What happend to the Israeli peace lobby?
The BBC News website is publishing a series of articles about the attempts to achieve peace in the Middle East and the main obstacles. Matthew Price considers what has happened to the Israeli peace movement.
It was the hottest night of the year so far. Cars were overheating left, right and centre, conked out on the hard shoulder of the highway running through Tel Aviv.
There was traffic chaos. Roads were sealed off, the police redirecting cars away from Rabin Square in the centre, as tens of thousands made their way on foot for a mass rally that was taking place.
There was revolution in the air, a popular protest. It felt like the mid-1990s when thousands would come together in Rabin Square in support of the peace process.
But this was May 2007, and the rally was not about pushing for peace. It was about pushing out an Israeli leadership which the public has decided failed at war.
In the end - even by conservative estimates - more than 100,000 turned up at the rally. The sort of figures peace rallies here could once count on attracting.
Former glories
"You used to get tens of thousands," Yehudit Elkana says. She's spent most of her adult life working for Israeli organisations which campaign for peace.
"Now if you can get 1,500 people for a demonstration you say, 'Wow! It's great'."
"There had always been radical groups on the left in Israel, but the Israeli peace movement really started to grow in the late 1980s," says Judith Green, an academic and peace activist.
Opposition to the first Lebanon war, which started in 1982, was one catalyst for the left. The other was the first Palestinian uprising which started in 1988.
"That was when parts of Israeli society really started to recognise the problems Palestinians were facing because of the occupation," says Ms Green.
The political environment in the 1990s helped too. The Oslo process which was supposed to lead to the creation of two states, living sides by side in peace, helped energise the left.
Judith Green says the 1990s were a time of optimism.
"We held big events which were important as we tried to get public momentum behind the peace process. But by 2001, people became depressed because of the chaos on the Palestinian side."
Feeling of rejection
That was the time of the second Palestinian uprising. A time of suicide bombs on the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. A time when many Israelis began to think peace with the Palestinians might not be achievable.
The general feeling was - and to large extent still is - that the Palestinians rejected Israel's moves towards peace during the Oslo years.
"There is hypocrisy among Israelis about what a peace movement and a peace process is," says Sarit Michaeli from the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem.
"What we felt was great progress [during the Oslo process]. This is not really what the Palestinians experienced."
"Many Israelis feel and felt that the Palestinians should do certain things under Oslo, things that might risk internal conflict for instance. But Israelis weren't prepared to accept that there are big problems for the Palestinians that Israel is contributing to. We're not willing to put ourselves in anyone else's shoes."
The result was that as the Oslo process began to unravel, many Israelis lost faith that large scale public demonstrations of support for the peace movement could achieve anything.
Fear and distrust
"People are tired," says Yehudit Elkana. "They don't believe any more in the possibilities of peace. And worse, since the terror attacks people became afraid and distrustful of the intentions of the Palestinians."
Does she think the peace movement achieved anything?
"No. It's too early to evaluate how much the Israeli peace movement has contributed to the creation of two states - which is what the solution will be in the end."
Sitting in her garden, with the sound of the call to prayer drifting up from the valley below, Judith Green is reminded every day of how close Israelis and Palestinians live to one another.
"We can't get together any more though," she says. "We can't go to their areas, they can't come here."
She also says there's a financial problem.
"Oslo led to an increase in funding from international groups. Now, Oslo has collapsed so the funding has collapsed."
But she rejects the idea that the Israeli peace movement is dead.
"It is active, but not on a public level. Now various groups specialise in human rights, health care, civil rights.
"There are groups against house demolitions, checkpoints, and settlements. There are lots of organisations working intensively."
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