But in recent days, some of the most vocal dissent has come from one of the country's most powerful figures, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, chief of staff of Israel's armed forces. Frustrated that Sharon had ignored his recommendations to loosen some of the curfews and roadblocks that have paralyzed Palestinian life in the West Bank, Yaalon three weeks ago took his concerns to the Israeli news media. He suggested that government policies were creating more terrorism than they were preventing and accused Sharon's government of having done nothing substantive to support the first Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, who resigned in September.
Sharon reportedly was furious at Yaalon's public criticism but in recent days has agreed to slightly loosen the clampdown on Palestinians in the West Bank and has been far more conciliatory in his public comments toward Abbas's newly nominated successor, Ahmed Qureia, than he was to Abbas, even though Qureia is regarded by Palestinian officials as less likely to stand up to Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader.
Activists from Israel's peace movement, reinvigorated by Ariel Sharon's failure to bring an end to the three-year conflict with Palestinians, demonstrated outside the prime minister's residence late last month.
(Gali Tibbon -- AFP)
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Proponents of three separate peace proposals said they hope their efforts will pressure Sharon to shift from the exclusive use of military tactics against the Palestinians and embrace political negotiations.
"There is a static situation," said Justice Minister Tommy Lapid, who heads the Shinui Party, which proffered one of the independent peace proposals by suggesting that Jewish residents be moved out of the Netzarim settlement in the Gaza Strip, where three Israeli soldiers recently were killed by a Palestinian gunman. "Nothing is moving while people are dying. We think we should restart the peacemaking engines."
Sharon and some of his cabinet ministers were enraged by the independent proposals, which have received strong words of encouragement from international leaders, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.
"People understand the promises from Sharon have not been fulfilled and the situation is worse off," said Yossi Beilin who helped craft the 1993 Oslo peace accords and has drafted, along with former Palestinian information minister and longtime Arafat associate Yasser Abed Rabbo, a proposal called the Geneva accords.
Under the proposal, which would create a separate Palestinian state, Israel would give up claims of sovereignty over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and such West Bank settlements as Ariel and Efrat, while Palestinians would effectively drop demands that refugees be allowed to return to Israel. "I think public opinion will tend to support our draft agreement and will put pressure on the government," Beilin said.
The third proposal was offered by Sari Nusseibeh, a Palestinian who is president of Al-Quds University, and Ami Ayalon, the former chief of Israeli security services, which also would require Palestinians to give up the so-called right of return, make Jerusalem an open city that would serve as capital of Israel and a Palestinian state, and require Jewish settlers to leave the Palestinian state. A petition in support of the plan has been signed by 100,000 Israelis and 60,000 Palestinians.
Some analysts express skepticism that any of the independent plans has a serious chance to advance.
"In both Palestinian and Israeli societies, the public is not likely to join a movement unless they are somehow sanctioned by the elected government," said Ephraim Yaar, a pollster for Tel Aviv University's Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research. "The leaders of the left are mistrusted" by the public, he said.
But Powell praised Beilin and Rabbo for their efforts, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz told an audience at Georgetown University two weeks ago that the Nusseibeh-Ayalon proposal represented "a significant grass-roots movement."
Wolfowitz added, "As Americans, we know there are times when great changes can spring from the grass roots."
