Peter Beaumont finds Israel’s peace movement being pushed to the margins like never before as the country prepares to vote
Out of Gaza and across the border to the sound of rocket fire.

A handful of hours later I am at the Hebrew University for a lecture by Gershon Baskin, one of Israel’s most prominent peace activists, who is describing his attempts to open a channel of communication between Israel’s leaders and Hamas.

It’s a strange and sudden quantum shift – from the ruins, anxiety and stench of war to normality, calm and mannered debate. What it entails is a journey from one ethos of conflict, the Palestinian one still raw, edgy and angry from the recent violence, to an Israeli one, expressed – most obviously for most – in the harsh rhetoric of political contest.

In a bare room littered with bean bags and exposed piping, less than a dozen students sit patiently to listen to Baskin’s account. The meeting has been organised by a group called It Is No Legend. It is an ironic play on a quote from Theodore Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism: “If you will it, it is no legend”.

Herzl meant the will to bring about the foundation of Israel. Among this group it signifies the will to peace and coexistence with Palestinian Arabs.

I know Baskin via his articles and his emails. The story he tells to the students is largely unreported: one of the hidden tales that Israel’s government would like to gloss over.

In meetings with Hamas figures, arranged through texts, calls and emails, Baskin established a kind of one-way channel of communication to the office of Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert. It was the offer of a means of negotiation that Olmert and his government emphatically rejected.

The students pose questions at the end. Was the war inevitable, they want to know. Most think it was. What are the prospects for the future? It is a subdued gathering.

The reality is that the facts of the war, the civilian deaths and the destruction, are not simply better known in Gaza than they are in Israel. In its sparse attendance, this meeting reflects a fundamental shift in Israeli society – despite the students’ excuses to the contrary.

Support for the war has been almost unanimous at up to 94%. Israel’s peace movement, as a consequence, has been pushed to the margins like never before. More than that, many of its members have been co-opted.

Click here to see the Video including interview with Gershon.