My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

by Ari Shavit

But we did not. We failed to say to the world and to our people that occupation must cease even if peace cannot be reached. We failed to tell ourselves the truth about the Palestinian wish to return to their pre-1948 villages and homes. Rather than deal courageously with reality as it is, we fell for the romantic belief in “peace now.” So when the great moment of opportunity arrived in 1993, we missed it. In Oslo we tried to impose a flawed concept of peace on a Middle East reality that soon rejected it. But even after rejection was apparent, we clung to the flawed concept. As buses exploded on the streets of our cities, we kept singing the hymns of our imaginary peace. This is how we lost the trust and respect of our countrymen, who turned away from us because we failed to acknowledge that our wished-for peace was turning into a macabre farce. Our failure was not caused by the forces we encountered, but by our own weakness: by our lack of intellectual integrity and courage, and by our immaturity. We never deigned to inherit the legacy of the founders of Israel that we were supposed to inherit, and we didn’t continue in the footsteps of those we were supposed to follow. The peace clan balked at the historical continuum. It refused to take the reins of true responsibility and remained a 1970s-style protest movement.

Wow! That's a brave confession from a former Peace Now member.