Peace from the Bottom Up

Private individuals and non-governmental groups should be encouraged to become stakeholders in peacemaking. It’s time for the tall poppies to work with, not against, their grassroots.

The hope that Israel and the Palestinian Authority may once again engage in peace talks brings to mind one of the key reasons for the failure of previous negotiations: Officials conducted top-down decision-making without building bottom-up support.

Rather than capitalize on public opinion polls showing solid majorities in favor of a negotiated settlement; rather than forge a partnership with pro-peace NGOs and other extra-parliamentary groups and individuals; rather than cultivate a peace-hungry culture in the Israeli and Palestinian streets, the top guys on both sides plunged into negotiations on the assumption that the masses would fall in line after the fact.

For a time post-Oslo, there was sufficient payoff to keep up the momentum. Israel became less of a pariah in the Arab world and Palestinian violence subsided to almost nil. Palestinians enjoyed limited political autonomy and immediate economic rewards as Israel pulled back from a few areas of the West Bank. But after Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination and Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount, everything unraveled. Without playing the blame game, we can agree, I think, that neither leader had prepared the ground for the long haul. Since potential partners in peacemaking had never been encouraged or empowered by their governments, there wasn’t enough popular will to insist on adherence to the treaty’s timetables. Nor were there constituencies with sufficient clout to pressure their governments to return to the negotiating table.

In 2000-2001, the meetings at Camp David and Taba were likewise restricted to officialdom—Barak, Arafat, Clinton and their deputies and diplomats. When the political elites failed, there was no critical mass of committed, credentialed non-governmental peace advocates, people who might have responded to that “tragedy of errors” by demanding that negotiations continue until agreement was reached, or by organizing a massive public protest against the shutdown of that hope-filled window of opportunity.

Sadly, today’s leaders are repeating their predecessors’ mistakes. They have yet to establish a collaborative relationship with members of civil society. One example of a group that has stood ready to contribute is the International Women’s Commission for a Just and Sustainable Palestinian-Israeli Peace.

Formed in July 2005 under the auspices of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the IWC is “a coalition of Palestinian, Israeli and international women who recognize the urgent need to achieve a meaningful peace…and feel a shared commitment to accomplish this goal.” The female presidents of Finland and Liberia and the Prime Minister of New Zealand are the group’s honorary chairs. Its Israeli members include women who are professors, a businesswoman, an engineer, heads of civic organizations and current or former members of the Knesset. Their Palestinian counterparts are ambassadors, former ministers, community activists, a lawyer, a banker and a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council. Together these women hope to bring about the substantive participation of diverse women “in any Israeli-Palestinian peace process, including negotiations and supportive initiatives.” To that end, the group holds “regular hearings with women on the ground in order to gain a deeper understanding of women’s perspective on the peace process…[and] build a stronger constituency for peace.” IWC is rich with talent, with women who possess mediation skills and political and policy-making experience. But their offers to contribute have largely been ignored.

Another important popular initiative you’ve probably never heard of is the People’s Voice, a grass-roots campaign initiated in 2003 by Ami Ayalon, former director of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency, and Sari Nusseibeh, former PLO representative in Jerusalem. The Ayalon-Nusseibeh effort managed to collect more than a half million signatures from ordinary Israelis and Palestinians in support of a six-point Statement of Principles that includes a demilitarized Palestinian state, compensation for Palestinian refugees, and an end to the Palestinian claim of the right of return to Israel.

Still another NGO, OneVoice, was founded by young Israelis and Palestinians to mobilize each community’s “moderate majorities” via citizen negotiations, town hall meetings, workshops, leadership development, and rallies. Last August, OneVoice launched a campaign to register a million people in support of “ongoing, immediate, and uninterrupted negotiations toward a two-state solution to be reached on or before October 18, 2008” [thereby] “fulfilling the consistent will of the overwhelming majority of both populations.” By November, 620,000 supporters, almost equally divided between Israelis and Palestinians, had signed on. OneVoice has been endorsed by Ambassadors Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk, Jim Zogby, seven Knesset members, actors Jason Alexander, Brad Pitt and Natalie Portman, the Islamic Chief Justice of Palestine, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator. Endorsements are nice. But not enough.

A self-sustaining mechanism should be created to solicit citizens’ views and engender their involvement. Non-governmental groups should be activated well in advance of peace summits; and ideally, their representatives should sit at the negotiating table or at least play a consultative role. Private individuals should be encouraged to become stakeholders in peace-making and their advocacy should be recognized as an important supplement to the work of the official delegations.

In short, it’s time for the tall poppies to work with, not against, their grass roots.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin is at work on her tenth book, a novel entitled The Man in the Playground.