By Reuven Koret
November 30, 2003
Observing the shenanigans leading up to the launching of the Geneva Accords, one doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.
Here we have some of the most discredited losers on the Israeli political scene, sucking at the teats of their European benefactors. Avrum Burg, who lost his party's race to become its candidate in the last election; Amram Mitzna, who lost in a massive landslide as that candidate, and their ringleader; Yossi Beilin, who failed to be elected to the Labor Knesset list, then moved further left to Meretz, where he failed to secure a seat there too.
What they do have is oodles of euros rolling in from wealthy Continentals and at least one Israeli who made his millions bilking idiots in online casinos. They spent millions producing and distributing to each Israeli household and old-age-home a virtually unreadable document, the text of which proves the extent of the absurdity which they have concocted with their Palestinian counterparts, and then flying to Switzerland everyone who wanted a duty-free shopping spree. One day only: Israel on sale!
On the eve of the trip to Geneva, Palestinians who negotiated the Accords discovered that Yasser Arafat was not even going to let them go to Geneva, until -- under international pressure -- he allowed them to travel as private citizens. The Palestinian Authority pointedly refused to endorse the Accord.
What Palestinian do agree about is the utility of the exercise: "One of the goals of the Geneva Accord is to create a rift in the Israeli street and a crack in the Sharon government," said Qadura Fares, an Accord architect who is going. "Our aim was to create divisions inside Israel and block the growth of the right-wing in Israel," said Hatem Abdel Kader, an Accord negotiator who is staying home.
In any case, Israelis and Palestinians are jetting off to Geneva not to sign anything, because apparently there is no real agreement between the sides on the critical issues in the document. All that initial stuff about Palestinian renunciation of their refugees' "right of return" to destroy Israel was just disingenuous media hype. They are going to "launch" the Accord. Perhaps they are just going to lunch.
And what a lunch it will be! They will whine as they dine, complaining that only they are proposing a diplomatic alternative, disdaining the fact that Sharon has the gall to insist on a security barrier to keep out suicide bombers and to demand that the Palestinian Authority actually fight the terrorists in their midst.
The Geneva document calls for the division of Jerusalem, the handing over to the terrorists of the Temple Mount and most of the Old City, and the ghettoization of Jerusalem's suburbs. The largest Israeli cities in Judea and Samaria -- Efrat and Ariel -- are to be forcibly abandoned, and a landbridge is to be created between the disparate parts of Palestine, effectively bisecting Israel.
Far from eliminating the Palestinian "right of return," the accord provides for the infiltration into Israel annually of tens of thousands of fiercely hostile Arabs under the guise of "family unification," fueling not defusing the demographic time-bomb, accelerating the dismantling of Israel as a Jewish State by Arab ballots if not bullets.
Israel is to rely on foreign nations to patrol its borders, and there will be no effective limitations on Palestine's ability to make defense pacts and obtain military aid from Iran, Pakistan or any other state. It is a recipe for Israeli self-dissolution, and well the Arabs and Europeans, and the same Americans who embraced Oslo, know it.
The celebrants in Geneva will shmooze as they booze, toasting themselves for their deep insight and profound wisdom, the courageousness of their convictions. They will be served with high compliments from their high-minded Swiss hosts, opining from their alpine heights how exactly Israel should behave to survive.
They should just dine in a hall of mirrors and admire their own brilliance, superior thinkers and negotiators whom they think they are, looking down from their august heights on the primitive Israeli electorate who so soundly rejected their world-view and conspiracies in the last election.
While their exhibition of diplomatic thong failed to entice President Clinton to come, but they did get Jimmy Carter, like the other VIP guests, to be flown over by the Swiss. And Colin Powell appears willing to extend a blessing of sorts on the venture. Tom Friedman and Jim Baker are all for it.
Other Israeli peace groups have enlisted young sex symbols like Brad Pitt, Jennifer Anniston, and of course Mideast expert Jason Alexander -- George from Seinfeld -- to express their deep wisdom about the intricacies of Middle East peace.
But the biggest coup of the Beilin crowd, no doubt, was convincing Richard Dreyfus to serve as master of ceremonies. No doubt they are expecting him to repeat his unforgettable performance as Duddy Kravitz, the storied Canadian-Jewish hustler in Mordecai Richler's novel.
Like Yossi, Duddy was a master of the theatrical in his pursuit of fame and fortune: in one brilliant scene, he hired a besotted British film-maker to produce a bar mitzvah film in which scenes from the synagogue were spliced with bloody scenes of circumcision from African coming-of-age rituals.
The production of these Accords strike one as akin to that movie within a movie: grandiose grandstanding, pomp and pretension, boasting and bombast signifying -- nothing.
OK, maybe they're good for a laugh, knowing that nothing will come out of this self-congratulation and self-adulation. Maybe they're good for a cry, realizing that the the assumptions of Oslo which led our nation, literally, to a dead end remain the tarrying messiah of Israel's self-proclaimed intelligentsia, followed slavishly by much of our media.
"Fooled us once, shame on you. Fooled us twice, shame on us." But most of the Israeli public is no longer so easily fooled.
The poseurs and losers have failed repeatedly to win over the Israeli voters, most of whom reject and despise them. At least in Geneva, the boys can play with each other in public, while the Europeans watch and applaud.
Views expressed by the author do not
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