Netanyahu's diplomatic vacuum
Israel's prime minister will need to get busy in the peace process or present an alternative plan of his own.
In October 2003, while the second intifada was raging, the Israeli media uncovered a diplomatic initiative that sent the country’s political system into turmoil. The scope of the public debate surrounding it surprised even its architects on the Israeli side: former minister Yossi Beilin and former chairman of the Israel Labor Party Amram Mitzna.
The right-wing prime minister of the time, Ariel Sharon, was then at the height of his political power, leading a party holding 38 seats. Yet even he found himself challenged by the virtual peace agreement signed in Geneva between Beilin, who was then the chairman of the small opposition Meretz Party, and the Palestinian adviser and politician Yasser Abed Rabbo, who held no official position. Sharon came out against those forces on the left who acted behind the government’s back and collaborated with forces he claimed were hostile to the State of Israel. He tried, to no avail, to delegitimize what has come to be known as the Geneva Initiative and the people behind it.
While the second intifada continued, Sharon experienced a drop in the public opinion polls, while at the same time his efforts to create a diplomatic agenda failed. The Geneva Initiative rolled into the ensuing vacuum like a tempest, receiving the backing of leaders of the free world, among them US President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. For many long months, the initiative refused to disappear from the headlines. Ultimately, it was one of the factors that motivated Sharon to announce the disengagement from Gaza a few months later. By then he had realized that he had lost all relevancy in the diplomatic discourse.
A decade later, that virtual peace initiative continues to set a meaningful agenda and to evoke political and public debates. That was its great achievement. It continues to preserve the relevance of Israel’s diplomatic left, which suffered a harsh blow after the failure of the Camp David talks in 2000 and the eruption of the second intifada immediately after that.
