JERUSALEM — With Prime Minister Ariel Sharon expected to meet his Palestinian counterpart this week, pressure is growing on the Israeli leader to ease tough military tactics and take the political initiative after three years of bloody conflict with the Palestinians.
Rumblings of discontent have come from the army chief of staff and four former chiefs of the security services, from members of Sharon's governing coalition and from opposition politicians who have forged their own model peace agreement with Palestinian counterparts.
"There is a general sense of malaise, of immobility, of a lack of vision," said Yaron Ezrahi, professor of political science at Hebrew University. "Three years of testing the pure right-wing position that more force will bring the desired result have been demonstrably a failure."
The meeting between Sharon and new Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia is expected this week. Next month in Cairo, separate talks are planned to arrange a cease-fire by Palestinian militant groups, a key step in reviving the Middle East peace plan known as the road map.
On Thursday, Sharon said his government could carry out "unilateral steps." He did not elaborate, but officials suggested that the steps could include lifting blockades and withdrawing troops from Palestinian cities in the West Bank.
Sharon has been prodded in recent weeks to loosen the army's grip on Palestinian areas and to move forward on the political front.
His public approval ratings have been sliding. An opinion poll published this month by the Ma'ariv newspaper showed Sharon's popularity at the lowest point since he was first elected prime minister, with 57 percent of the respondents saying they were dissatisfied with his performance. Only 34 percent said they were satisfied, while 9 percent said they had no opinion.
Police investigations of suspected corruption involving Sharon and his sons have further threatened his standing. Fraud investigators questioned Sharon for seven hours last month in connection with suspected bribery by an Israeli businessman, and a second investigation is under way into a loan received from another businessman and family friend from South Africa.
As the stalemate with the Palestinians has deepened, Sharon's critics have launched their own political initiatives.
The model peace agreement, known as the Geneva Accord, was distributed in mailboxes across Israel last week in an attempt to generate public debate. The agreement by Israeli and Palestinian politicians calls for a Palestinian state in nearly all the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, divided control of Jerusalem and its holy sites, the return of a limited number of Palestinian refugees to Israel and a land swap that would leave sections of Jewish settlements under Israeli control.
Sharon has denounced the agreement, which is expected to be signed in Geneva next month, as the greatest mistake since the 1993 Oslo accords on Palestinian self-rule, and he accused the organizers of undermining official policy by conducting freelance diplomacy behind the government's back.
Yet the publicity surrounding the agreement, much of it generated by Sharon's response, has challenged him to come up with a political initiative of his own.
Challenge from coalition
Sharon also has been challenged by his governing coalition, in which the centrist Shinui party, the third largest in parliament, has drafted its own proposal to revive the peace effort.
That plan calls for a series of steps: renewed talks with Palestinians and an unlimited cease-fire; removal of illegal settlement outposts in the West Bank; lifting blockades of and the eventual withdrawal from Palestinian cities; a revision of the route of an Israeli security barrier that slices into the West Bank; prisoner releases; and replacing of settlers with soldiers at the isolated Gaza Strip settlement of Netzarim as a prelude to its complete evacuation.
"The Israeli public is quite fed up with the situation, and although we realize that the chances of a permanent peace agreement are very remote, the public rightly expects its government to take some sort of initiative to get us out of the mud," said Infrastructure Minister Yosef Paritzky, a member of Shinui. "We're trying to get the engine going."
Another spur to action has come from four former heads of the Shin Bet security service who in a joint newspaper interview published this month warned that Sharon's policies were leading Israel to disaster. They chose Israel's most widely circulated daily, Yediot Ahronot, to deliver their appeal for a political solution to the conflict with the Palestinians.
"We have to admit once and for all that there is another side, that it has feelings and that it is suffering, and that we are behaving disgracefully," said Avraham Shalom, who led the Shin Bet in the 1980s.
Ami Ayalon, who left the Shin Bet three years ago and has started a joint peace initiative with Sari Nusseibeh, a leading Palestinian moderate, said, "We are going surely and steadily to a place where the state of Israel will not be a democracy and a home for the Jewish people."
Carmi Gilon, who led the Shin Bet in the mid-90s, said the government was focused on military tactics, not political solutions.
"The political agenda has become solely a security agenda," he said. "It deals only with the question of how to prevent the next terrorist attack, not with the question of how we get out of the mess we're in today."
Yaakov Perry, who headed the Shin Bet during the first Palestinian uprising in the late '80s and early '90s, said a peace agreement would require the removal of Jewish settlements.
"Sharon has said many times that painful compromises will be required, and there are no painful compromises except the evacuation of settlements," he said.
"If nothing happens here," Perry warned, "we will continue to live by our sword, we will continue to wallow in the mud and we will continue to destroy ourselves."
Criticism of restrictions
The blunt comments came after an earlier salvo by the army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, who in remarks last month to Israeli newspaper reporters criticized the sweeping measures imposed on ordinary Palestinians.
Yaalon said continued blockades of towns and villages and restrictions on movement were breeding hatred and strengthening militant groups.
"In our tactical decisions we are working against our strategic interest," he was quoted as saying.
He asserted that the government had contributed to the downfall of the first Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, by failing to take steps, such as withdrawing the army from Palestinian cities, that would have bolstered his position. Yaalon said Israel had been "miserly" toward Abbas, who abruptly resigned Sept. 6.
Several weeks before Yaalon's comments, 27 reserve air force pilots signed a letter saying they would refuse to carry out missions against Palestinian militants in heavily populated areas, strikes that have caused civilian casualties. Such strikes are "illegal and immoral," the pilots said.
Although the criticism has come from people who command respect among many Israelis, it is unclear whether their statements will seriously undermine public support for the tactics used by Sharon in the past three years of fighting. Despite the polls showing a decline in Sharon's popularity, a solid majority of Israelis have supported a tough military response to Palestinian suicide bombings and attacks that have taken hundreds of lives.
Sociologist's analysis
Ephraim Yaar, a sociologist at Tel Aviv University who surveys public attitudes toward peace efforts, said Sharon's standing would remain firm so long as most Israelis distrusted Palestinian intentions and saw no chance to break the stalemate.
"This can change dramatically if the Israeli public sees initiative and serious steps taken by the Palestinians," Yaar said. "Sharon's position may be eroded if the public sees that he has failed to seize a serious opportunity to get out of the deadlock. We have not yet reached this point."
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