This is not a theoretical debate. We cannot say, as the Hebrew expression goes, "May every man live with his own faith," and may peace reign in the peace movement. Between these two alternatives there can be no compromise. We have to decide, we have to choose, because they dictate quite different strategies and different tactics-not tomorrow, but today, here and now. The difference is fateful.

For example, should we concentrate our efforts on the struggle for public opinion in Israel, or should we give up on the struggle here and concentrate on the struggle abroad?

I am an Israeli. I stand with both feet on the ground of Israeli reality. I want to change this reality radically. But I want the State of Israel to exist.

Those who oppose the existence of Israel as a state that expresses our Israeli identity deprive themselves of any possibility to act here. All their activities in Israel are doomed to failure.

A person can despair and say: "There's nothing to be done. Everything is lost. We have passed the ‘point of no return.' The situation is ‘irreversible.' We have nothing more to do in this country."

Everyone can despair for a moment. Perhaps each of us has

despaired at one time or other. But one should not turn despair into an ideology. Despair destroys the ability to act.

I say: "There is no reason at all for despair. Nothing is lost. Nothing in life is ‘irreversible,' except life itself. There is no such thing as a ‘point of no return.'"

I am 83 years old. In my lifetime, I have seen the advent of the Nazis and their downfall. I have seen the Soviet Union at its zenith and watched its collapse. A day before the fall of the Berlin wall, no German believed that he would witness that moment in his lifetime. The smartest experts did not foresee it. Because in history, there are subterranean streams that nobody perceives in real time. That's why the theoretical analyses are so rarely confirmed.

Nothing is lost until the fighters raise their hands and say that all is lost. Raising hands is no solution. Neither is it moral.

In our situation, a person who despairs has three alternatives: (a) emigration, (b) inner emigration, which means staying at home and doing nothing, or (c) escape to the world of idealist solutions for the days of the Messiah.

The third alternative is the most dangerous at the moment, because the situation is critical, especially for the Palestinians. There is no time for a solution in a hundred years. We need an urgent solution, a solution that can be realized within a few years.

It has been said that Avnery is old, he sticks to old solutions, he is unable to absorb a new idea. And I wonder: a new idea?

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