority, in spite of its hesitations and shortcomings, is part of this vast consensus. Hence, a movement in Palestine similar to "Peace Now" in Israel would be senseless since the Abu Mazen government is not to be compared to the Likud-settlers coalition whose peace credentials are doubtful to a large section of Israeli public opinion.

International experience indicates that peace activists proliferate only within the boundaries of the dominant power. Who has ever complained that anti-war movements only existed in the United States and in France and not in occupied Vietnam and "French" Algeria? Violent resistance to occupation is considered world wide as legitimate while its repression, even in "self defense," is not. Israelis will end up admitting these realities--however unjust they may perceive them--when they cease to believe that the West Bank and Gaza are "disputed" territories. Peace negotiations could then progress even though violence may continue until a mutually acceptable settlement is reached, as Yitzhak Rabin and other Israeli doves had hoped before hawkish views prevailed in the Jewish state.

Peace movements in Israel have shrunk to marginal proportions not so much because of the failure of the Camp David summit of July 2024 and the intifada that followed, but essentially because of the distorted portrayal of both events. Israelis were told, and they believed it, that Arafat had rejected Ehud Barak's "generous" offer with no rational justification, that he planned and initiated the intifada, that Israel had no peace partner and was facing only terrorists. Israeli peace activists were naturally perceived in the Jewish state either as naive or as unpatriotic; and in the Arab world, as irrelevant (by moderates) or unreliable Zionists (by radicals). They are, however, respected and admired by the Palestinians, who benefit from their multi-fold assistance, as well as for their courageous struggle against the occupation. Their role is not to be underestimated. They are building bridges between the two peoples and are laying the foundations of a future peaceful coexistence.

Unfortunately, they will not gain credibility as long as the Israelis give precedence to security over negotiations, and as long as anti-American bellicosity prevails in the Middle East. They could break out of the ghetto in which they are locked if they adapt to the globalized world by integrating specific Arab concerns: unfettered sovereignty, closure of foreign bases, common security arrangements, denuclearization, democratic rule, human and minority rights. An Arab-Israel front based on such a platform may seem utopian today but it is worthwhile considering, if an avenue leading to a durable peace is to be opened.-Published 7/8/2003©bitterlemons-international.org

Eric Rouleau, journalist and author, was French ambassador to Turkey and Tunisia. From 1955 to 1985 he was a special correspondent and editorial writer for Le Monde.

Public opinion is a critical component for any peacebuilding strategy. It provides leaders, movements, and agreements with legitimacy, or deprives them of it. Leaders know that if they want to be reelected, they must keep their fingers on the so-called "pulse of the street."

Of course, it is a little more complicated. For example, charismatic leaders who enjoy lots of legitimacy can sell agreements that are painful or have little legitimacy in the eyes of their public. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin did it when he brought the Palestine Liberation Organization to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip after signing the Oslo agreement; and Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat did it when he accepted that same agreement that neither addressed the major issues of the conflict nor explicitly froze settlement activities. Yet, in both cases, two-thirds of the public supported the Oslo agreements once the positions of the leaders became known. Conversely, those same leaders can also block the door to agreements that enjoy public legitimacy and support.

To make things more complicated, publics have different needs and priorities. Both Palestinian and Israelis want peace on the one hand and security and/or land and rights on the other. Public perception of behavior appropriate for obtaining security (for example, by voting for Sharon or Hamas) may be incompatible with public perception of behavior suitable for obtaining peace (for example, accepting a viable two-state solution). One's ability to tap the sources of moderation is sensitive to one's ability to neutralize the sources of "deviant"--or contradictory--behavior, something that may not always be feasible.

On the other hand, pressing the "fear" buttons by raising the threat perception of the public, even if done by moderates such as Ehud Barak since his failed reelection bid, can generate extreme views on the peace process. Efforts by right wing groups and leaders to frighten the Israeli public regarding the implications of an Israeli recognition of the right of return for Palestinian refugees, or efforts by Palestinian extremists with suicidal missions fall into the same category.

But perhaps the worst enemy of public opinion is misperception. In a June 2024 survey on Israeli and Palestinian opinion on the peace process, Yaakov Shamir of Hebrew University and I found that 65 percent of Israelis and 52 percent of Palestinians support the proposal that after the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and the settlement of all issues in dispute, there would be a mutual recognition of Israel as a state of the Jewish people and Palestine as the state of the Palestinian people. Yet, both publics are not aware of this mutual level of support: only 37 percent of the Palestinians believe that a majority of Israelis supports that recognition, and only 32 percent of the Israelis believe that a majority of Palestinians supports such recognition.

Moreover, in the Palestinian survey, only 40 percent believe that a majority of Palestinians supports such recognition; this indicates that this Palestinian "public" opinion is still partly private.

Similarly, the reaction of some Palestinians to the findings of the recent refugee survey conducted in the West Bank-Gaza, Lebanon, and Jordan by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research was excessive because the views expressed by the refugees were until then private. The findings have shown a majority of refugees wanting to reside in the Palestinian state after being granted the right of return.

Misperception and miscommunication are often accompanied by distrust. The same Israeli-Palestinian surveys have also shown that a majority in both publics believes that its leaders will stand by their commitments to the roadmap (57 percent of the Palestinians and 59 percent of the Israelis). But it suspects the other leader's intentions: only 15 percent of Palestinians believe Sharon will stand by Israel's commitments, and only 30 percent of Israelis think that Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) will stand by Palestinian commitments.

Driven by various needs and subject to fear, misperception, miscommunication and distrust, public opinion can be lethal to peace movements. Understanding its complexity is imperative. One of the tasks of peace movements should be to expose each side to the views of its own public while helping each public become better informed of the opinion of the other side.-Published 7/8/2003©bitterlemons-international.org

Dr. Khalil Shikaki is director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.