The landslide victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections was, in a sense, a sort of “poetic justice,” according to Shlomo Ben-Ami, the former Israeli ambassador to Spain, Knesset member and minister of foreign affairs.
In San Francisco to address the World Affairs Council of Northern California on Thursday, Feb. 9 about a book he authored, the Oxford-educated Ben-Ami also addressed current events during an interview prior to his talk.
Referring to Hamas’ victory at the polls last month, he said the Palestinian people were fed up with the incompetence of the Palestinian Authority and therefore voted for the party they believed would help them reach a life of “dignity and stability.”
In spite of Hamas being a terrorist organization, Ben-Ami said its officials have acted “fairly responsibly” since winning the Palestinian elections. One of its leaders had said all agreements signed between the Palestinian Authority and Israel would be honored.
“The truth is, there are no agreements between them; they were all signed between Israel and the [Palestine Liberation Organization], but this declaration essentially means that they are looking for a way to reconcile their fanatic image with political necessities,” said Ben-Ami, who also spoke at the Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center on Saturday, Feb. 11.
He believes Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s unilateral decision to withdraw from Gaza was perfectly understandable in light of the fact that a previous administration “was ready to go to the outer limits of our capabilities in what we were going to give [the Palestinians].” Sharon, therefore, saw no reason to go back to the negotiating table.
However, explained the former minister, the problem with taking unilateral action is that it is not recognized by the international community. For instance, Israelis may feel more secure behind the security barrier, which has become a de facto border, but this “will not solve the problem, because Israel needs to have an internationally recognized border. One unilaterally defined border will not have the legitimacy of the international community.”
The creation of Kadima, the new centrist party in Israel that Sharon created late last year, is a result of the fact that “people did not believe in the positions of the right, that we needed to get stuck with the territories and the settlements, but they reject the left too, that naively believed you can reach a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians,” he said. “A wide space opened between those extremes.”
Regarding his book “Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy,” Ben-Ami was inspired to write it — his first book — in English.
“The Israeli-Arab issue is something that has occupied my mind and body for some years now. I felt that I have to share my insights with the English reader,” he said.
In the book, Ben-Ami looks at efforts at peacemaking from 1936 to 1992. In the earlier years, he uses a historical lens, but from the 1991 Madrid peace talks onwards, he views events through a more personal perspective. He served as ambassador to Spain from 1987 to 1991, and was elected to the Knesset in 1996, served as Foreign Affairs minister from late 2000 to mid-2001, and resigned from the Knesset in 2002.
He has studied the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a historian, taken part in trying to end it as a politician, and — just like any other Israeli citizen — experienced its everyday ramifications.
Ben-Ami is quite critical of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, as well as some of the other early Israeli leaders. Noting that “intellectual integrity” required it of him, he said, “I tried to say where Israel did it wrong and not hide behind empty formulas of diplomatic niceties and platitudes.”
He tried to be equally evenhanded in the latter part of the book as well, though he admits that, “I tend to put the blame on the Palestinian leader for failing to raise up to the challenge.”
“Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy” by Shlomo Ben-Ami (368 pages, Oxford University Press, $30).