At 90, Israel's Uri Avnery still lobbies for peace

Having just turned 90, Uri Avnery still finds himself firmly outside Israel's national consensus.
For more than six decades, the tabloid publisher, member of parliament, author and peace activist has lobbied for establishing a Palestinian state as the only way to secure peace for a democratic Israel with a Jewish majority.
Avnery was perhaps the first prominent Israeli to promote the idea, taking on successive Israeli governments and once, in 1982, sneaking across four battle lines in Israeli-besieged Beirut to talk to Israel's then-nemesis, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat.
Avnery's views are a measure of how far Israeli public opinion has come: Palestinian statehood was a fringe idea as recently as a generation ago, but is now a principle accepted by a majority.

Yet the nonagenarian renegade with the white beard and full head of white hair still finds himself in a minority because, he says, most Israelis believe reaching a deal with the Palestinians is impossible in his view, a dangerously complacent and self-serving attitude.
Avnery says his job is to persuade fellow Israelis that doing nothing and allowing Israeli settlements to spread on occupied lands the Palestinians want for their state will lead to a catastrophe either an Israeli-ruled apartheid state with a disenfranchised Palestinian majority or a bi-national state with equal rights for all where Jews find themselves once again in a minority.

"I feel we are on the Titanic, sailing straight toward an iceberg," Avnery said in an interview on the eve of his 90th birthday last week.
"We have the chance to change the course any moment, but if we are stupid, if we go on sailing, we shall meet the iceberg, inevitably," he said, sitting in a rocking chair in his small apartment overlooking the Mediterranean and Tel Aviv's sparkling skyline.