A Handshake That Is Capable of Shaking Up the World

The image of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat sharing a meal on Wednesday in Gaza brought me back to a December day almost 10 years ago when I, together with four other American Jews, met with Arafat and other leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Stockholm. At that time, the platforms of Israel’s two major parties, the right-wing Likud and the center-left Labor, precluded any negotiations with the PLO.

Our encounter with Arafat had a single purpose: to jump-start the stalled Middle East peace process. After years of rejecting Israel’s very existence, the PLO was now prepared to accept a political solution. Israel, however, had just undergone an inconclusive national election in which the hard-line Yitzhak Shamir had nosed out the moderate Shimon Peres. A broad-based coalition of both Likud and Labor headed by Shamir seemed inevitable, making any viable peace initiative unlikely in the extreme.

The Stockholm meeting was productive. For the first time, the PLO publicly and formally recognized Israel’s existence and renounced terrorism. The Israeli and much of the American Jewish establishments were apoplectic in their reaction. Arafat, they said, was a murderer who could never be trusted, and the five of us were, at best, willing dupes.

While my four colleagues in Stockholm had only tenuous ties to the organized American Jewish community, I was the national president of the Labor Zionist Alliance and a member of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. As such, I supposedly gave our group a measure of legitimacy. Thus, I was the target of the most vehement attacks. Among my sharpest critics were Netanyahu, then a newly elected member of Israel’s parliament, and Ariel Sharon, who has just been appointed Israel’s foreign minister.

An actual encounter between an Israeli prime minister and the head of the PLO, let alone repeated handshakes and exchanges of pleasantries, was utterly unthinkable in 1988. The ensuing 10 years have brought about cataclysmic changes in the Middle East. Two national Israeli elections and countless summit meetings later, the rejectionists of yesterday have become today’s pragmatic peacemakers. While the original 1993 handshake on the White House lawn was between Arafat and the late Yitzhak Rabin, it seems likely that the actual peace will be reached between the one-time terrorist and Netanyahu, whose brother was killed by the PLO and who has spent much of his public career denouncing terrorism in general and Arafat in particular.

This is as it should be. For any peace to prevail, it must have the support of those mainstream individuals and groups most likely to distrust its very feasibility.

Acceptance of an peace agreement by dovish Israelis and Palestinian intellectuals is largely irrelevant. Sharon’s endorsement of such an agreement will give it credibility. It is only when the basic political and psychological transformations essential to any end of hostilities are embraced by those least likely to do so that their respective constituencies may begin to look at each in a different light.

As a long-time supporter of the Israeli peace movement, I applaud Netanyahu’s courage. If every human being is destined to play a particular role, Netanyahu now may be entering the most difficult stage of his life. By sharing a meal and accepting cigars from Arafat, he has gone a long way in the de-demonization of the Palestinian leader and all he represents. Netanyahu’s body language, as much as if not more than any actual agreement, will earn him the hatred of those Israelis and Diaspora Jews who want to retain the illusion that the Palestinians are the eternal enemy.

Ultimately, the brief 1988 Stockholm encounter may have served a very different purpose from the one we envisioned. Perhaps our contribution was to serve as a lightning rod for the initial fury at any encounter with the enemy, making subsequent meetings with Arafat less controversial. If Israeli leaders like Netanyahu, who excoriated us for shaking Arafat’s hand, can do so now without even an eyebrow being raised, all the abuse we endured was indeed worthwhile. If nothing else, that is progress for which we must be grateful.