LETTER FROM JERUSALEM: Give Peace A Chance by Arlynn Nellhaus

The Voice of America has been saying for weeks that Israelis were rejecting newly defeated Prime Minister Ehud Barak because he hadn't clinched a deal with the Palestinians.

Since the VOA just stepped from its flying saucer, they couldn’t possibly understand the Israeli situation. But on election day, they finally got the message.

Usually, the media seem to talk to themselves, or Israelis like Uri Avnery and Yossi Beilin, who dream that if Israel would just give the Palestinians everything they want, there will be peace. And so, the media usually remain in the dark.

I wonder what the press, which has loved to demonize Sharon, will make of the outcome of Israeli soldiers' votes?

For them, scattered to the remotest corners of this land, to get to vote took Herculean effort. Some had to be helicoptered to voting sites.

These men and women, who would be first under fire should the doomsday predictions about Sharon come to be, voted more than 65 percent for him – even higher than the rest of the voting public.

Israelis are fed up by the Oslo Accords between Israel and Yasser Arafat. In seven years, of concession after concession, Israelis got in return bombed, stabbed, burned, kidnapped, shot, run over by cars and lynched.

Then Barak crossed every red line for Israel's security to please Arafat, who walked away in a huff and then orchestrated a violent uprising to squeeze more out of Israel.

With Israelis merely riding in their cars, walking down the street or riding buses being killed these past few months, the people said, there has to be a different path to peace.

At least we don't have to endure Barak's grubbing for votes. He began some weeks ago by apologizing for the treatment Jewish refugees from Moslem lands received by the ruling Labor Party when they arrived in droves in the 1950s.

That was why Afro-Asian Jews flocked to Likud. Menahem Begin didn't try to change their accent. In exchange for their vote, he offered them dignity.

Condescension and worse by Labor continued. When Barak ran for prime minister 22 months ago, one of his supporters publicly called Likudniks, "riff-raff." There were no apologies then.

Israeli-Arabs vowed they wouldn't vote in this election. They would punish Barak for the killing of 13 Israeli-Arabs engaged in Palestinian Intifada-inspired riots.

He went to them before elections on February 6 and again apologized. "Too little, too late," was the response.

Stars of the left, former Meretz party head Shulamit Aloni and authors Amos Oz and David Grossman, tried their persuasive powers on the Arabs.

They warned that Sharon would deprive them of basic rights; they would regret their action if they didn't vote, and "They must vote or the cost will be blood."

Oz waxed wrathful. He said, "We have fought for your rights all our lives. Whoever of you doesn't vote betrays us to Ariel Sharon. I do not envy the persons who would have to look at themselves in the mirror and know that they played a part in bringing about the next Arab-Israel war."

The Arabs remained unmoved. Besides, their boys don't have to go to the army, anyway.

Scare tactics constantly surfaced. Yael "Yuli" Tamir, a Peace Now founder whom Barak plucked from Tel Aviv University to be the Absorption Minister, debated Jerusalem mayor Ehud Olmert.

She threatened that if Israel doesn't make its peace own with the Arabs, the international community would. "How could that be worse than what Barak has done?" a woman in the audience asked.

One of the strangest vote pitches came from a newspaper notice which read that it was by the Prime Minister Ehud Barak to mourn the deaths of Lior Attiah, 23, and Dr. Shmuel Gillis, 42, who were killed four days before elections.

Attiah was killed near the Palestinian Authority when he went to pick up his car, in what might have been a set-up. Gillis, father of 5 and a renowned hematologist at Hadassah-University Hospital, was killed in a drive-by shooting while on his way home.

I don't remember seeing such a notice about any of the other more than 50 Israelis killed since Intifada II started. But then they weren't killed days before an election.

The election party I went to was the highlight of the day. We – artists, writers, editors, poets and filmmakers – just sat at a restaurant and ate and talked. No one breathed a word of politics. No one was made to leave the table.

Now the biggest topic of conversation is the mountains of garbage that has accumulated during weeks of a strike. Added to the mess is abandoned campaign posters. Jerusalem simply is filthy. But no parking tickets are being issued during this time.

In contrast, delicate pink and white almond blossoms are in full bloom, defying the garbage below.

Also coming now is Tu B'shvat, new year of the trees, during which people usually go to the woods and plant seedlings. But this is the Sabbatical year for the land to rest and lie fallow.

But if it doesn't rain – and Israel desperately needs rain – people will be out in the woods, anyway, just to enjoy.

Arlynn Nellhaus is a former Denver Post reporter now based in Jerusalem and the author of Into the Heart of Jerusalem.