1,500 Retired Israeli Officers Petition Netanyahu to Choose ‘Path of Peace’

With anxiety growing over a moribund peace process, more than 1,500 retired military and police officers petitioned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday to “choose the path of peace” and forgo efforts to build a Greater Israel.

The petition was made public as Netanyahu concluded a quick swing through Europe to drum up support for the Israeli government’s position in negotiations with Palestinian officials.

Netanyahu is calling for a one-on-one summit with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat to push peace talks into their final phase. But Arafat has rejected such a meeting until measures that have already been agreed upon, including the opening of an airport in Palestinian territory and additional withdrawals of Israeli troops in the West Bank, are fulfilled.

“For the process to take off, we need to . . . open direct negotiations,” Netanyahu said Sunday shortly before meeting in London with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Britain currently occupies the rotating presidency of the 15-nation European Union.

Analysts here said that Netanyahu’s efforts were aimed at preempting a European initiative that the British say would include a demand that Israel halt the building of Jewish settlements in Palestinian areas.

Netanyahu has refused to stop new settlements, a decision that helped derail peace talks a year ago. The issue was also the focus of Sunday’s petition signed by 1,544 reserve army and police officers, including a former chief of staff and 216 commanders whose ranks ranged from colonel to general. Many have ties to the opposition Labor Party or the left.

The officers condemned a government that “prefers settlements over normalization and the opportunity to end the historical conflict.”

“It is not easy for us to write this to you,” the officers told Netanyahu, but “we feel that it is our duty to call on you to avoid taking steps which would be proved painful and regrettable for generations to come. . . .

“A government that prefers Greater Israel over an Israel existing in peace and good neighborly relations would arouse serious doubts in us.”

The petition was modeled after an almost identical letter addressed to then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin exactly 20 years ago and signed by many of the same people. Coming at a moment of tension between Israel and Egypt, the 1978 letter gave rise to Peace Now, a prominent leftist organization of peace activists.

While officers expressing disloyalty to a prime minister was unheard of 20 years ago, dissent in today’s Israel is so common that the petition published in Sunday’s editions of the newspaper Yediot Aharonot is not likely to stir any scandal. It could, however, help broaden the base of peace activism, analysts said.

Netanyahu’s office rejected the petition. The “unilateral steps” advocated by the officers “would lead to war,” spokesman David Bar-Illan said. The Israeli government argues that the Palestinians have failed to uphold their end of signed agreements, particularly in the areas of security and terrorism.

“There are so many charges that [Netanyahu] is trying to kill the process, including one yesterday [from Arafat], that he wants to show he has concrete ideas about where the peace process can go,” Bar-Illan said.

Israeli journalists traveling with Netanyahu reported Sunday night that British officials expressed “disappointment” with the way Israel is handling its disputes with the Palestinians.