Soros considers backing a new lobby for Palestinian peace deal By Guy Dinmore in Washington
Israel's summer war with Lebanon's Hizbollah ended after 34 days, but a fierce debate within the American Jewish community over the nature of Israel's relationship with the US rages on.
It is spurring on efforts to create a new and powerful voice to lobby for peace with the Palestinians and George Soros - the billionaire financier and philanthropist who has criticised Israel's actions in Lebanon - is said by friends to be considering support for a new initiative.
The move would set up an alternative group that would lobby for a negotiated two-state settlement.
Organisers deny that they intend to rival the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), one of Washington's most effective lobbying groups. But with sufficient funding, the new grouping's outlook will be seen as a counterweight.
"The Lebanon conflict provided a sense of urgency," said Jeremy Ben- Ami, one of the organisers of the proposed new group, which is in the early stages of discussion. He said the "Israel project", as he calls it, was "a new effort to promote the perspective in the Jewish community that Israel's security depends on ending this conflict [with the Palestinian people] peacefully."
Mr Ben-Ami, vice-president of Fenton Communications, a PR firm, and a former advisor to President Bill Clinton, told the FT. "We deeply care for Israel. The Lebanon conflict shows the dangers facing Israel and its need for peace as quickly as possible."
Other figures involved include David Elcott, director of Israel Policy Forum; Mort Halperin, director of US advocacy at the Open Society Institute headed by Mr Soros; Debra DeLee, president of Americans for Peace Now; and Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.
The debate over the US relationship with Israel was revived last March by two political scientists - John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard - whose "Israel Lobby" paper was intended to "break the taboo" by questioning the financial, political and moral cost of the alliance to the United States.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, labelled Israel's response to Hizbollah "dogged, heavy- handed, politically counter-productive and morally unjustifiable".
"When we supply Israel with cluster bombs, that's an act of international friendship and peace. When Iran supplies Palestinians with weapons, that means terror," Mr Brzezinski told the New America Foundation think-tank, describing US politicians as "intimidated by Aipac".
"President Bush should say 'Either I make policy on the Middle East or Aipac does'," he declared.