-Caveat Lector-
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?
file=/chronicle/archive/2002/11/20/MN117253.DTL
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Barak expects lengthy struggle
Protesters characterize speech by ex-Israeli leader as propaganda
Charles Burress, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 20, 2002
©2002 San Francisco Chronicle.
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?
file=/chronicle/archive/2002/11/20/MN117253.DTL
In a Berkeley speech greeted by protests, Israel's former Prime Minister Ehud Barak
Tuesday warned that a protracted global struggle with terrorism was just beginning.
Before an audience of about 1,000 people at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall, Barak also
said
Mideast peace depended on building a literal fence between Israelis and Palestinians
and
on an Israeli willingness to negotiate whenever Palestinian violence ceased.
"We're just in the opening chapter of this ordeal," Barak said of worldwide terrorist
attacks,
predicting that half a generation may pass before peace is achieved. "We have to win
this
first World War of the 21st century, and we will."
Barak, usually called "dovish" in the Israeli political landscape, has made no secret
in recent
U.S. comments of his support for President Bush's hard- line stance against Iraq and
his
belief that war is inevitable.
Some 200 people -- from a wide range of anti-war and Jewish peace organizations --
demonstrated against Barak outside Zellerbach Hall, calling Barak's image as a
peacemaker
false.
"Ehud Barak is a peace-faker," said Snehal Shingavi, a member of Students for Justice
in
Palestine, one of the groups that organized the protest. Among the several groups
represented were the Berkeley Stop the War Coalition and the Bay Area Jewish Voice for
Peace.
"We've seen the horrors," Ishay Rosen-Zvi told the crowd. Rosen-Zvi, a self- described
conscientious objector of the Israeli Army, said he had been jailed for refusing to
serve in
the military action against the Jenin refugee camp.
He called Barak's appearance in Berkeley "organized and official Israeli propaganda."
At one point, a dozen protesters holding tickets to Barak's speech were evicted from
the
hall after they removed outer garments to reveal T-shirts covered with the word "LIE"
in
fluorescent green paint, and a few others were removed later after scattered shouts
interrupted him on two occasions.
With tight security screening and large numbers of UC police, the scene was nothing
like
the demonstration in November 2000, when angry protesters blocked the entrance to a
speech by Israel's hawkish former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Berkeley
Community Theatre. Netanyahu canceled his appearance.
Barak, who was warmly applauded by the audience, said Israel should continue to deal
firmly with violent attacks against it, as the Sharon government is doing. But he said
it must
also open the door for peace negotiations without preconditions, except the end of
violence,
and should physically disengage itself from Palestinians through construction of a
concrete
fence.
Barak, a former Labor Party leader who holds the largest number of decorations in the
history of the Israeli military, was a top general who won election to prime minister
in 1999
on a peace platform.
In the failed Camp David negotiations with President Bill Clinton and Palestinian
leader
Yasser Arafat in July 2000, he offered concessions that were not enough for Arafat and
too
much for Israeli hawks.
In his Berkeley speech, he blamed Arafat for refusing to negotiate Barak's offer of
concession, which Barak described as closer to the Palestinian position than the
Israeli
position, a claim that Jewish peace groups dispute.
Voters soundly defeated him amid renewed violence in February 2001 and elected current
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of the Likud party. A second Palestinian intifada,
or
uprising, occurred after Sharon made a September 2000 tour of the Temple Mount in
Jerusalem and asserted Jewish claims to the site, which is holy to both Jews and
Muslims.
Barak was invited to Berkeley by a pro-Israel campus group, the Israel Action
Committee,
and his appearance was co-sponsored by the office of UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert
Berdahl.
Assistant Chancellor John Cummins said the chancellor's office had contributed $10,000
to
the event from a $100,000 special fund for a series of events and speakers this school
year
"on both sides of the issue" in the Middle East conflict. He noted that Columbia
University
Professor Edward Said, a well-known Palestinian advocate, would speak on campus Feb.
19.
Staff writer Joshunda Sanders contributed to this report. / E-mail Charles Burress at
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
©2002 San Francisco Chronicle. Page A - 8
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