Inside Israel's peace bloc
Interview with Adam Keller of the Gush Shalom peace movement
International Viewpoint: When was Gush Shalom (the Peace Block) formed and what organisations does it regroup? Adam Keller: It was founded in December 1992, after the deportation of 450 Palestinian Islamic activists to Lebanon. A few months later, the Rabin Labour government took power. At the time, it was a big disappointment. For the first six months of his term in office, Rabin did very little to advance the peace process, but instead was quite aggressive...
We felt that many of the peace movements in Israel - especially Peace Now -were too closely tied to the Labour Party. They were too inhibited about contronting the Labour Party... We felt the need for a group which would be independent from political parties, and which would be willing to support or oppose the government on the merits of what it was actually doing.
Gush Shalom was originally called the Jewish-Arab Committee Against Deportations. It was quite a broad coalition which included some elements which did not stay with us.
In the beginning we had the active participation of the Islamic movement [among Israel's Arab citizens]. We did not always agree with them, but at least we worked out a kind of modus vivendi which helped us to understand better those who are sometimes called Muslim fundamentalists. In fact, we became very doubtful about using the term "fundamentalists" which is now used as a catch-all term, as was the word "Communist" during the Cold War... • Did you discuss with them the question of terrorism, of armed actions aimed against civilian targets?
Yes, of course. Firstly, we have to remember that this is the Islamic movement in Israel, whose members are Israeli citizens. On the one hand they certainly have officially declared fraternal relations with the Hamas, Hezbollah and the other Islamic movements in the Arab world. On the other hand, particularly through municipalities where they have been elected to power, they have an official working relationship with the Israeli government.
When the question comes up, they always say that they are against killing civilians, but that they have the right to take up arms when Islamic people are oppressed. When you talk to them about Hamas or the Algerian Islamic movement for example, they say that they do not agree with what those groups ar doing, but that they understand that they have been pushed into this situation by circumstances, occupation, oppression, etc... • But aside from the fact that they try to resist the oppression to which they are victims as Palestinians, aren't they reactionary, right-wing, obscurantist, religious?
I don't think that is the case for all of them. When discussing the situation of women, for instance, we discovered that there were a wide range of opinions among them. It seems that Islamic law concerning the status of the women in society is subject to quite a lot of interpretation...
Actually, we found a lot of similarities between our discussions with them and with Jewish rabbis (priests). Moslem and Jewish Israelis both have a general assumption of a religious, God-given right to the land. But in both cases, the question arises of how far this God-given right should be pursued, and whether other circumstances, especially the sanctity of human life, could be an overriding factor against certain kinds of behaviour...
In any case, this initial stage was basically Gush Shalom's pre-historic period, during our anti-deportation work... As more general issues were raised, we started to work mainly with other forces, although we still find a basis for working with Muslim activists on specific issues from time to time. • What about the other components which make up Gush Shalom?
Gush Shalom was initially conceived as a coalition of groups. There were a few small groups which merged with one another, losing their initial identity, and there were others which ended up leaving. In the beginning, the Communist Party, Haddash, was quite deeply involved, but that did not last very long.
From the middle of 1997, Gush Shalom was not really a coalition of forces, but rather a distinct group as such. We promote the two-state solution as the political scenario that could resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. • You said that Gush Shalom is willing to support or oppose Israeli governments on the merits on what they actually do. Have you yet had the occasion to support an Israeli government?
Yes. In August 1993, we demonstrated in front of the Labour Party Headquarters when Rabin was attending a party meeting. We called upon him to talk with
the PLO, and we unveiled a large painting of Rabin shaking hands with Arafat. It was a very short-term prophecy, as less than two weeks later, Rabin put into practise exactly what we asked him to do in this demonstration.
For the first months following the signing of the Oslo Accords we supported the Rabin government. But we were among the first to start criticising it, at the end of 1993 and beging of 1994.
The first thing was Rabin's refusal to release political prisoners. That was his government's first big mistake in a series which led to his assassination.
If he would have released nearly all of