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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=119342

Sharon's hard line stirs peace movement
By Phil Reeves in Tel Aviv
11 February 2002
Sharon's hard line stirs peace movement

Office of UN envoy damaged in Israeli jet attack

Leading article:
Israel's hard man has nothing to offer his people

More than 16 months after the start of the intifada,
Israel's long dormant left-wing and pro-peace lobby
has declared that the

"peace camp is going back to the streets",

as rumblings increase over the conduct
of Ariel Sharon's government and the army.

More than 25 grassroots political organisations
fired the opening salvo of the new campaign by
gathering in Tel Aviv on Saturday to protest against
the government's handling of the intifada and to
demand Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories.

As the crowd unfurled banners
lambasting Israel for

assassinating Palestinians,
uprooting orchards,
and demolishing homes,

activists were distributing thousands of
leaflets across Israel calling on soldiers to
refuse to serve in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

One year after Mr Sharon,
an ex-general with a dark past,

was elected
prime minister
by a landslide,

his opponents - led by the left -
are finally beginning to mobilise.

Another demonstration is being
organised for next weekend.

Mr Sharon returned home from the United States
yesterday to new stirrings of dissent, having failed
to persuade the Bush administration to cut ties with
Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, and support
his drive to create an alternative Palestinian leadership.

Every day, fundamental questions are being
asked in public by Israelis about what is being
done in their name.

"For the first time we are seeing the beginnings
of some form of movement on the part of the left,"

said Professor Benjamin Isaac,
a history lecturer from Tel Aviv University,
who was among the 5,000 people at
Saturday's protest for peace.

So far, Mr Sharon's position in the
polls remains impressive.

A survey last week, commissioned by the
Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, found that
68 per cent of respondents rated his
performance as good,

although he has not fulfilled his election
promise of providing the country with
peace and security.

But other results reflect a growing
public unease in specific areas.

Sixty-six per cent of respondents
said the policy of assassinating
Palestinian activists

 - "targeted killings",

as the poll euphemistically called them

- either increased Palestinian attacks
on Israelis, or had no effect on them.

The tone of Mr Sharon's critics
has also hardened significantly.

When the Israeli army demolished
60 homes in Rafah, southern Gaza,
last month and then attempted to lie
about it, the word "war crime" began
to appear in the Israeli press.

This refers not just to the fact that the
Prime Minister is facing possible
indictment in a Belgian court for his
role in the massacre of Palestinians
at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps
in Lebanon in 1982, but also to his army's
conduct during the intifada.

Banners flourished during Saturday's
protest made the same point.

"From Oslo to The Hague",

said one.

"Don't say - I didn't know", said another.

Among those raising awkward
questions over Israel's policy is Ami Ayalon,
the head of the Shin Bet security services
during the government of Ehud Barak.

He has challenged one of the core myths
circulated by Israel about the cause of the
conflict -

the claim that Mr Arafat launched the
intifada after rejecting a generous peace
package from Mr Barak at Camp David in
July 2000.

There was

"no serious discussion"

at Camp David,

Mr Ayalon told an audience recently.

A crucial role in Israel's changing mood is
being played by army reservists who have
signed a petition saying they will refuse to
do their annual service, of up to a month
a year, in the occupied territories.

By yesterday, the number of reservists signing
had risen to more than 200, in defiance of a
deeply uneasy army leadership.

Lieutenant-General Shaul Mofaz,
the chief of staff, has suggested the
protest could amount to sedition.

The boycott has also rattled Mr Sharon's
coalition with the Labour party.

If his grassroots opponents succeed in
awakening opposition to the government
among the mainstream public,
then the coalition will come under serious strain,
and no one will be in a more awkward position
than Labour's leader, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer.

An ex-general who once served as Israel's
military governor in the West Bank,
he believes there should be no
compromise with the Palestinians
over Jerusalem.

He supports building Jewish settlements
in contravention of international law,
and believes in Israel's assassinations policy.

Nor does his other job help.

It is a reflection of the nation's siege mentality
and wheeler-dealing politics that the Labour leader
 - in a government led by an arch right-winger -
should be the Defence Minister.

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