Uri Avnery.

• Author: Elmer, Jon
• Position: Interview

Uri Avnery is a founding member of Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc). As a teenager, Avnery was an independence fighter in the Irgun, the armed Jewish resistance, and later a soldier in the Israeli army. He also served three times as a member of the Knesset. Avnery was the first Israeli to establish contact with the Palestinian Liberation Organization leadership in 1974. During the war on Lebanon in 1982, he crossed enemy lines to meet with Yasser Arafat. He has been a journalist since 1947, including forty years as editor-in-chief of the newsmagazine Ha'olam Haze. He is the author of numerous books on the conflict, including My Friend, the Enemy and Two People, Two States. I spoke with him twice, the first time on September 14 of last year and the second time on February 15 of this year.

Q: Can you talk a little bit about your years in the Irgun?

Uri Avnery: I joined the Irgun when I was just fifteen years old, and I left when I was nineteen years old. I joined because I wanted to fight for our freedom and a state of our own against the British colonial administration of Palestine. I left it because I did not approve of the methods and the aims of the Irgun.

I have always been conscious of the importance and the strength of nationalism, and this has led me straight to the acknowledgment of the nationalism of the Palestinian people. I believe there is no way around this: We have to have a solution based on two national states, which will hopefully live and grow together and establish a relationship between them in something like a European Union.

Q: Can you discuss your 1945 essay, "Terrorism: The infantile disease of the Hebrew revolution"? And how does it relate to current Palestinian terrorism?

Avnery: When we in the Irgun put bombs in the Arab markets of Jaffa and Jerusalem and Haifa and killed scores of people--men, women, and children--in retaliation for similar acts by the Arabs, I didn't back this. But it left me with a lasting understanding of what gets people to join such organizations, and I understand the Palestinians who join these organizations.

I am against violence on both sides. But I understand people who believe that without violence they will not achieve anything at all. It is our responsibility as the stronger party, as the occupying power, to convince the Palestinians that they can achieve their basic national aims, their just national. A aspirations, without violence. Unfortunately, the behavior of the Sharon administration, and before this of the Barak administration, has shown the Palestinians the opposite: namely, that they will achieve nothing without violence.

Q: According to the United States and Israel, it is the Palestinians--more specifically, Arafat--who must take the initiative in ending the "cycle of violence." Edward Said once said: "Since when does a militarily occupied people have responsibility for a peace movement?" Is it the responsibility of the Palestinians to end the violence?

Avnery: Violence is...