Reaching the age of 85, a still vigorous and energetic activist and columnist, Uri Avnery declined the offer of the Gush Shalom friends to hold for him a conventional birthday party. Rather, he opted for marking the occasion with a public debate, tackling the major issues facing Israel, and in particular the peace movement.

Two subjects were decided upon, for the Dec. 21 event. The first debate was on the two state solution. Is it still a feasible, implementable proposition? The second focused on the Israeli Media - are they independent, serving the public, or are they government- and business-dominated? This corresponded with the two main aspects of Avnery's life and career - as an outspoken advocate of Israeli-Palestinian peace, and as a pioneer and "founding father" of Israeli journalism.

The format chosen was, in fact, based on an Arab model - the celebrated "Doha Debates", broadcast regularly from Qatar's capital, tackling the region's most controversial and topical issues, and increasingly getting attention also in Israel.

Such a format implies a fast-moving debate, necessitating very active moderators who constantly intervene to pass the baton from one speaker to the other. David Landau of Ha'aretz, chosen to conduct the first debate - and veteran Israeli TV anchorman Chaim Yavin in the second - proved well fitted for the task.

True to his reputation as a maverick and iconoclast, Meron Benvenisti stated by stating: "The question is not if you want two states or one state. I despise the idea of a single state, but what does that matter? One state is what we have, with Jewish domination over the Arabs in the whole territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. You invent a scarecrow called the settlers, you count how many they are and go to the Supreme Court in futile efforts to block them. There is no difference between the settlers and the Jews inside the Green Line, like there is no difference between the Palestinians in the Territories and the Palestinians who are Israeli citizens. It is an ethnic conflict between the Jews on one side and the Arabs on the other side, by making pipedreams about dividing into two states you just help disguise and perpetuate this situation.

The polar opposite in the debate was represented by Gil'ad Sher, who had been a senior member of Ehud Barak's negotiating team with the Palestinians in 1999-2000 (though not sharing in Barak's later rightwards trajectory). "Achieving a solution now is difficult, certainly, but difficult is not impossible. You fall down, and then you get up and shake off the dust and go on. There were failures, but not total failures, much which was achieved also in failed negotiations can be used as a foundation for the future. Israel needs clearly defined borders, a clearly defined identity. When I am asked to do military service and defend my country, I would like to know what and where is the country I am asked to defend. Israelis want to have a country with a solid Jewish majority, they are willing to give up the West Bank. The settlers are a problem but not an insoluble one, there is nothing irreversible.

Especially because 75% of the settlers live on 1.5% of the land. We can keep this small part and compensate the Palestinians with territory of exactly the same size and quality."

Landau asked Sher to comment about the widespread apprehension of Israelis that missiles would be fired at Israel from an evacuated West Bank. "The Jenin Experiment, where the Palestinian Police took charge of security in the city, was quite successful" said Sher. "General James Jones, who oversaw their training on behalf of the US and is now going to be Obama's National Security Advisor, was quite satisfied. This can be extended gradually to other West Bank cities. Perhaps an international force can be stationed on as an interim measure, until the Palestinian Authority is strong enough to manage on its own, and ensure that no missiles are shot from the evacuated territory".

"What you are talking about is neo-colonialism. You will not find any country crazy enough to voluntarily jump into the hornets' nest undertake oppressing the Palestinians and send its soldiers. Why should anyone do it?" interjected Benvenisti. And Dr. Menachem Klein of Bar Ilan University - known for having called for talks with Hamas as long ago as 1992 - added:

"This whole Jenin Experiment is derived from the wrong paradigm, from the mindset that Israel is in control of the whole territory and can assign some tasks to Palestinian sub-contractors under its "guidance" and/or that of the US. In 2001-2002 Israel deliberately destroyed the Palestinian Authority as an independent actor, genuinely representing its people, and left an empty shell. This entire concept should be discarded, it leads us nowhere good.

The Palestinians have been broken up into various fragments, with different rights and privileges, and cut off from each other. Those inside Israel can vote but not take a real part in the political game; those in East Jerusalem can't vote, but have a freedom of movement which those on the West Bank don't have. Gaza Palestinians are under a terrible siege, and Diaspora Palestinians are just left out in the cold.

In this way, even if all the Palestinians together are a majority, the Jewish Israelis will always be a majority towards each of the separate segments."

For the short term, Klein was not very optimistic about the chances of a change. "Too much of the Israeli political system and society in general want to perpetuate this regime of domination over the Palestinians. But eventually - sooner or later though it might be quite a bit later - the price of maintaining the status quo would become higher than the price of changing it. Then, the two state solution will get a chance again. In passing, I would like to comment on Gilead Sher's idea that most of Jerusalem be divided between Israel and Palestine, but the Old City be kept a Separate Entity inder a special regime.

This will just not work. If and when we get this far, sovereignty will have to be divided in the Old City, too". (Sher: "God Forbid!")

Israela Oron is member of the Steering Committee in the Geneva Initiative, which exactly now embarked on a major advertising campaign to get its draft peace agreement back into the public limelight, with the slogan "The Geneva Agreement is good for the Jews" (ironically, a paraphrase on an elections slogan used by Netanyahu ten years ago).

She took issue with Gilead Sher's willingness to contemplate a unilateral Israeli withdrawal, as "a last resort if we don't achieve an agreement". As Oron rebutted, "withdrawing from Gaza without an agreement was a major mistake, and the very difficult situation there is the result, it very much discredited the whole idea of withdrawal even though we must do it.

There should be negotiations, and a negotiated agreement, and a transfer of the territory to the partner with whom we made the agreement. And Israel should encourage Fatah and Hamas to settle their differences and form a National Unity Government with which we should talk."

"Should we intervene in this way in the internal affairs of the Palestinians?" asked David Landau, the moderator. Oron answered: "At least, we should not interfere to prevent them from uniting, as we had done until now".

In the second debate, that on the role of the media, the borderlines between the various participants were less clear-cut, in discussing the convoluted interrelationships between print media and electronic media, state TV and commercial TV, government establishment and business tycoons, and the ability (or lack thereof) of journalists to navigate this maze keep some independence and adhere to the basics of journalistic ethics.

Given the raison d'etre of the event, and the composition of the audience in the packed hall, it was natural that one specific issue came to the fore. Namely, that most cases and instances of terrible oppression and injustice towards Palestinians go unreported in the mainstream Israeli media, as do most peace-minded demonstrations and protest. To break through the barrier, peace and human rights organizations usually need to take their own footage of particularly brutal violence and present them more or less ready-made to news editors.

Rina Matzliach, political reporter for the Second Channel TV, had some interesting inside information to share with the audience: "I never got any direct orders from the owners, what to cover and how. The problem is more what the viewers want and don't want, as their will is represented through the ratings. Journalistic norms are bent in the service of ratings, and the influence is critical. In the morning the news editor goes through the ratings of the previous night's news broadcast, item by item, checking their ratings. The results are consistent; anything to do with the Arabs and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has low ratings; the viewers don't want to see or hear of it."

"It is not that we sit in the editorial room and say to each other "Hey guys, Arabs have a low rating, don't propose news items about Arabs. It is more subtle and insidious than that. There is the collective decision making of the system, composed of hundreds of big and small decisions in the course of the day. Without even thinking too much of it, this process leads to the conclusion that when celebrities like Eyal Golan and Ilanit Levy got divorced you say this is an item, but when something happened in Sakhnin it does not look like an item". (Matzliach's words are here translated from an extensive report in "Ha'ayin Ha'Svi'it", "The Seventh Eye", the media monitoring magazine published by the Israeli Democracy Institute).

At the conclusion, Uri Avnery mounted the podium to offer some closing remarks on the most vexed question of all: "How to Build an Influential Left?"

For full text of Avnery's speech, click here

Avnery remarked on the inherently paradoxical situation. Positions which were considered "radical" and "extremist" twenty years ago, are now the common sense of the mainstream - at least verbally. ("When I met Arafat in 1982, four cabinet ministers demanded that I be put on trial for treason; little more than ten years later, all four of them met with Arafat themselves").

On the other hand, despite the cloying mass of official lip-service, the fortunes of the Israeli peace camp seem at their nadir - as reflected, for example, in the ongoing elections campaign. "We can already now be sure of one thing: when Israel goes to the polls, no government of peace will emerge. The differences between the possible outcomes are not more than between very bad and a bit less bad.

"There is not much to be done before on February 10. But whatever the results, on the day after the elections we should start working to create a better alternative in the next elections. A real alternative for those who want to see peace and an end to the occupation, an Israel which strives for social justice and cares for the environment, an Israel of which we can at long last be proud. Something completely new, which can arouse enthousiasm and fire the imagination. Which can especially appeal to the young, who feel disgusted with and completely alienated from politics and politicians - at least, from the politics and the politicians which they so far got a chance to know".

Avnery concluded by stating "We should lay the ground for the Israeli Obama" - an allusion which was obvious even before he explicitly mentioned the name. He also made a reference to a recent Israeli experience: The past Tel Aviv municipal elections where KM Dov Khenin - on a groundswell of a popular movement of environmentalists, slum dwellers and radical students came within touching distance of unseating the incumbent mayor. If only this could be somehow translated to national elections...

[Report by Adam Keller]