Tel Aviv/Hamburg - World-famous Israeli author Amos Oz and other Israeli intellectuals and dovish politicians have announced the establishment of a new political party that aims to unite the Israeli peace camp. The Israel Labour Party, the traditional choice of Israeli peace supporters, has reached the end of its historic mission, Oz said in an interview with German weekly Die Zeit to be published Thursday.
Therefore, a new social-democratic party would formally be established on December 6, he said.
The new list is to include the left-liberal Meretz party, which at the outset of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in the early 1990s was a dominant coalition partner with 12 mandates in the 120-seat Knesset, but has since been pushed to the margins. It currently has five mandates in the Israeli parliament.
Oz, 69, said he decided to join the new initiative because he regarded the upcoming Israeli elections on February 10 as "decisive."
"It may be a cliche to describe an election campaign as decisive, but this one really is more than ever," he told Die Zeit in remarks translated into German.
"It's about war or peace."
He said Israelis and the Palestinians, who resumed peace negotiations last year after seven years of violence, had "never been so close" to an agreement, which he called "within reach." It was up to the next government to obtain it, he said.
The election is mainly between Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, the new leader of Israel's ruling centrist Kadima party who as Israel's chief negotiator would continue the peace talks, and former premier Benjamin Netanyahu of the hardline Likud party, who opposes negotiations under the current conditions.
Opinion polls are predicting a neck to neck race.
Oz, who won the Israel Prize for literature in 1998, the Goethe Prize in 2005 and Spain's Prince of Asturias Prize in 2007, said however that he does not want a political office.
