The Israel-Arab Reader (90 page)

In this context, I call on Russia and the United States, sponsors of the peace process, to accelerate the steps of this process, to take part in its formulation and to overcome its obstacles. I urge Norway and Egypt, in their capacity as hosts to the Palestinian-Israeli agreement, to continue their good initiative, which started from Oslo and reached Washington and Cairo. Oslo, as well as the names of the other states that have been hosting the multilateral talks, will remain shining names linked to the peace of the courageous. I also urge all countries, foremost of which are the donor countries, to make their contributions quickly to enable the Palestinian people to overcome their economic and social problems, to rebuild themselves and to establish their infrastructure. Peace cannot grow and the peace process cannot be entrenched unless their necessary material conditions are met.

I then urge my partners in peace to view the peace process in a comprehensive and strategic way. Confidence alone cannot make peace, but only recognizing the rights, together with confidence, can make peace. Encroaching on rights generates a sense of injustice, keeps the fire under the ashes, and will push peace to a dangerous point and toward quicksand that may destroy it. We view peace as a strategic option, rather than a tactical option influenced by temporary calculations of loss and profit. The peace process is not only a political one, but also an integrated process in which national awareness and economic, scientific, and technological development play an important role. The interaction of cultural, social, and creative elements also play basic roles in strengthening the peace process.

I view all this as I recall the difficult peace march, in which we have covered only a short distance. We should have courage and move as far as possible to cover the greater distance based on just and comprehensive peace and to absorb the strength of creativity which is contained in the deeper lesson of peace.

As long as we have decided to coexist and live in peace, then we should coexist on a solid basis that can last through all time and that is acceptable to the future generations. In this context, full withdrawal from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip requires deep discussions about the settlements that cut through geographic and political unity, prevent free movement between the areas of the West Bank and the Strip, and create hotbeds of tension that conflict with the spirit of peace, which we want to be free of anything that spoils its purity.

As for Jerusalem, it is the spiritual home of Christians, Muslims, and Jews. To Palestinians, it is the city of cities. The Jewish shrines in the city are our shrines, the same as the Islamic and Christian shrines. So let us make Jerusalem an international symbol of this spiritual harmony, this cultural brightness, and this religious heritage of humanity as a whole.

There is an urgent task that activates the peace mechanism and enables it to overcome the problem that is troubling hearts, the question of prisoners. It is important to release them so smiles can return to their children, their mothers, and their wives. Let us together protect this little baby from the winter's winds, and let us provide it with the milk and honey it deserves in the land of milk and honey in the land of Salim, Ibrahim, Isma'il, and Ishaq—the holy land, the land of peace.

Finally, I again congratulate my partners in peace—Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Israeli Foreign Minister Simon Peres—for winning the Nobel Peace Prize. . . . I emphasize to you that we will discover ourselves through peace more than we did through confrontation and conflict. I am certain that Israelis will find themselves through peace more than they did in war.

Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, and good will toward men.

I am pleased to be receiving this prize together with Yitzhak Rabin, with whom I have labored for long years for the defense of our country and with whom I now labor together in the cause of peace in our region. This is a salute to his daring leadership.

I believe it is fitting that the prize has been awarded to Yasir Arafat. His quitting the path of confrontation in favor of the path of dialogue has opened the way to peace between ourselves and the Palestinian people, to whom we wish all the best in the future. . . .

From my earliest youth, I have known that while obliged to plan with care the stages of our journey, we are entitled to dream, and keep dreaming, of its destination. A man may feel as old as his years, yet as young as his dreams. The laws of biology do not apply to sanguine aspiration.

I was born in a small Jewish town in White Russia. Nothing Jewish remains of it. From my youngest childhood, I related to my place of birth as a mere way station. My family's dream, and my own, was to live in Israel, and our voyage to the port of Jaffa was a dream that came true. Had it not been for this dream and this voyage, I would probably have perished in the flames, as did so many of my people, among them most of my own family.

I went to school at an agricultural youth village in the heart of Israel. The village and its fields were enclosed by barbed wire which separated their greenness from the bleakness of the enmity all around. In the morning, we would go out to the fields with scythes on our backs to harvest the crop. In the evening, we went out with rifles on our shoulders to defend our lives. On Shabbat we would go out to visit our Arab neighbors. On Shabbat, we would talk with them of peace, though the rest of the week we traded rifle fire across the darkness!

From the Ben Shemen Youth village, my comrades and I went to Kibbutz Alumot in the Lower Galilee. We had no houses, no electricity, no running water. But we had a magnificent view and a lofty dream: to build a new, egalitarian society that would ennoble each of its members.

Not all of it came true, but not all of it went to waste. The part that came true created a new landscape. The part that did not come true resides in our hearts to this very day.

For two decades, in the Ministry of Defense, I was privileged to work closely with a man who was and remains, to my mind, the greatest Jew of our time. From him I learned that the vision of the future should shape the agenda for the present; that you can overcome obstacles by dint of faith; that you may feel disappointed—but never despair. And above all, I learned that the wisest consideration is the moral one. David Ben-Gurion has passed away, yet his vision continues to flourish: to be a singular people, to live at peace with our neighbors.

The wars we fought were forced upon us. Thanks to the Israel Defence Forces, we won them all, but we did not win the greatest victory that we aspired to: release from the need to win victories.

We proved that aggressors do not necessarily emerge as the victors, but we learned that victors do not necessarily win peace.

It is no wonder that war, as a method of conducting human affairs, is in its death throes, and that the time has come to bury it.

The sword, as the Bible teaches us, consumes flesh, but it cannot provide sustenance. It is not rifles but people who triumph, and the conclusion from all the wars is that we need better people, not better rifles—to avoid wars, to win peace.

There was a time when war was fought for lack of choice. Today peace is the “no-choice” option for all of us. The reasons for this are profound and incontrovertible. The sources of material wealth and political power have changed. No longer are they determined by the size of territory won by war. Today they are a consequence of intellectual potential, obtained principally by education.

Israel, essentially a desert country, has achieved remarkable agricultural yields by applying science to its fields, without expanding its territory or its water resources.

Science must be learned; it cannot be conquered. An army that can occupy knowledge has yet to be built. And that is why armies of occupation are passé. Indeed, even for the defense of the country you cannot rely on the army alone. Territorial frontiers are no obstacle to ballistic missiles, and no weapon can shield a nation from a nuclear device. Today, the battle for survival must be based on political wisdom and moral vision no less than on military might.

Science, technology, information are—for better or for worse—universal, not national. They are universally available. Their availability is not contingent on color of skin or place of birth. Past distinctions between West and East, North and South, have lost their importance in the face of a new distinction: between those who move ahead in pace with new opportunities, and those who lag behind.

Countries used to divide the world into their friends and foes. No longer.

The foes now are universal—poverty, famine, religious radicalization, desertification, drugs, proliferation of nuclear weapons, ecological devastation. They threaten all nations, just as science and information are the potential friends of all nations.

Classical diplomacy and strategy were aimed at identifying enemies and confronting them. Now they have to identify dangers, global and local, to tackle them before they become disasters.

As we leave a world of enemies, as we enter a world of dangers, the future wars which may break out will not be, probably, the wars of the strong against the weak for conquest, but the wars of the weak against the strong for protest.

The Middle East must never lose pride in having been the cradle of civilization. But though living in the cradle, we cannot remain infants forever.

Today as in my youth, I carry dreams. I would mention two: the future of the Jewish people and the future of the Middle East.

In history, Judaism has been far more successful than the Jews themselves. The Jewish people remained small, but the spirit of Jerusalem—the capital of Jewish life, the city holy and open to all religions—went from strength to strength. The Bible is to be found in hundreds of millions of homes. The moral majesty of the Book of Books has been undefeated by the ups and downs of history.

Moreover, time and again, history has succumbed to the Bible's immortal ideas. The message that the one, invisible God created man in His image, and hence there are no higher and lower orders of man, has fused with the realization that morality is the highest form of wisdom and, perhaps, of beauty and courage, too.

Slings, arrows, gas chambers can annihilate man, but they cannot destroy human values, the dignity and freedom of the human being.

Jewish history presents an encouraging lesson for mankind. For nearly four thousand years, a small nation carried a great message. Initially, the nation dwelt in its own land; later, it wandered in exile. This small nation swam against the tide and was repeatedly persecuted, banished, downtrodden. There is no other example in all history—neither among the great empires nor among their colonies and dependencies—of a nation, after so long a saga of tragedy and misfortune, rising up again, shaking itself free, gathering together its dispersed remnants, and setting out anew on its national adventure. Defeating doubters within and enemies without. Reviving its land and its language. Rebuilding its identity, and reaching toward new heights of distinction and excellence.

The message of the Jewish people to mankind is that faith and moral vision can triumph over all adversity.

The conflicts shaping up as our century nears its close will be over the content of civilization, not over territory. Jewish culture has lived over many centuries; now it has taken root again in its own soil. For the first time in our history, some five million people speak Hebrew as their native language. That is both a lot and a little: a lot, because there have never been so many Hebrew-speaking people; but a little, because a culture based on five million people can hardly withstand the pervasive, corrosive effect of the global television culture.

In the five decades of Israel's existence, our efforts have focused on reestablishing our territorial center. In the future, we shall have to devote our main effort to strengthen our spiritual center. Judaism—or Jewishness—is a fusion of belief, history, land, and language. Being Jewish means to belong to a people that is both unique and universal. My greatest hope is that our children, like our forefathers, will not make do with the transient and the sham, but will continue to plow the historic Jewish furrow in the fields of human spirit, that Israel will become the center of our heritage, not merely a homeland for our people; that the Jewish people will be inspired by others, but at the same be to them a source of inspiration.

The second dream is about the Middle East. In the Middle East most people are impoverished and wretched. A new scale of priorities is needed, with weapons on the bottom and regional market economy at the top. Most inhabitants of the region—more than sixty percent—are under the age of eighteen. The Middle East is a huge kindergarten, a huge school. A new future can be and should be offered to them. Israel has computerized its education and has achieved excellent results. Education can be computerized throughout the Middle East, allowing young people, Arabs and others, to progress not just from grade to grade but from generation to generation.

Israel's role in the Middle East should be to contribute to a great, sustained regional revival:

A Middle East without wars, without enemies, without ballistic missiles, without nuclear warheads.

A Middle East in which men, goods and services can move freely without the need for customs clearance or police licenses.

A Middle East in which every believer will be free to pray in his own language—Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, or whatever language he chooses—and in which the prayers will reach their destination without censorship, without interference, and without offending anyone.

A Middle East in which nations strive for economic equality and encourage cultural pluralism.

A Middle East where young men and women can attain university education. A Middle East where living standards are in no way inferior to those in the world's most advanced countries—may I say, a Middle East very much like Scandinavia.