Israel, 1994

I should like to congratulate

you, Sir, on your election to the presidency of the General

Assembly. We are pleased that the representative of Côte

d’Ivoire - a nation for which Israel has high regard - has

been elected to this distinguished post. I should like to

express to the Secretary General our deepest appreciation

13

for his contribution to world peace in general, and to peace

in the Middle East in particular.

A year ago, I offered a concept for a new Middle

East. Many applauded; more remained sceptical. What at

that time seemed lofty is today a reality. I feel I can

submit today an invitation to a further journey in the new

Middle East.

Last year was a year of remarkable events. The

Palestinian people, as a result of our agreement, gained

authority in Gaza and Jericho; Jordan and Israel agreed, in

the Washington Declaration, to end the state of war and

move towards an agreement of full peace; voices of

promise are exchanged between Damascus and Jerusalem;

multilateral meetings produced a network of regional

cooperation; Morocco and Israel established formal

relations; and an agenda for a new Middle East will emerge

from an unprecedented economic conference in Casablanca

next month.

The desire for peace is rooted in the millenniums of

Jewish existence. Generations prayed for it, and now a

young generation in Israel is today engaged in making it.

The search for peace is shared by young people all over the

Middle East, Arabs and Israelis alike. We have to fulfil

their hope.

I am addressing this Assembly for the first time, not

as a party to a controversy, but as a representative of a

country that has shown a capacity to solve conflicts that

seemed insoluble.

The United Nations should play an increasing role

facing the changing times. It can define new destinies. It

can adopt new means.

As the United Nations celebrates its fiftieth

anniversary, it may adopt models for new endeavours by

mobilizing builders to construct peace, not just by

deploying troops to keep it. Economic structures will offer

more than military deployment.

Gaza, as an example, has a new authority. It needs a

new economy. The United Nations can provide an answer.

The 7,000 years of Gaza are mainly a history of suffering.

Its population density today is among the highest in the

world.

There is a role for the United Nations in Gaza, and it

has played one. It began by stationing troops - which were

recalled, unfortunately, on the eve of the Six-Day War.

Then UNRWA came and supplied food, health and

education to the refugees. Then UNDP contributed

greatly to the construction of an infrastructure in the Gaza

Strip.

The United Nations can help Gaza today become

free from want. It can introduce there the necessary

economic and proper social institutions. An enlarged

allocation for Gaza, with the existing United Nations

administration, will produce immediate results and may

make Gaza a new model of United Nations endeavours.

The world is moving from military might to social

priorities. It is time to turn from political confrontation

to economic cooperation. In the Middle East, economic

growth can compensate for political compromises.

We no longer live in a closed world. The intensive

flow of information has opened the eyes of many people.

No longer can tyranny blind their perceptions. Iron

curtains can no longer bar the spread of the true story.

Knowledge has finally overcome propaganda.

This current is profound and lasting. The sources of

strength and wealth are today universal rather than

national, intellectual rather than material. The size of the

territory, the number of its people, the wealth of its raw

materials, no longer decide the fate of a nation. It is the

scope of education, the level of science, applied

technology and up-to-date information that make all the

difference.

Intellectual sources are no longer partitioned by

traditional divides. Science has no territorial limits.

Technology has no national flags. Information can travel

without visas. Armies cannot conquer wisdom. Borders

cannot protect knowledge. The talent of creation is

replacing the strategies of destruction. Computers, not

rifles, mark the difference. The hunting season in history

is disappearing.

This does not mean an end to agonies. Starvation,

disease, terrorism, desertification, nuclear weapons,

ecological damage and dangerous drugs overflow the

boundaries of land and the boundaries of reason.

Violence employs new tactics: it has not

disappeared. Confrontations in the future may not

necessarily be wars of conquest, but bloodshed of protest.

14

The strong know that they will not be strengthened by

dominating the poor, or by owning their deserts. The poor

cannot, and will not, comply with their conditions, tolerated

by the indifference of the well-off.

Existing institutions were initiated in a different time.

They are based today on memories rather than on needs.

Ministries of foreign affairs and defence were structured to

confront enemies. Now we face dangers more than

enemies, but without our being organized to handle them.

We are not answering the need. Diplomacy and strategy

should be mobilized to face the undefined dangers. Disease

will not be overcome by traditional diplomatic démarches.

Starvation cannot be eliminated by guns. Deserts will not

bloom beneath air raids. Remedies will not arrive of their

own accord: they should be invented and introduced.

Israel is on the side of this tendency. We are

committed to ending the conflicts. We are determined to

uproot their causes. We do not intend to stop this

momentum or allow its interruption.

For the last five decades the mere existence of Israel

has served as a temptation to try and destroy it. For half a

century we had to give security top priority. To this very

day, we shed tears on the tombs of our children, who paid

with their young lives to overcome the menace. When

wars became futile, suspicion succeeded fighting. The

allegation was that Israel was trying to expand territorially

and was unwilling to compromise geographically. Reality

ended this allegation as well.

Egypt, first to negotiate peace, found an Israel willing

to exchange land for peace. The Palestinians, next in line,

gained jurisdiction over territories they had never controlled

before. With Jordan, we agreed to delineate a permanent

border without one side encroaching on the land of the

other. Syria was told at the outset of negotiations that the

nature of peace would affect the depth of the withdrawal.

Lebanon was told that Israel had no demands on its

territory and no intention of compromising its integrity.

Negotiations have not been easy. With the

Palestinians, we negotiated on uncharted ground. Never

had the Palestinian people experienced self-rule. Today

they possess a territorial address and an administrative

authority. For the first time in their history, their children’s

education is solely in Palestinian hands. In the coming days

Israel will hand over additional responsibilities to the

Palestinian Authority. The Declaration of Principles will be

fully implemented in the spirit and letter. We shall support

a Palestinian readiness to hold democratic elections.

Israel, as well as the Palestinians, may discover that

Palestinian democracy and Israeli security are

complementary. We have demonstrated that we are true

in our moral choice not to govern the destiny of another

people.

We shall continue to negotiate with Syria. We are

negotiating out of conviction, not weakness, and we hope

to conclude the negotiations with a settlement that will

respect the interests of both sides, without harming Syrian

dignity or compromising Israeli security. Syria insists on

a narrow path for the negotiations, postponing meetings

between the leaders and thus slowing the pace of

negotiations. Israel is ready for accelerated negotiations.

We address the Syrians by saying: "Let us talk face to

face. Let us negotiate, as proclaimed in Damascus, with

courage to attain a peace of honour. By ending suspicion,

introducing creativity and allowing flexibility, we can

transform a promising climate into a solid terrain." Syria

declared its strategy for peace. We appreciate it.

Military threats and territorial positions should be

transformed by security arrangements, diplomatic rapport,

full peace and economic endeavours. That will erode the

motivation for conflict. Without peaceful relations,

balances of power are meaningless. The range of

understanding can serve as the only answer to the range

of ballistic missiles.

President Clinton and Secretary of State Christopher

are relentlessly pushing for peace. European, Russian and

many other leaders are genuinely supportive. Important

Middle Eastern leaders are actively engaged in the same

direction. Still, much depends on direct negotiations.

Yesterday’s enemies, tomorrow’s partners, should become

today’s interlocutors.

A peace treaty between Israel and Syria may

produce a historic result greater than just an agreement

between two countries. It may well become the crowning

of a comprehensive peace. It may become an opportunity

for the leaders of the region - Kings, Presidents, Prime

Ministers, supported by the most prominent leaders of our

time - to gather and announce the end of the conflict and

to proclaim full peace throughout the region.

Peace can hardly emerge from stinginess. By

definition, it calls for generosity. Peace is more than a

mere ceremony. It requires ongoing maintenance; it

awaits a passionate cultivation of new relations. We hope

that our neighbours, from Saudi Arabia to Lebanon, from

Djibouti to Algeria, will become constructive partners in

15

it. Dark clouds are still hanging over the horizon - the

shadows of missed opportunities.

We have to build a coalition to prevent subversive

turbulence from undermining legitimate Governments and

harassing the stability needed for the inflow of investment.

All countries of the Middle East face a choice: to remain

politically divided and economically stagnant or to become

economically advanced and politically just.

A high standard of living for the people - all people -

is the best promise for stability in our midst. Israel is

willing to participate in achieving it. There are sceptics, we

know, who do not believe that the Middle East is ripe for

a common market similar to the European one. They forget

that Europe did not do it in one leap. It started with a

Community of coal and steel. We can start with a

community of water and tourism.

Nor do they believe that the Middle East is ready for

a free trade zone like the one in North America. Yet the

North American Free Trade Agreement emerged in a short

while as a success by linking geographic proximity with

economic growth. Those sceptics claim that generations are

needed to cement a new market in the Middle East. Well,

they can see what in 10 short years happened to Asian

countries, which attained unpredicted prosperity. They

achieved it by adopting a market economy.

The profile of a market economy is clear. It is made

of comprehensive education, open borders, free movement,

science-based industries and competitive trade. A market

economy is a fabric woven from political silk and durable

threads of welfare. The time is ripe for its rendezvous with

the Middle East.

At the end of October, under the presidency of King

Hassan II, we shall take the first step to implement a

regional design. We shall try to establish instruments for

development: a regional bank, channels for private

investment and a framework for regional planning. The

wealth of the Middle East should be convinced to remain

at home. Over the last decade it has invested the better

part of its fortunes abroad. Homebound wealth will attract

foreign investment as well.

We should cut the enormous expense - $70 billion

annually - of the arms race. The savings can be directed to

development. The arms race can be reduced only by

regional consent. No single country will do it alone.

To transform the region and make it a stable and

attractive place we need the emergence of the region as

a whole, committed to a new future. Nature, and not

only politics, calls for it. The waters, the winds, the

environment call for regional responsibility and

cooperation, for desalinization plants, energy stations,

highways, railways, runways, piers, telecommunication

networks, high-tech industries, tourism infrastructure,

banking systems, computer terminals and ecological

considerations - a landscape that will meet the future will

create a state of prosperity, and it is a regional challenge.

The Middle East was the cradle of civilization and

has a capacity to contribute. It experienced golden ages,

economically and culturally. It should be our collective

ambition to make it happen again and to make it happen

soon. Today, shortages can be bridged rapidly.

Computers can carry children not only from grade to

grade but from age to age. The software of knowledge

will better replace the hardware of weapons.

I have served my country since its birth. I have

learned that complex problems call for unconventional

solutions. I feel that over the past year we have won a

licence to build a new Middle East, to make it part of the

globe in its new age, free of wars, free of enemies, free

of terrorism; a Middle East which will be nuclear-free,

missile-free, hunger-free, discrimination-free, tyranny-free;

a constituency of peace, a domain of freedom, a land of

prosperity. There is a morning awaiting us after a long

night, calling us to direct our energies and our aims and

our prayers towards that great opportunity.