Quotes of the Day

A friend of mine almost gave his mother a heart attack the other day when he told her that he would vote for Yossi Beilin. As the main Israeli figure behind the Geneva Accord — the peace agreement drafted by a group of non-official Israelis and semi-official Palestinians — Beilin is a disputable politician. While the Israeli public despises him for his smooth eloquence and for his central role in bringing the Oslo Accords into being, there is nonetheless a grudging respect for his persistence and for his proven record of materializing his ideas.

Beilin, now running for the presidency of the left-wing Meretz party, is a bizarre choice for my friend,whose politics tend towards the center-right politically, and who hasn't much passion for the settlements. My friend also believes strongly that by rejecting Barak's peace offer in Camp David 2000 and then opting for an armed struggle, the Palestinians forced Israel to re-capture the Territories.

No wonder, then, that when my friend announced his support for Beilin — during one of the political arguments so commonplace around every Israeli dinner table — his right-wing mother was stunned.

"I wanted to tease her," he confessed to me later. But the statement did not come out of thin air. It's not that he's changed his mind about the reliability of the Palestinians, but, as he puts it, "If there are enough guarantees for the implementation of such plan, I'd support it. And yes, I might, eventually, find myself voting for Beilin in the next elections."

The Geneva initiative has shaken Israeli public opinion as much as Israeli politics. Its timing was ripe. Having been negotiated for three years now, the final version, including suggested solutions for the most problematic issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Jerusalem's status, the Palestinian refugees' right of return), was concluded only a couple of months ago. It happened exactly as a new spirit — a left-oriented breeze — managed to penetrate the Israeli political consensus of "there's nothing we can do as long as the terror runs wild in our street."

Polls show that 31% of Israelis support the Accord, and 38% are opposed. At the very least, the Accord has stimulated an interesting debate across audiences of every political view. Another friend, a leftist journalist, is skeptical. Although she agrees with the details, she feels it's a highly undemocratic exercise. "I disapprove of a group of people who did not get a mandate from anyone, negotiating on my behalf," she told me. Particularly annoying is the fact that the main Israelis involved in this accord — among them Beilin and the former chairman of the Labour party, Amram Mitzna — are exactly the same people who were rejected by the Israeli public in the last elections. "Add to that the fact that the whole thing was sponsored by foreign money," she explains, "and see how unaesthetic it is." A third friend — a Meretz activist who is involved in the Geneva initiative — disdains the criticism. "Well, isn't initiating alternative solutions the exact roll of an opposition?" he asks. He was surprised by the depth of public feeling this virtual peace plan initiated. After all, there have been many Israeli-Palestinian meetings over the past few years, and many drafts and ideas have been exchanged. "The fact that we managed to inflate a bubble-gum balloon to the size of a zeppelin shows how hungry the media was for an alternative to the political stagnation." Although the Accord is only meant to be "a sample," he said, "both the media and Israeli public treated it seriously, as if it'll be implemented tomorrow."

• MICHAL LEVERTOV
• How the Geneva initiative is affecting Israeli public opinion