Mattityahu Peled
Encyclopedia
Mattityahu "Matti" Peled was a well-known Israeli public figure who was at various periods of his life a professional military man who reached the rank of Aluf
(Major General
) in the IDF
and was a member of the General Staff during the Six Day War of 1967; a notable scholar who headed the Arabic Language
and Literature
Department of Tel Aviv University
; a radical peace activist
and a leading proponent of Israeli dialogue with the PLO and of complete withdrawal from the Occupied Territories
in whose conquest he personally had a major role; and a member of the Knesset
who often expressed controversial views considered "extreme left" in Israeli terms, yet was treated with considerable respect by staunch political opponents.
, then the main port of the British Mandate of Palestine, and grew up in Jerusalem. Like many youth of that period, he was involved in one of the Socialist Zionist youth movements. At the age of 18 he joined the Palmach
, the newly-created Jewish paramilitary defense organization, as Palestine was becoming threatened by Rommel
's rapid advance across North Africa. After Rommel's defeat
in 1943 however, Peled was involved in various acts against the continuing British rule. He served in the Palmach's Jerusalem Platoon together with Yitzhak Rabin
, with whom Peled was to maintain lifelong contact.
, following the Partition of Palestine brought him back to the military. With the ensuing 1948 Arab-Israeli War
(Israeli war of Independence/Palestinian Nakba) in May, he was among the cadre of militia officers who became the backbone of the newly-founded Israeli Defence Forces, as the newly created state of Israel
had to transform its collection of militias into a single, full-fledged, regular army, in the midst of a heavy fighting on multiple fronts. With many still in their twenties, Peled and his fellow-officers were often entrusted with highly responsible positions, which in most armies are entrusted to older and far more experienced officers.
As the military commander of the Jerusalem region following the 1949 Armistice Agreements
, Peled participated in a single project to resettle Palestinian refugees, in which a small group of villagers were allowed to cross the Green Line
from the Jordan
ian-held West Bank
back into Israel; this act was a marked exception to the government's policy of outright rejecting the return of Palestinian refugees
. These refugees, however, were not allowed to return to their original village - Ein Neqova west of Jerusalem - but were resettled at a nearby location, the village of Ein Rafa
.
Peled, an officer with wide-ranging intellectual interests, was marked early-on as a potential staff officer and in the early 1950s was sent to study at the British Staff and Command College, together with Rabin and others, who later held senior positions in the IDF over the following decades. During his stay in Britain, Peled met and befriended some Jordan
ian officers, who also had been sent there; some of these officers were to gain senior positions in their own, opposing military.
, which followed and extended the Suez Crisis
in 1956.
Though lasting only briefly, it was a crucial turning point in his life, as he was to recount on numerous later occasions; he found himself the "lord and master" over hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. While his daily decisions as governor profoundly affected their daily life, sometimes with life-and-death significance, he commanded without any personal knowledge of their language, and only the most vague idea of Palestinian culture and their way of life. This experience led his decision to study Arabic and the more general idea that Jews and Arabs who share a single small country should know each others' language. This conclusion, however, was not yet based on any particular political concept, and it was only many years later when he formulated his alternative political ideas which characterized his later career.
(Major General) and in charge of the IDF Supply Division - was considered a hawk
. At the time when the government of PM Levi Eshkol
seemed to be hesitating whether or not to launch a pre-emptive attack on the Egypt
ian armies concentrating in the Sinai, Peled was among a group of generals who demanded that the government start a war, and threatened to resign if it did not.
Others involved in this Generals' Protest (which became known to the general public only many years later) were then Major General Ariel Sharon
and Major General Israel Tal
. Sharon later became Defence Minister and Prime Minister and held positions then diametrically opposite Peled's; Tal, who later also became a dove, but a less radical one, never entered active politics.
Some historians credit the Generals' Protest, of which Peled was part, with a decisive role in Israel's making the decision to launch the Six Day War - a crucial turning point in the history of the country and of the entire Middle East to the present day. Others, however, assert that the Eshkol Government had already decided to go to war and that its apparent hesitation was mainly aimed at gaining international (and specifically, American) support.
When later asked about this incident - as he was on numerous occasions during his later career on the Left - Peled expressed no regret, and stated that having been in charge of the Supply Division, he was aware that prolonged mobilization, with the IDF reserves comprising a significant percentage of Israel's overall workforce, would severely cripple the country's economy (which at the time already suffered from a severe, years-long recession). Therefore, Peled asserted, he was duty-bound to tell the government that the country could not afford a long mobilization and that it had to strike " a sharp decisive blow" after which the reserves could be discharged - which is what Israel proceeded to do in the June 1967 Six Day War.
Peled reiterated, however, that he had conceived of this as a purely military operation to counter a military threat, and that he had no idea that Israel would maintain occupation of the territories captured for decades aterwards, or establish settlements
designed to effect their annexation and permanently change their demographic character. He had opposed these tendencies as soon as they appeared, in the aftermath of the war.
Peled retired from military life in 1969. In that period he visited Vietnam
as an official guest of the US Army and was cordially received by American generals. At the time he still supported the US involvement in the Vietnam War
, a position which was to change in subsequent years.
ian Nobel Prize
laureate Naguib Mahfouz
. Subsequently, Peled was one of the founders of the Arabic Literature
Department at Tel Aviv University
, which he for some years headed, and soon gained a reputation as a serious and innovative scholar in his chosen field.
At the same time, he started regularly publishing articles in the weekend edition of Ma'ariv
, in which the clear leftward change in his political stance was evident. He also joined the Israeli Labor Party, though holding no office on its behalf, and in the 1973 elections
was among a group of prominent doves who called upon voters to vote for Labor, despite its faults, rather than for the more radical small left-wing parties (which, under Israel's system of proportional representation
have a good chance of gaining some seats in the Knesset
).
Peled later reversed this position, becoming a leading member in several such left-wing parties in succession and on numerous occasions expressing sharp criticism of Labour. Still, until his last day, he considered himself a Zionist, irrespective of the biting skepticism voiced by his political opponents on that point.
, the late Yaakov Arnon, Yossi Amitai, Amos Keinan
, Aryeh Eliav
and others. Aside from Avnery (a journalist and Knesset
member who had confronted the Israeli establishment since the early 1950s) most founders of the ICIPP - like Peled himself - were dissident members of the establishment who had moved leftward in the early 1970s.
Arnon, for example, was a noted economist, who had headed the Zionist Federation of the Netherlands
until 1948,when he came to Israel and became the director-general of its newly-founded Ministry of Finance; later on he was Chairman of the Board of the Israeli Electricity Company. Eliav had been until shortly before the Secretary-General of the Alignment
, from which he resigned over the declaration of then-PM Golda Meir
that "There is no Palestinian people
".
The ICIPP Charter called for Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967 and the creation of an independent Palestinian state in these territories, Jerusalem being shared between them. At the time this was considered a very radical plan, which the ICIPP was the first Zionist organization to support. (Peled and several other ICIPP members presented a libel suit against a columnist who had called them and their organization "anti-Zionist" - and won.)
The ICIPP sought to promote private and unofficial dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians in as many ways as possible, but also to try to bring about official negotiations between the Government of Israel and the leadership of the PLO.
As the chief coordinator of the ICIPP, Peled took a leading role in the initially clandestine meetings with PLO leaders. The first meeting in Paris, in 1976 brought Peled and several other Israelis together with PLO senior official Issam Sartawi
, who acted with the full authorisation of Yasser Arafat
- (thought Arafat personally would become involved in such dialogue only during the siege of Beirut
in the First Lebanon War
in 1982. The very holding of this dialogue represented a significant step from the PLO's side, as until the organization had the official policy of "talking only to anti-Zionist Israelis", i.e. only to a small handful among the Israeli Jewish population.
Sartawi was assassinated in 1983 by an extremist Palestinian group, as was Sa'id Hamami, another Palestinian participant in the dialogue. Also assassinated was Henri Curiel
, an Egypt
ian Jewish Communist living in exile at Paris
who had played a key role in facilitating the opening of Israeli-Palestinian contacts. Curiel's assassination in 1978 remains a mystery, with the French police never finding (and according to some of his friends, never making a real effort to find) the killer(s).
The Israeli participants were spared such tragedies, though death threats on their lives there were in plenty, and some newspaper columnists explicitly accused them of "treason". The PLO was then considered as arch-terrorists and murderers, and few Israelis could comprehend the idea of talking to them.
Peled did approach his old comrade in arms Yitzhak Rabin
, then on his first term as Prime Minister of Israel (1974–77). He offered to brief Rabin on his talks with the Palestinians, and Rabin consented. On several occasions, indeed, Sartawi and other Palestinian interlocutors used this channel to pass on specific messages intended for Rabin's ears. The PM patiently heard him out, but never consented to send a message in return. "That would be negotiating with the PLO, and I will never never do that" he told Peled - ironic words in retrospect, as Rabin was later to conduct intensive talks with the PLO and sign the Oslo Agreement with Arafat. Peled always believed that Oslo was at least in part a late flowering of the seeds he and his friends had sown in the 1970s.
party, whose platform focused on advocating peace negotiations with the Palestinians. Peled, like virtually the entire membership of the ICIPP went into the new party as a matter of course, but things did not go as smoothly as may have been expected.
While all members of the party were doves as far as the Israeli general political spectrum was concerned, there were considerable difference of political strategy and tactics. One faction, headed by Ran Cohen
- later a Knesset Member and cabinet minister for the Meretz
party - held that Israeli peaceniks talking to the Palestinians should strive to extract concessions from them, such as an official recognition of Israel.
On the other hand, Peled - member of the Left Camp of Israel Executive for the whole of the party's six years of existence, though he never held a public office on its behalf - claimed that the Palestinian leadership, representing its entire people, could not be expected to make in a dialogue with radical Israeli dissidents the kind of concessions which would undermine its negotiating position if and when it came to negotiate with the Government of Israel. (Which, with Menachem Begin
as Israel's PM at the time, and Ariel Sharon as Defence Minister, seemed a very distant possibility). In effect, the ICIPP - with Peled and Avnery at its head - became a faction within the Left Camp of Israel, embroiled in constant internecine struggle with the opposing faction.
Things came to a head with the outbreak of the First Lebanon War
in 1982. Peled outspokenly supported the reserve soldiers who refused to take part in the war, organised by the newly-founded Yesh Gvul
movement - some 200 of whom served terms in the military prisons. Peled's position in support of the refusers drew much public attention due to Peled's illustrious military past. Ran Cohen, himself a reserve Colonel (Aluf
-Misheh) strongly objected, stating that it was a soldier's duty to obey orders, even when he politically objects to the war being conducted; and indeed, Cohen himself, as an artillery officer, took part in the bombardment of Beirut.
Avnery, Peled's partner, arrived in Beirut in quite different circumstances - crossing the lines to conduct a first-ever meeting with PLO leader Yasser Arafat
, at his besieged and bombarded headquarters. Cohen strongly condemned the meeting, which he characterised as "fawning". Thereupon Peled, always known as a forthright speaker, accused Cohen of being "a war criminal who bombards a civilian population".
This precipitated a final split and break-up of the party. Cohen and his followers decisively parted ways with Peled and Avnery, and joined with Shulamit Aloni
and other factions to form the Meretz
party.
. Their Arab partners were headed by Mohammed Miari
, a veteran radical political activist and human rights lawyer specializing in land confiscation cases, and Rev. Riach Abu-el-Assal
, Vicar of the Anglican Church in Nazareth
(later Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem
).
Several attempts were made by the government and right-wing parties to outlaw the PLP and prevent it from running in elections - which was the fate of earlier parties in which Miari was involved, such as Al Ard in 1965. However, the Supreme Court overturned these attempts.
Thus, in the elections of that year
Miari and Peled were elected to the Knesset
. Peled's parliamentary term coincided with the tense atmosphere of the outbreak of the First Intifada
. However, he was far from confining himself to the hotly controversial issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, taking great interest in a great spectrum of subjects, on some of which he found common ground with staunch right-wingers.
He soon gained a reputation as one of the most serious and industrious of Israel's parliamentarians, whose speeches on the Knesset floor "resembled academic lectures". Reportedly, he was capable of reading up for a whole week to prepare a ten-minute speech on an obscure subject. To the despair of the party's press spokespersons, he utterly refused to make any "gimmicks" to catch the attention of the press, or include any "soundbite" in his parliamentary speeches. He lost his seat in the 1988 elections
when the party was reduced to one seat.
Peled published numerous political articles in Israeli and international media and translated several pieces of Arabic literature to Hebrew. For what turned out to be his last work of translation - "The Sages of Darkness" by the Syrian
-Kurdish
writer Salim Barakat
- Peled won the Translators' Association Prize.
In 1993, he took part in forming Gush Shalom
, the Israeli Peace Bloc - a grassroots peace movement in whose ranks Peled alternately expressed a sharp criticism of his old friend Rabin for severe human rights
violations in the occupied territories
; warmly commended and congratulated him for his dramatic rapprochement with the PLO and the handshake with Arafat on the White House lawn; and finally expressed a growing worry and anxiety at the slow pace of the peace process and the continuing occupation, oppression and settlement activity - which gave ample opportunity, as Peled wrote in several admonitory articles, to extremists on both sides to create a renewed dynamic of escalation.
In 1994, seventy years of robust health were broken when Peled felt sharp pains which turned out to be the sign of an incurable liver cancer
. Virtually until his last day he followed political developments and continued to write political essays even when the very act of sitting at his word processor became extremely difficult and painful.
His last essay, written a few weeks before his death and published in "The Other Israel", the ICIPP's newsletter, was entitled “Requiem to Oslo” - an article expressing disappointment with the Oslo Accords
and predicting the explosion which was to break out with the Second Intifada of 2000.
Peled's funeral brought together a unique combination of radical peace activists with former generals and senior officers. At the graveside, messages of condolences were read from both the government of Israel and PLO Chairman Arafat. After his death, his widow Zika Peled contributed Matti’s private library to the Arab Teachers' College at Beit Berl
. His political articles were contributed to the Lavon Institute.
A sad irony of history was to occur two and a half years later, in September 1997, when Matti’s 14-year-old granddaughter Smadar Elhanan was among the victims of a Palestinian suicide bomber blowing himself up in Ben Yehuda Street, in the center of Jerusalem. Rami Elhanan, Smadar's father and Peled's son in law, was among the founders and organizers of the Parents Circle - Families Forum
together with Peled's daughter, Nurit Peled-Elhanan
. The organization brings together several hundred Israelis and Palestinians who all lost their dear ones in the course of the conflict, and who act together to consolate each other, bring about peace and avert any further bloodshed. "I am sure that this is what Smadar's grandfather would have wanted me to do" said Elahanan.
According to the Peled foundation, "Many considered him a renegade. Matti Peled, however, was loyal to his country and the cause of peace, which he championed during the last two decades of his life, after a distinguished military career"
Aluf
Aluf is the term used for General and Admiral in the Israel Defense Forces . In addition to the Aluf rank itself, there are four other ranks which are derivatives of the word...
(Major General
Major General
Major general or major-general is a military rank used in many countries. It is derived from the older rank of sergeant major general. A major general is a high-ranking officer, normally subordinate to the rank of lieutenant general and senior to the ranks of brigadier and brigadier general...
) in the IDF
Israel Defense Forces
The Israel Defense Forces , commonly known in Israel by the Hebrew acronym Tzahal , are the military forces of the State of Israel. They consist of the ground forces, air force and navy. It is the sole military wing of the Israeli security forces, and has no civilian jurisdiction within Israel...
and was a member of the General Staff during the Six Day War of 1967; a notable scholar who headed the Arabic Language
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
and Literature
Arabic literature
Arabic literature is the writing produced, both prose and poetry, by writers in the Arabic language. The Arabic word used for literature is adab which is derived from a meaning of etiquette, and implies politeness, culture and enrichment....
Department of Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University is a public university located in Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, Israel. With nearly 30,000 students, TAU is Israel's largest university.-History:...
; a radical peace activist
Peace activist
This list of peace activists includes people who proactively advocate diplomatic, non-military resolution of political disputes, usually through nonviolent means.A peace activist is an activist of the peace movement.*Jane Addams*Martti Ahtisaari...
and a leading proponent of Israeli dialogue with the PLO and of complete withdrawal from the Occupied Territories
Israeli-occupied territories
The Israeli-occupied territories are the territories which have been designated as occupied territory by the United Nations and other international organizations, governments and others to refer to the territory seized by Israel during the Six-Day War of 1967 from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria...
in whose conquest he personally had a major role; and a member of the Knesset
Knesset
The Knesset is the unicameral legislature of Israel, located in Givat Ram, Jerusalem.-Role in Israeli Government :The legislative branch of the Israeli government, the Knesset passes all laws, elects the President and Prime Minister , approves the cabinet, and supervises the work of the government...
who often expressed controversial views considered "extreme left" in Israeli terms, yet was treated with considerable respect by staunch political opponents.
Early years
Peled was born in 1923 at HaifaHaifa
Haifa is the largest city in northern Israel, and the third-largest city in the country, with a population of over 268,000. Another 300,000 people live in towns directly adjacent to the city including the cities of the Krayot, as well as, Tirat Carmel, Daliyat al-Karmel and Nesher...
, then the main port of the British Mandate of Palestine, and grew up in Jerusalem. Like many youth of that period, he was involved in one of the Socialist Zionist youth movements. At the age of 18 he joined the Palmach
Palmach
The Palmach was the elite fighting force of the Haganah, the underground army of the Yishuv during the period of the British Mandate of Palestine. The Palmach was established on May 15, 1941...
, the newly-created Jewish paramilitary defense organization, as Palestine was becoming threatened by Rommel
Rommel
Erwin Rommel was a German World War II field marshal.Rommel may also refer to:*Rommel *Rommel Adducul , Filipino basketball player*Rommel Fernández , first Panamanian footballer to play in Europe...
's rapid advance across North Africa. After Rommel's defeat
Second Battle of El Alamein
The Second Battle of El Alamein marked a major turning point in the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War. The battle took place over 20 days from 23 October – 11 November 1942. The First Battle of El Alamein had stalled the Axis advance. Thereafter, Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery...
in 1943 however, Peled was involved in various acts against the continuing British rule. He served in the Palmach's Jerusalem Platoon together with Yitzhak Rabin
Yitzhak Rabin
' was an Israeli politician, statesman and general. He was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–77 and 1992 until his assassination in 1995....
, with whom Peled was to maintain lifelong contact.
War of independence
In 1946 Peled started Law studies in London, but the outbreak of civil war1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine
The 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine lasted from 30 November 1947, the date of the United Nations vote in favour of the termination of the British Mandate for Palestine and the UN Partition Plan, to the termination of the British Mandate itself on 14 May 1948.This period constitutes the...
, following the Partition of Palestine brought him back to the military. With the ensuing 1948 Arab-Israeli War
1948 Arab-Israeli War
The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, known to Israelis as the War of Independence or War of Liberation The war commenced after the termination of the British Mandate for Palestine and the creation of an independent Israel at midnight on 14 May 1948 when, following a period of civil war, Arab armies invaded...
(Israeli war of Independence/Palestinian Nakba) in May, he was among the cadre of militia officers who became the backbone of the newly-founded Israeli Defence Forces, as the newly created state of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
had to transform its collection of militias into a single, full-fledged, regular army, in the midst of a heavy fighting on multiple fronts. With many still in their twenties, Peled and his fellow-officers were often entrusted with highly responsible positions, which in most armies are entrusted to older and far more experienced officers.
As the military commander of the Jerusalem region following the 1949 Armistice Agreements
1949 Armistice Agreements
The 1949 Armistice Agreements are a set of agreements signed during 1949 between Israel and neighboring Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria. The agreements ended the official hostilities of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and established armistice lines between Israeli forces and the forces in...
, Peled participated in a single project to resettle Palestinian refugees, in which a small group of villagers were allowed to cross the Green Line
Green Line (Israel)
Green Line refers to the demarcation lines set out in the 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and its neighbours after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War...
from the Jordan
Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...
ian-held West Bank
West Bank
The West Bank ) of the Jordan River is the landlocked geographical eastern part of the Palestinian territories located in Western Asia. To the west, north, and south, the West Bank shares borders with the state of Israel. To the east, across the Jordan River, lies the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan...
back into Israel; this act was a marked exception to the government's policy of outright rejecting the return of Palestinian refugees
Right of return
The term right of return refers to a principle of international law, codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, giving any person the right to return to, and re-enter, his or her country of origin...
. These refugees, however, were not allowed to return to their original village - Ein Neqova west of Jerusalem - but were resettled at a nearby location, the village of Ein Rafa
Ein Rafa
Ein Rafa is an Israeli Arab village ten kilometers west of Jerusalem, Israel. Located across Route 1 from Abu Ghosh, it falls under the jurisdiction of Mateh Yehuda Regional Council. In 2006 it had a population of 865.-History:...
.
Peled, an officer with wide-ranging intellectual interests, was marked early-on as a potential staff officer and in the early 1950s was sent to study at the British Staff and Command College, together with Rabin and others, who later held senior positions in the IDF over the following decades. During his stay in Britain, Peled met and befriended some Jordan
Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...
ian officers, who also had been sent there; some of these officers were to gain senior positions in their own, opposing military.
Military commander of Gaza
Peled served as the military commander of Gaza during the half-year Israeli occupation of the Gaza StripGaza Strip
thumb|Gaza city skylineThe Gaza Strip lies on the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The Strip borders Egypt on the southwest and Israel on the south, east and north. It is about long, and between 6 and 12 kilometres wide, with a total area of...
, which followed and extended the Suez Crisis
Suez Crisis
The Suez Crisis, also referred to as the Tripartite Aggression, Suez War was an offensive war fought by France, the United Kingdom, and Israel against Egypt beginning on 29 October 1956. Less than a day after Israel invaded Egypt, Britain and France issued a joint ultimatum to Egypt and Israel,...
in 1956.
Though lasting only briefly, it was a crucial turning point in his life, as he was to recount on numerous later occasions; he found himself the "lord and master" over hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. While his daily decisions as governor profoundly affected their daily life, sometimes with life-and-death significance, he commanded without any personal knowledge of their language, and only the most vague idea of Palestinian culture and their way of life. This experience led his decision to study Arabic and the more general idea that Jews and Arabs who share a single small country should know each others' language. This conclusion, however, was not yet based on any particular political concept, and it was only many years later when he formulated his alternative political ideas which characterized his later career.
The "Generals' Protest" and the Six-Day War
During the severe political crisis of May 1967, in the lead-up to the Six Day War, Peled - then at the rank of AlufAluf
Aluf is the term used for General and Admiral in the Israel Defense Forces . In addition to the Aluf rank itself, there are four other ranks which are derivatives of the word...
(Major General) and in charge of the IDF Supply Division - was considered a hawk
War Hawk
War Hawk is a term originally used to describe members of the Twelfth Congress of the United States who advocated waging war against the British in the War of 1812...
. At the time when the government of PM Levi Eshkol
Levi Eshkol
' served as the third Prime Minister of Israel from 1963 until his death from a heart attack in 1969. He was the first Israeli Prime Minister to die in office.-Biography:...
seemed to be hesitating whether or not to launch a pre-emptive attack on the Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
ian armies concentrating in the Sinai, Peled was among a group of generals who demanded that the government start a war, and threatened to resign if it did not.
Others involved in this Generals' Protest (which became known to the general public only many years later) were then Major General Ariel Sharon
Ariel Sharon
Ariel Sharon is an Israeli statesman and retired general, who served as Israel’s 11th Prime Minister. He has been in a permanent vegetative state since suffering a stroke on 4 January 2006....
and Major General Israel Tal
Israel Tal
Israel Tal , also known as Talik , was an Israel Defense Forces general known for his knowledge of tank warfare and for leading the development of Israel's Merkava tank.-Biography:...
. Sharon later became Defence Minister and Prime Minister and held positions then diametrically opposite Peled's; Tal, who later also became a dove, but a less radical one, never entered active politics.
Some historians credit the Generals' Protest, of which Peled was part, with a decisive role in Israel's making the decision to launch the Six Day War - a crucial turning point in the history of the country and of the entire Middle East to the present day. Others, however, assert that the Eshkol Government had already decided to go to war and that its apparent hesitation was mainly aimed at gaining international (and specifically, American) support.
When later asked about this incident - as he was on numerous occasions during his later career on the Left - Peled expressed no regret, and stated that having been in charge of the Supply Division, he was aware that prolonged mobilization, with the IDF reserves comprising a significant percentage of Israel's overall workforce, would severely cripple the country's economy (which at the time already suffered from a severe, years-long recession). Therefore, Peled asserted, he was duty-bound to tell the government that the country could not afford a long mobilization and that it had to strike " a sharp decisive blow" after which the reserves could be discharged - which is what Israel proceeded to do in the June 1967 Six Day War.
Peled reiterated, however, that he had conceived of this as a purely military operation to counter a military threat, and that he had no idea that Israel would maintain occupation of the territories captured for decades aterwards, or establish settlements
Israeli settlement
An Israeli settlement is a Jewish civilian community built on land that was captured by Israel from Jordan, Egypt, and Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War and is considered occupied territory by the international community. Such settlements currently exist in the West Bank...
designed to effect their annexation and permanently change their demographic character. He had opposed these tendencies as soon as they appeared, in the aftermath of the war.
Peled retired from military life in 1969. In that period he visited Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
as an official guest of the US Army and was cordially received by American generals. At the time he still supported the US involvement in the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, a position which was to change in subsequent years.
Scholar and commentator
Already during his military service, Peled had studied Arabic literature, and soon after being discharged he completed and submitting at UCLA his Ph.D. thesis on the EgyptEgypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
ian Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
laureate Naguib Mahfouz
Naguib Mahfouz
Naguib Mahfouz was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. He is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers of Arabic literature, along with Tawfiq el-Hakim, to explore themes of existentialism. He published over 50 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie...
. Subsequently, Peled was one of the founders of the Arabic Literature
Arabic literature
Arabic literature is the writing produced, both prose and poetry, by writers in the Arabic language. The Arabic word used for literature is adab which is derived from a meaning of etiquette, and implies politeness, culture and enrichment....
Department at Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University is a public university located in Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, Israel. With nearly 30,000 students, TAU is Israel's largest university.-History:...
, which he for some years headed, and soon gained a reputation as a serious and innovative scholar in his chosen field.
At the same time, he started regularly publishing articles in the weekend edition of Ma'ariv
Maariv
Maariv is a Hebrew language daily newspaper published in Israel. It is second in sales after Yedioth Ahronoth and third in readership after Yedioth Ahronoth and Israel HaYom. In a TGI survey comparing the last half of 2009 with the same period in 2008, Maariv saw its market share fall slightly...
, in which the clear leftward change in his political stance was evident. He also joined the Israeli Labor Party, though holding no office on its behalf, and in the 1973 elections
Israeli legislative election, 1973
The Elections for the eighth Knesset were held on 31 December 1973. Voter turnout was 78.6%.-Results:1 Aryeh Eliav left the Alignment and merged with Ratz to form Ya'ad - Civil Rights Movement...
was among a group of prominent doves who called upon voters to vote for Labor, despite its faults, rather than for the more radical small left-wing parties (which, under Israel's system of proportional representation
Proportional representation
Proportional representation is a concept in voting systems used to elect an assembly or council. PR means that the number of seats won by a party or group of candidates is proportionate to the number of votes received. For example, under a PR voting system if 30% of voters support a particular...
have a good chance of gaining some seats in the Knesset
Knesset
The Knesset is the unicameral legislature of Israel, located in Givat Ram, Jerusalem.-Role in Israeli Government :The legislative branch of the Israeli government, the Knesset passes all laws, elects the President and Prime Minister , approves the cabinet, and supervises the work of the government...
).
Peled later reversed this position, becoming a leading member in several such left-wing parties in succession and on numerous occasions expressing sharp criticism of Labour. Still, until his last day, he considered himself a Zionist, irrespective of the biting skepticism voiced by his political opponents on that point.
Peace activist
In 1975 Peled was one of the founders of the Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace (ICIPP), together with Uri AvneryUri Avnery
Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement.A member of the Irgun as a teenager, Avnery sat in the Knesset from 1965–74 and 1979–81...
, the late Yaakov Arnon, Yossi Amitai, Amos Keinan
Amos Keinan
Amos Kenan , also Amos Keinan, was an Israeli columnist, painter, sculptor, playwright and novelist.-Life:...
, Aryeh Eliav
Aryeh Eliav
Arie "Lova" Eliav, born Lev Lipschitz , , was an Israeli politician and former member of the Knesset.-Biography:...
and others. Aside from Avnery (a journalist and Knesset
Knesset
The Knesset is the unicameral legislature of Israel, located in Givat Ram, Jerusalem.-Role in Israeli Government :The legislative branch of the Israeli government, the Knesset passes all laws, elects the President and Prime Minister , approves the cabinet, and supervises the work of the government...
member who had confronted the Israeli establishment since the early 1950s) most founders of the ICIPP - like Peled himself - were dissident members of the establishment who had moved leftward in the early 1970s.
Arnon, for example, was a noted economist, who had headed the Zionist Federation of the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
until 1948,when he came to Israel and became the director-general of its newly-founded Ministry of Finance; later on he was Chairman of the Board of the Israeli Electricity Company. Eliav had been until shortly before the Secretary-General of the Alignment
Alignment (political party)
The Alignment was an alliance of the major left-wing parties in Israel between the 1960s and 1990s. It was established in 1965 as an alliance of Mapai and Ahdut HaAvoda but was dissolved three years later when the two parties and Rafi formally merged into the Israeli Labor Party...
, from which he resigned over the declaration of then-PM Golda Meir
Golda Meir
Golda Meir ; May 3, 1898 – December 8, 1978) was a teacher, kibbutznik and politician who became the fourth Prime Minister of the State of Israel....
that "There is no Palestinian people
Palestinian people
The Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with origins in Palestine. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one third of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza...
".
The ICIPP Charter called for Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967 and the creation of an independent Palestinian state in these territories, Jerusalem being shared between them. At the time this was considered a very radical plan, which the ICIPP was the first Zionist organization to support. (Peled and several other ICIPP members presented a libel suit against a columnist who had called them and their organization "anti-Zionist" - and won.)
The ICIPP sought to promote private and unofficial dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians in as many ways as possible, but also to try to bring about official negotiations between the Government of Israel and the leadership of the PLO.
As the chief coordinator of the ICIPP, Peled took a leading role in the initially clandestine meetings with PLO leaders. The first meeting in Paris, in 1976 brought Peled and several other Israelis together with PLO senior official Issam Sartawi
Issam Sartawi
Dr Issam Sartawi was a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organization .-Medical background:Issam Sartawi attended university in Baghdad, graduating in medicine, before specializing in cardiology and getting his MD in the United States.-Politics:Sartawi returned to Palestine in 1967, joined...
, who acted with the full authorisation of Yasser Arafat
Yasser Arafat
Mohammed Yasser Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini , popularly known as Yasser Arafat or by his kunya Abu Ammar , was a Palestinian leader and a Laureate of the Nobel Prize. He was Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization , President of the Palestinian National Authority...
- (thought Arafat personally would become involved in such dialogue only during the siege of Beirut
Beirut
Beirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon, with a population ranging from 1 million to more than 2 million . Located on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon's Mediterranean coastline, it serves as the country's largest and main seaport, and also forms the Beirut Metropolitan...
in the First Lebanon War
1982 Lebanon War
The 1982 Lebanon War , , called Operation Peace for Galilee by Israel, and later known in Israel as the Lebanon War and First Lebanon War, began on 6 June 1982, when the Israel Defense Forces invaded southern Lebanon...
in 1982. The very holding of this dialogue represented a significant step from the PLO's side, as until the organization had the official policy of "talking only to anti-Zionist Israelis", i.e. only to a small handful among the Israeli Jewish population.
Sartawi was assassinated in 1983 by an extremist Palestinian group, as was Sa'id Hamami, another Palestinian participant in the dialogue. Also assassinated was Henri Curiel
Henri Curiel
Henri Curiel was a left-wing political activist. Born in Egypt, Curiel led the communist Democratic Movement for National Liberation until he was expelled from the country in 1950. Settling in France, Curiel aided the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale and other national liberation causes...
, an Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
ian Jewish Communist living in exile at Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
who had played a key role in facilitating the opening of Israeli-Palestinian contacts. Curiel's assassination in 1978 remains a mystery, with the French police never finding (and according to some of his friends, never making a real effort to find) the killer(s).
The Israeli participants were spared such tragedies, though death threats on their lives there were in plenty, and some newspaper columnists explicitly accused them of "treason". The PLO was then considered as arch-terrorists and murderers, and few Israelis could comprehend the idea of talking to them.
Peled did approach his old comrade in arms Yitzhak Rabin
Yitzhak Rabin
' was an Israeli politician, statesman and general. He was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–77 and 1992 until his assassination in 1995....
, then on his first term as Prime Minister of Israel (1974–77). He offered to brief Rabin on his talks with the Palestinians, and Rabin consented. On several occasions, indeed, Sartawi and other Palestinian interlocutors used this channel to pass on specific messages intended for Rabin's ears. The PM patiently heard him out, but never consented to send a message in return. "That would be negotiating with the PLO, and I will never never do that" he told Peled - ironic words in retrospect, as Rabin was later to conduct intensive talks with the PLO and sign the Oslo Agreement with Arafat. Peled always believed that Oslo was at least in part a late flowering of the seeds he and his friends had sown in the 1970s.
Founding the Left Camp of Israel
Peled’s first direct involvement in a political party was in 1977 with the foundation of the short-lived Left Camp of IsraelLeft Camp of Israel
The Left Camp of Israel was a left-wing political party in Israel. It was also known as Sheli , an acronym for Peace for Israel .-Background:...
party, whose platform focused on advocating peace negotiations with the Palestinians. Peled, like virtually the entire membership of the ICIPP went into the new party as a matter of course, but things did not go as smoothly as may have been expected.
While all members of the party were doves as far as the Israeli general political spectrum was concerned, there were considerable difference of political strategy and tactics. One faction, headed by Ran Cohen
Ran Cohen
Ran Cohen is an Israeli politician and former Knesset member for Meretz-Yachad. He is a resident of Mevaseret Zion and married with four children....
- later a Knesset Member and cabinet minister for the Meretz
Meretz-Yachad
New Movement-Meretz , previously known as Meretz, then Yachad, and then Meretz-Yachad is a left-wing, Zionist, social democratic political party in Israel....
party - held that Israeli peaceniks talking to the Palestinians should strive to extract concessions from them, such as an official recognition of Israel.
On the other hand, Peled - member of the Left Camp of Israel Executive for the whole of the party's six years of existence, though he never held a public office on its behalf - claimed that the Palestinian leadership, representing its entire people, could not be expected to make in a dialogue with radical Israeli dissidents the kind of concessions which would undermine its negotiating position if and when it came to negotiate with the Government of Israel. (Which, with Menachem Begin
Menachem Begin
' was a politician, founder of Likud and the sixth Prime Minister of the State of Israel. Before independence, he was the leader of the Zionist militant group Irgun, the Revisionist breakaway from the larger Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah. He proclaimed a revolt, on 1 February 1944,...
as Israel's PM at the time, and Ariel Sharon as Defence Minister, seemed a very distant possibility). In effect, the ICIPP - with Peled and Avnery at its head - became a faction within the Left Camp of Israel, embroiled in constant internecine struggle with the opposing faction.
Things came to a head with the outbreak of the First Lebanon War
Lebanon War
The term Lebanon War can refer to any of the following wars, fought in Lebanon:*Lebanese Civil War *Hundred Days' War 1978 *1982 Lebanon War...
in 1982. Peled outspokenly supported the reserve soldiers who refused to take part in the war, organised by the newly-founded Yesh Gvul
Yesh Gvul
Yesh Gvul is a movement founded in 1982, by combat veterans, at the outbreak of the Lebanon War, who refused to serve in Lebanon and has expanded its opposition to the war in Lebanon to the negation of service in the occupied territories, reflected in the current Yesh Gvul...
movement - some 200 of whom served terms in the military prisons. Peled's position in support of the refusers drew much public attention due to Peled's illustrious military past. Ran Cohen, himself a reserve Colonel (Aluf
Aluf
Aluf is the term used for General and Admiral in the Israel Defense Forces . In addition to the Aluf rank itself, there are four other ranks which are derivatives of the word...
-Misheh) strongly objected, stating that it was a soldier's duty to obey orders, even when he politically objects to the war being conducted; and indeed, Cohen himself, as an artillery officer, took part in the bombardment of Beirut.
Avnery, Peled's partner, arrived in Beirut in quite different circumstances - crossing the lines to conduct a first-ever meeting with PLO leader Yasser Arafat
Yasser Arafat
Mohammed Yasser Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini , popularly known as Yasser Arafat or by his kunya Abu Ammar , was a Palestinian leader and a Laureate of the Nobel Prize. He was Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization , President of the Palestinian National Authority...
, at his besieged and bombarded headquarters. Cohen strongly condemned the meeting, which he characterised as "fawning". Thereupon Peled, always known as a forthright speaker, accused Cohen of being "a war criminal who bombards a civilian population".
This precipitated a final split and break-up of the party. Cohen and his followers decisively parted ways with Peled and Avnery, and joined with Shulamit Aloni
Shulamit Aloni
Shulamit Aloni is an Israeli politician and left-wing activist. She is a prominent member of the Israeli peace camp, founded the Ratz party and was leader of the Meretz party and served as Minister of Education from 1992 to 1993.-Biography:...
and other factions to form the Meretz
Meretz-Yachad
New Movement-Meretz , previously known as Meretz, then Yachad, and then Meretz-Yachad is a left-wing, Zionist, social democratic political party in Israel....
party.
Knesset Member in the Progressive List for Peace
For their part, Peled and Avnery were in 1984 among the founding members of a Jewish-Arab political party, the Progressive List for PeaceProgressive List for Peace
The Progressive List for Peace was a left-wing political party in Israel formed from an alliance of both Arab and Jewish left-wing activists.-History:...
. Their Arab partners were headed by Mohammed Miari
Mohammed Miari
Mohammed Miari is an Israeli Arab former politician who headed the Progressive List for Peace during the 1980s and early 1990s.-Biography:Miari was born during the Mandate era in al-Birwa, a village which was depopulated as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. He grew up in Makr and attended...
, a veteran radical political activist and human rights lawyer specializing in land confiscation cases, and Rev. Riach Abu-el-Assal
Riah Hanna Abu El-Assal
Riah Hanna Abu El-Assal is an Israeli Arab Anglican clergyman, who was Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem from 1998 to 2007.-History:He graduated from Nazareth Baptist school where he also taught...
, Vicar of the Anglican Church in Nazareth
Nazareth
Nazareth is the largest city in the North District of Israel. Known as "the Arab capital of Israel," the population is made up predominantly of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel...
(later Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem
Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem
The Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem is the bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem, which is a part of the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and The Middle East, and based at St. George's Cathedral, Jerusalem. The Diocese of Jerusalem covers Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon...
).
Several attempts were made by the government and right-wing parties to outlaw the PLP and prevent it from running in elections - which was the fate of earlier parties in which Miari was involved, such as Al Ard in 1965. However, the Supreme Court overturned these attempts.
Thus, in the elections of that year
Israeli legislative election, 1984
Elections for the eleventh Knesset were held in Israel on 23 July 1984. Voter turnout was 78.8%. The results saw the Alignment return to being the largest party in the Knesset, a status it had lost in 1977...
Miari and Peled were elected to the Knesset
Knesset
The Knesset is the unicameral legislature of Israel, located in Givat Ram, Jerusalem.-Role in Israeli Government :The legislative branch of the Israeli government, the Knesset passes all laws, elects the President and Prime Minister , approves the cabinet, and supervises the work of the government...
. Peled's parliamentary term coincided with the tense atmosphere of the outbreak of the First Intifada
First Intifada
The First Intifada was a Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories. The uprising began in the Jabalia refugee camp and quickly spread throughout Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem....
. However, he was far from confining himself to the hotly controversial issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, taking great interest in a great spectrum of subjects, on some of which he found common ground with staunch right-wingers.
He soon gained a reputation as one of the most serious and industrious of Israel's parliamentarians, whose speeches on the Knesset floor "resembled academic lectures". Reportedly, he was capable of reading up for a whole week to prepare a ten-minute speech on an obscure subject. To the despair of the party's press spokespersons, he utterly refused to make any "gimmicks" to catch the attention of the press, or include any "soundbite" in his parliamentary speeches. He lost his seat in the 1988 elections
Israeli legislative election, 1988
Elections for the twelfth Knesset were held in Israel on 1 November 1988. Voter turnout was 79.7%.-Results:1 Five members of the Likud left to form the Party for the Advancement of the Zionist Idea; after two returned, the party was renamed the New Liberal Party...
when the party was reduced to one seat.
Final years
Peled dedicated his last years to advancing a dialogue of mutual recognition and respect between Israelis and Palestinians, and to research of Arabic literature. He was the first Israeli professor of Arabic literature who introduced studies of Palestinian literature into the academic curriculum.Peled published numerous political articles in Israeli and international media and translated several pieces of Arabic literature to Hebrew. For what turned out to be his last work of translation - "The Sages of Darkness" by the Syrian
Demographics of Syria
Syrians today are an overall indigenous Levantine people. While modern-day Syrians are commonly described as Arabs by virtue of their modern-day language and bonds to Arab culture and history...
-Kurdish
Kurdish people
The Kurdish people, or Kurds , are an Iranian people native to the Middle East, mostly inhabiting a region known as Kurdistan, which includes adjacent parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey...
writer Salim Barakat
Salim Barakat
Salim Barakat is a Syrian writer of Kurdish origins. He was brought up in Qamishli in northern Syria and spent most of his youth there. In 1970 he moved to Damascus to study Arabic Literature but after one year he moved to Beirut where he stayed until 1982. While in Beirut he published five...
- Peled won the Translators' Association Prize.
In 1993, he took part in forming Gush Shalom
Gush Shalom
Gush Shalom is an Israeli peace activism group founded and led by former Irgun and Knesset Member and journalist, Uri Avnery, in 1993...
, the Israeli Peace Bloc - a grassroots peace movement in whose ranks Peled alternately expressed a sharp criticism of his old friend Rabin for severe human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
violations in the occupied territories
Israeli-occupied territories
The Israeli-occupied territories are the territories which have been designated as occupied territory by the United Nations and other international organizations, governments and others to refer to the territory seized by Israel during the Six-Day War of 1967 from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria...
; warmly commended and congratulated him for his dramatic rapprochement with the PLO and the handshake with Arafat on the White House lawn; and finally expressed a growing worry and anxiety at the slow pace of the peace process and the continuing occupation, oppression and settlement activity - which gave ample opportunity, as Peled wrote in several admonitory articles, to extremists on both sides to create a renewed dynamic of escalation.
In 1994, seventy years of robust health were broken when Peled felt sharp pains which turned out to be the sign of an incurable liver cancer
Hepatocellular carcinoma
Hepatocellular carcinoma is the most common type of liver cancer. Most cases of HCC are secondary to either a viral hepatitide infection or cirrhosis .Compared to other cancers, HCC is quite a rare tumor in the United States...
. Virtually until his last day he followed political developments and continued to write political essays even when the very act of sitting at his word processor became extremely difficult and painful.
His last essay, written a few weeks before his death and published in "The Other Israel", the ICIPP's newsletter, was entitled “Requiem to Oslo” - an article expressing disappointment with the Oslo Accords
Oslo Accords
The Oslo Accords, officially called the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements or Declaration of Principles , was an attempt to resolve the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict...
and predicting the explosion which was to break out with the Second Intifada of 2000.
Peled's funeral brought together a unique combination of radical peace activists with former generals and senior officers. At the graveside, messages of condolences were read from both the government of Israel and PLO Chairman Arafat. After his death, his widow Zika Peled contributed Matti’s private library to the Arab Teachers' College at Beit Berl
Beit Berl
Beit Berl is a village and the largest academic college in Israel in number of students and the range of programs it offers. Located on the outskirts of Kfar Sava, it falls under the jurisdiction of Drom HaSharon Regional Council...
. His political articles were contributed to the Lavon Institute.
A sad irony of history was to occur two and a half years later, in September 1997, when Matti’s 14-year-old granddaughter Smadar Elhanan was among the victims of a Palestinian suicide bomber blowing himself up in Ben Yehuda Street, in the center of Jerusalem. Rami Elhanan, Smadar's father and Peled's son in law, was among the founders and organizers of the Parents Circle - Families Forum
The Parents Circle-Families Forum
The Parents Circle-Families Forum is a grassroots organization of Palestinian and Israeli families who have lost immediate family members due to the conflict...
together with Peled's daughter, Nurit Peled-Elhanan
Nurit Peled-Elhanan
Nurit Peled-Elhanan is a Professor of language and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an Israeli peace activist, and one of the founders of the Bereaved Families for Peace...
. The organization brings together several hundred Israelis and Palestinians who all lost their dear ones in the course of the conflict, and who act together to consolate each other, bring about peace and avert any further bloodshed. "I am sure that this is what Smadar's grandfather would have wanted me to do" said Elahanan.
According to the Peled foundation, "Many considered him a renegade. Matti Peled, however, was loyal to his country and the cause of peace, which he championed during the last two decades of his life, after a distinguished military career"