The Israel-Arab Reader (108 page)

IV. Military infrastructure and installations in the Gaza Strip and the northern Samaria region

All will be dismantled and evacuated, except for those that the State of Israel decides to transfer to an authorized body.

V. The nature of the security assistance to the Palestinians

The State of Israel agrees that in coordination with it[self], consulting, assistance and training will be provided to Palestinian security forces for the purpose of fighting terror and maintaining the public order. The assistance will be provided by American, British, Egyptian, Jordanian or other experts, as will be agreed upon with Israel.

The State of Israel stresses that it will not agree to any foreign security presence in Gaza or the West Bank without its consent. . . .

... We are beginning the most difficult and painful step of all, evacuating our communities from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria (West Bank). . . .

It is no secret that, like many others, I had believed and hoped we could forever hold onto Netzarim and Kfar Darom. But the changing reality in the country, in the region, and the world required of me a reassessment and change of positions. We cannot hold on to Gaza forever. More than a million Palestinians live there and double their number with each generation. They live in uniquely crowded conditions in refugee camps, in poverty and despair, in hotbeds of rising hatred with no hope on the horizon.

It is out of strength and not weakness that we take this step. We tried to reach agreements with the Palestinians that would move both peoples towards a path of peace. These were crushed against a wall of hatred and fanaticism.

The unilateral disengagement plan I announced two years ago is the Israeli answer to this reality. This plan will be good for Israel in any future scenario. We are reducing daily friction and its victims on both sides. The Israeli army will redeploy along defensive lines behind the security fence.

Those who continue to fight us will meet the full force of the Israeli army and security forces. The Palestinians bear the burden of proof. They must fight terrorist organizations and dismantle their infrastructure and show sincere intentions for peace so they can sit with us at the negotiating table. The world is waiting for the Palestinian response—a hand stretched out to peace or the fire of terror. To an outstretched hand we shall respond with an olive branch, but we shall fight fire with the harshest fire ever. . . .

. . . I stand before you at the gate of nations as a Jew and as a citizen of the democratic, free and sovereign State of Israel, a proud representative of an ancient people, whose numbers are few, but whose contribution to civilization and to the values of ethics, justice and faith, surrounds the world and encompasses history. The Jewish people have a long memory, the memory which united the exiles of Israel for thousands of years: a memory which has its origin in God's commandment to our forefather Abraham: “Go forth!” and continued with the receiving of the Torah at the foot of Mount Sinai and the wanderings of the children of Israel in the desert, led by Moses on their journey to the promised land, the land of Israel.

I was born in the Land of Israel, the son of pioneers—people who tilled the land and sought no fights—who did not come to Israel to dispossess its residents. If the circumstances had not demanded it, I would not have become a soldier, but rather a farmer and agriculturist. My first love was, and remains, manual labor; sowing and harvesting, the pastures, the flock and the cattle.

I, as someone whose path of life led him to be a fighter and commander in all Israel's wars, reach out today to our Palestinian neighbors in a call for reconciliation and compromise to end the bloody conflict, and embark on the path which leads to peace and understanding between our peoples. I view this as my calling and my primary mission for the coming years.

The Land of Israel is precious to me, precious to us, the Jewish people, more than anything. Relinquishing any part of our forefathers' legacy is heartbreaking, as difficult as the parting of the Red Sea. Every inch of land, every hill and valley, every stream and rock, is saturated with Jewish history, replete with memories. The continuity of Jewish presence in the Land of Israel never ceased. Even those of us who were exiled from our land, against their will, to the ends of the earth—their souls, for all generations, remained connected to their homeland, by thousands of hidden threads of yearning and love, expressed three times a day in prayer and songs of longing.

The Land of Israel is the open Bible, the written testimony, the identity and right of the Jewish people. Under its skies, the prophets of Israel expressed their claims for social justice, and their eternal vision for alliances between peoples, in a world which would know no more war. Its cities, villages, vistas, ridges, deserts and plains preserve as loyal witnesses its ancient Hebrew names. Page after page, our unique land is unfurled, and at its heart is united Jerusalem, the city of the Temple upon Mount Moriah, the axis of the life of the Jewish people throughout all generations, and the seat of its yearnings and prayers for 3,000 years. The city to which we pledged an eternal vow of faithfulness, which forever beats in every Jewish heart: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its cunning!”

I say these things to you because they are the essence of my Jewish consciousness, and of my belief in the eternal and unimpeachable right of the people of Israel to the Land of Israel. However, I say this here also to emphasize the immensity of the pain I feel deep in my heart at the recognition that we have to make concessions for the sake of peace between us and our Palestinian neighbors.

The right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel does not mean disregarding the rights of others in the land. The Palestinians will always be our neighbors. We respect them, and have no aspirations to rule over them. They are also entitled to freedom and to a national, sovereign existence in a state of their own.

This week, the last Israeli soldier left the Gaza Strip, and military law there was ended. The State of Israel proved that it is ready to make painful concessions in order to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians. The decision to disengage was very difficult for me, and involves a heavy personal price. However, it is the absolute recognition that it is the right path for the future of Israel that guided me. Israeli society is undergoing a difficult crisis as a result of the Disengagement, and now needs to heal the rifts.

Now it is the Palestinians' turn to prove their desire for peace. The end of Israeli control over and responsibility for the Gaza Strip allows the Palestinians, if they so wish, to develop their economy and build a peace-seeking society, which is developed, free, law-abiding, transparent, and which adheres to democratic principles. The most important test the Palestinian leadership will face is in fulfilling their commitment to put an end to terror and its infrastructures, eliminate the anarchic regime of armed gangs, and cease the incitement and indoctrination of hatred towards Israel and the Jews.

Until they do so—Israel will know how to defend itself from the horrors of terrorism. This is why we built the security fence, and we will continue to build it until it is completed, as would any other country defending its citizens. The security fence prevents terrorists and murderers from arriving in city centers on a daily basis and targeting citizens on their way to work, children on their way to school and families sitting together in restaurants. This fence is vitally indispensable. This fence saves lives!

The successful implementation of the Disengagement Plan opens up a window of opportunity for advancing towards peace, in accordance with the sequence of the Roadmap. The State of Israel is committed to the Roadmap and to the implementation of the Sharm El-Sheikh understandings. And I hope that it will be possible, through them, to renew the political process.

I am among those who believe that it is possible to reach a fair compromise and coexistence in good neighborly relations between Jews and Arabs. However, I must emphasize one fact: there will be no compromise on the right of the State of Israel to exist as a Jewish state, with defensible borders, in full security and without threats and terror.

I call on the Palestinian leadership to show determination and leadership, and to eliminate terror, violence and the culture of hatred from our relations. I am certain that it is in our power to present our peoples with a new and promising horizon, a horizon of hope.

As I mentioned, the Jewish people have a long memory. We remember events which took place thousands of years ago, and certainly remember events which took place in this hall during the last 60 years. The Jewish people remember the dramatic vote in the UN Assembly on November 29, 1947, when representatives of the nations recognized our right to national revival in our historic homeland. However, we also remember dozens of harsh and unjust decisions made by the United Nations over the years. And we know that, even today, there are those who sit here as representatives of a country whose leadership calls to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, and no one speaks out.

The attempts of that country to arm itself with nuclear weapons must disturb the sleep of anyone who desires peace and stability in the Middle East and the entire world. The combination of murky fundamentalism and support of terrorist organizations creates a serious threat that every member nation in the UN must stand against. . . .

Peace is a supreme value in the Jewish legacy, and is the desired goal of our policy. After the long journey of wanderings and the hardships of the Jewish people; after the Holocaust which obliterated one third of our people; after the long and arduous struggle for revival; after more than 57 consecutive years of war and terror which did not stop the development of the State of Israel; after all this—our heart's desire was and remains to achieve peace with our neighbors. Our desire for peace is strong enough to ensure that we will achieve it, only if our neighbors are genuine partners in this longed-for goal. If we succeed in working together, we can transform our plot of land, which is dear to both peoples, from a land of contention to a land of peace—for our children and grandchildren.

... It is my pleasure to meet with you in the new Middle East. . . . It is new with the achievements of the resistance and with the unprecedented and clear-cut classification of forces and exposing of machinations, plots, masks, and false phrases. This is the new Middle East, which Syria heralded repeatedly as the only hope for the Arabs so that they will have a place on this earth in the political and material sense.

It is no secret to anyone of you that it was not easy at all to manage to convince many people about our vision of the future. In fact, we had to wait for this future to be present and speak for itself. Today, the facts speak for themselves; not just as we imagined them in the past, but even in a clearer and more expressive manner.

We meet today while their cherished Middle East, which is built on submission and humiliation and the deprivation of peoples of their rights, has become an illusion. In fact, it has turned into a sweeping popular upsurge on the level of the Arab arena characterized by honor and Arabism and its rejection of all the excuses offered it to justify our continued existence as submissive and timid—killed, while we are silent in the same way the sacrifice used to be offered to appease the gods and avoid their anger. . . .

In other words, if wisdom, according to some Arabs, means defeat and humiliation, then by the same token, victory means adventure and recklessness. . . .

During the peace process, we—the Arabs—adopted the only peace option and cancelled all the other options and then replaced the purport of the only peace option with the cheap or free peace option. In this option, we are supposed to offer everything to Israel and take a little. Actually, through practice, we offered a great deal and perhaps some of us offered everything, but we did not get even a little. In fact, we did not get anything at all. Thus, we find the Palestinians today paying the price of that past reality. For this reason, and through its vision at the time, Syria refused to concede any of its rights. . . .

Before the peace process, Israel used to tell the world that it wanted peace and the Arabs wanted war. The world was surprised when the Arabs agreed to join the peace process—hence the reaction was this statement. But the prevailing Arab wisdom used to say: We must close our eyes so as to embarrass Israel before the international community, which was reduced to a few states loyal to Israel. The other world states, most of which stood by us and supported our causes, were ignored and marginalized. The result is that we became embarrassed before our Arab people and lost our respect and credibility before our friends and foes at the same time.

This was the Arab responsibility in the failure of the peace process, but what about the responsibility of the others? Of course, with the exception of Israel and the United States, which are in one basket, the world states after the 1973 war, the October Liberation War, showed interest in the Middle East. They concentrated all their attention on our region and talk began about peace. This talk about peace continued until we reached the peace process in Madrid. Of course, this subject passed through various stages. When most of the world states concerned became reassured that the peace process had taken off through the negotiations, they handed the entire process to the United States, which remained the sole sponsor of this process. The United States, in turn, handed the process to Israel. Therefore, every proposal that came to the Arabs during that period was either an Israeli proposal or a proposal endorsed by the Israelis.