[The following article appeared in the July 5 issue of the French Trotskyist daily Rouge. The translation is by Intercontinental Press/ Inprecor.]
JERUSALEM-One in every four cars bears a sticker on its back window that says, "Peace is better than a great Israel." No one can deny it any longer-the peace movement, launched a little more than three months ago, has succeeded in winning a real mass following.
What do they want, these tens of thousands of Israelis who for the first time are ready to mobilize openly against the warmongering policy of their rulers? Who are they, and what makes them tick?
A cursory glance at the participants in the teach-in outside the Knesset (parliament) that came at the end of the [April 26] demonstration in Jerusalem reveals that while all age groups are represented, the great majority are young people. But they are not just any young people-only those who are known as "kibbutznikim" in Israeli terminology [residents of collective farms], along with students and sons and daughters of well-to-do families from the residential neighborhoods of Jerusalem and the suburbs north of Tel Aviv. Only a few "oriental" Jews from immigrant communities and working-class neighborhoods can be seen.
A second observation is that veterans of demonstrations against the occupation and members of left Zionist organizations are only a tiny minority. Alongside moderate members of parliament—Meir Pail and Shulamith Aloni-activists in Shelli [a bloc of "left" Zionists], and revolutionary feminists, are thousands of persons for whom this demonstration is the first political activity of their lives.
*I met more than half a dozen classmates here whom I never thought I would meet at a political demonstration," Assia told me. She is a student at Tel Aviv University, and an old hand at this. It's her third demonstration. Most of her highschool friends are now married to doctors, lawyers, and members of other liberal professions, and fairly accurately reflect the social origins of the demonstrators. I interviewed them.
Shula: "After Sadat's peace initiative, the choice is simple-either make concessions in return for a peace treaty with Egypt, at least, or get ready for a terrible war." Deborah adds: "My husband is not about to die for Yamit" [an Israeli settlement built on Egyptian territory occupied after the 1967 war].
The hope awakened by Sadat's initiative, and fear of an imminent war, are themes that run through all the statements by the movement's leaders. While some of them are close to the Labor Party (Mapai), no indications that they are there are being manipulated by one or another political party.
Quite the contrary-most of them display well-justified suspicion toward the official organizations. Eytan, a reserve lieutenant and student at the Technion in Haifa, explains: "After the October war, I participated in the protest movement. Like many others, I voted for the Dash [Democratic Movement for Change], which promised a radical change in the whole political process. Now Dash is in the government and backs Begin's policy in order to hold on to its cabinet posts. This time they're not going to fool me. All parties are corrupt, or wind up that way. We'll win our demands in the streets."
And what are their demands? "That Begin either prepare to make concessions or else resign." This formula has become the central slogan of demonstrations by the peace movement.
There have been many comparisons between the peace movement and the movements that appeared after the October 1973 war. What they have in common is a broad desire for change, and the fact that a fairly large group of junior reserve officers played a role in organizing them.
But one element sets these two movements from two different periods apart, and makes it possible to note the evolution represented by the current movement. Unlike in 1974, the demonstrators today do not talk about shortcomings in the way the war was fought, but, on the contrary, demand something tangible-peace-even if they do not exactly know how and at what price it is to be achieved.
This choice has led them for the first time to blame their own government, not the Arab states, for the coming war. The appearance of a mass movement that openly insists-even if it is a minoritythat Begin and the Israeli government will bear the responsibility for the next war is a radically new phenomenon, which Sadat can boast of having initiated.
This double feeling of the exorbitant cost of the next war and of a real chance for peace-even if it is only temporary-gives the peace movement a kind of credibility that no extraparliamentary movement in Israel has ever had before. Such credibility is a necessary prerequisite for winning over the masses who can make the government give in. But it is not enough.
"The majority of the people still fear peace at least as much as war," one of the leaders of the movement in Jerusalem cogently remarked. "The question is how to win this majority to our peace gamble."
Such a goal demands a peace plan acceptable to the leaders of the Arab countries, or at least to Sadat. However, a quick poll of the demonstrators showed that while everyone there was willing to mobilize against the hard line of the present government, very few could agree to a political formula that included Israeli withdrawal from all of the territories occupied in June 1967, much less to the idea of an independent Palestinian state.
In fact, for most of the movement's leaders, the real target is Washington more than anything else. As one of the leaders said in a closing speech at the Tel Aviv demonstration [April 1]: "We do not want war on the American front, much less a war on two fronts."
Reestablishing smooth relations with American imperialism, and hoping that Carter will be able to force further concessions out of Sadat-that is the most coherent political line emerging at the head of the peace movement.
This is a very slight basis on which to try to fulfill the immense hope for peace that Sadat was able to kindle in the hearts of the Israeli people. And it is certainly insufficient to win the majority of the Jewish masses in Israel to a political battle against the Begin government, which looms as a long and difficult one.
But, for the first time, a breach has been opened in the "sacred alliance" that has always been the mainstay of the Jewish state. And no demagogic speeches by Begin, or crude threats from Simha Ehrlich, the minister of finance, will be able to mend it. It is up to the Palestinian movement, above all, to find a way to widen it and then jump into it.
The 'Aid' Was a Disaster, Too
Following the February 1976 earthquake in Guatemala that killed 23,000 persons and injured 75,000, Western disaster-relief agencies sent in a highly publicized shipment of emergency medical supplies. At least that is what they were supposed to be.
However, according to a report in the July 9 Washington Post, "the 115 tons of drugs turned out to include contraceptive pills, doctors' samples and a batch of tablets manufactured in 1934. The Guatemalan authorities put three pharmacists to work to sort out anything that might be useful, but after three months they gave up, dug a trench near the warehouse where the drugs had been stored and buried the lot."