Peace Now activist still hopeful for his cause

As national chairman of Americans for Peace Now, Franklin Fisher often walks a razor-thin line.

"When things are good," he says, "people think they don't need us anymore. When things are bad, they think we failed."

These days, Fisher and his confreres face the latter problem. APN is the U.S. fundraising arm for Shalom Achshav (Peace Now), an Israeli-based organization launched in the 1970's by a group of former military officers and others pursuing dialogue between Arabs and Israelis.

Peace Now reached a high point during the days of the Oslo Accords and the Clinton administration. Since the onset of the second intifada, not to mention the ferocious Hezbollah war this past summer, Peace Now seems more like Peace Never.

But Fisher, in town to speak at Berkeley's Congregation Netivot Shalom on Thursday, Nov. 9, still hopes for a peaceful solution to the conflict. He cites the Nov. 4 Tel Aviv rally marking the 11th anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, which drew a crowd of 100,000, as proof he isn't alone.

"There are now inside the government former Peace Now members, like [Minister of Defense] Amir Peretz," he asserts. "They are a rising voice, but it's very tough."

Tough, he says, because it's hard to think peace while the Kassam and Katyusha rockets fall.

"[Peace Now] members were not against the recent war," says Fisher. "They were against the overreaction in the war. I'm not sure how I would feel if they had managed to wipe out Hezbollah. But they didn't. That has made Israel more vulnerable. The government is caught between doing nothing and doing too much. The Peace Now answer is: They've got to talk."

But talk to whom? That is the question critics of Peace Now often ask.

"We do have a partner," responds Fisher. "Maybe not one with whom negations would go somewhere, but we have at least suggestions from the other side that they want a deal, and that includes Hamas."

He says the controversial 2002 Saudi proposal, which calls for Israel to return to pre-1967 borders in exchange for a comprehensive regional peace, may still offer a launching pad for talks. "It's perfectly true that the initiative includes terms Israel will not accept," adds Fisher. "That's the point at which negotiations begin."

Though Fisher has held his post less than a year, he allied himself with Americans for Peace Now in the early 1980s. And his affiliation with Israel dates back much earlier. Fisher grew up in a Zionist household, and successfully ran for his seventh-grade student council on the platform that "the Jews should have a state."

That was in the Bronx circa 1946. Fisher built a career as an MIT economics professor, and has published 17 books on economics. He also served as chair of the Middle East Water Project, a cooperative endeavor of American, Dutch, Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian experts.

He returned last December to a leadership position with Americans for Peace Now, which has a donor list of 15,000 names.

Fisher is a lifelong supporter of Israel, and says he has more close friends in Jerusalem than anywhere else. He's heard all the criticisms: that Peace Now members are naïve, that they underestimate the lethal intentions of the Palestinians.

Fisher doesn't buy it.

"I don't doubt there are some Palestinians who have a hidden agenda," he says. "But do I think there's some great secret plot on the part of the Palestinians? No. There are a lot of people in power, particularly around [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas, who do not have an agenda."

As unlikely as it may be to expect further Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank, Fisher insists that will have to happen. "Keeping the West Bank is a recipe for corruption of Israeli society," he states, "and a complete loss of democratic values in world opinion."

Fisher rejects any suggestion that he loves Israel less than the most ardent settler. He tells the story of his daughter, who was in college during the Gulf War. He remembers how upset she was as Iraqi Scud missiles landed in Jerusalem.

"She said to me, 'I thought of that line from Robert Frost: Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in,'" Fisher recalls. "I then thought, 'Are my grandchildren going to feel that way about Israel?' If the occupation goes on and Israel moves further away from what I consider traditional Jewish values, then no, they're not."