Israel, 1995

I should like to congratulate Mr.

Freitas do Amaral on his election to the presidency of the

General Assembly. We are glad that a representative of

Portugal, a nation for which Israel has high regard, was

elected to that distinguished post.

I would like to express to the Secretary-General, Mr.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a man of our region and a man of

peace, our deepest appreciation for his contribution to world

peace in general and to the Middle East peace in particular.

Tomorrow, the Jewish people will pray on the day of

Yom Ha-Kippurim:

(spoke in Hebrew; English text furnished by the delegation)

“In the Book of Life: blessings, peace, a good

livelihood, good decrees, salvation and consolation.

May you be remembered and inscribed.”

(spoke in English)

We pray for all humanity, for the whole world.

For us, the United Nations is not just a place of prayer

and surely not a platform for speeches. We come here to

state our convictions and to announce our commitments. In

our address in 1987, I stated on behalf of the State of

Israel:

“We have found President Mubarak of Egypt to

be a builder of a better life for his people and of

bridges for a comprehensive peace in the region.”

(Official Records of the General Assembly, Forty-

second Session, Plenary Meetings, 17th meeting,

p. 23-25)

Today, under the leadership of President Mubarak,

Egypt is becoming a centre for regional development on the

way to hosting the first regional bank of development.

In the same address, we stated:

“An international conference is the door to direct

negotiations. Once convened it should lead

immediately to face-to-face bilateral negotiations.”

(Ibid., p. 26)

On 30 October, 1991, the Madrid Conference took place.

In 1992, again we declared:

“The opportunity to select, through democratic

political elections, the Palestinian administrative

council will enable the Palestinian people to exercise

a double measure of freedom: the freedom to govern

their own lives and to do so ... democratically.”

(Ibid., Forty-seventh Session, Plenary Meetings,

20th meeting, p. 48)

Last week, we achieved what we promised.

Lastly, in 1993, we declared again from this rostrum:

“Geographically speaking, we live side by side

with the Jordanian Kingdom, and what is so obvious

geographically must become clear politically [so

that] we can offer the people of both sides of the

river full peace, that the Dead Sea can become a

spring of new life.” (Ibid., Forty-eighth Session,

Plenary Meetings, 6th meeting, p. 22)

In October 1994, just one year later, Jordan and Israel

signed a peace treaty.

Last year, we said here:

“All countries of the Middle East face a choice:

to remain politically divided and economically

stagnant or to become economically advanced and

politically just.

“... We shall try to establish instruments for

development: a regional bank, channels for private

investment and a framework for regional planning.”

(Ibid., Forty-ninth Session, Plenary Meetings,

10th meeting, p. 16)

In October 1994, the first Middle East-North African

economic summit was held in Casablanca under the

splendid presidency of His Majesty King Hassan II. At

the end of this month, a second summit will be held in

Amman under the auspices of His Majesty King Hussein.

At the end of November, the first ground-breaking Euro-

Mediterranean conference will be held in Barcelona.

Three years, five promises: all of them fulfilled. I

would like to use this occasion to turn to the Syrians and

to turn to the Lebanese and ask them to stop hesitating,

to stop wandering. They have to look at this record and

come in and follow up. The President of Syria has said

that from experience he has learned that only through

military negotiations and making security the major

agenda item can one achieve peace. Sorry: Experience has

4

shown that through negotiation on all levels, embracing all

issues without timidity, without fatigue, we can achieve

peace. If leaders meet and are not successful at the first

meeting, they will have another meeting. How can it be

wrong for them to work day and night, ceaselessly, with

new ideas and new approaches? They are not wasting the

leaders’ time; they are wasting the time of the people —

their fortunes, their happiness, opportunities for the younger

generation.

We also tell all the countries of the Middle East, not

that we want to have a new Middle East, but that we want

the Middle East to join in a new age — for the good of

their people, not for the good of Israel. Israel is in good

shape because we are no longer living in a world where

there are empires of power and colonies of poverty. Poverty

and oppression are home-made, not imposed by others. The

choice is before every country to become free and

prosperous and democratic, like so many nations have done

in a relatively short time in Asia, Latin America and in

some countries of Africa. It is their choice, their

opportunity not just to build a different world but to

introduce the new world to their own people.

For us, the United States is not an empire of power.

We are not afraid of the United States. For us, the United

States is an empire of peace. We need the United States.

For us, Russia is going through a process of change. Russia

will remain great but will become something different. For

us, we welcome the European contribution to other

countries east and south of them and the convening of the

Barcelona conference to offer the Mediterranean peoples

funds and experience to build a new life. We are glad that

Japan is expanding its economic horizons and understanding

and contributing so that other nations can do so. And we

hope that other well-to-do countries in the Middle East,

including Arab countries, will help the needy parts of our

own region.

May I say that in my best judgement the greatest

danger is a combination of high technology and deep

hatred, of modern instruments and feudalistic views, and

the greatest hope for all of us is a double effort to respect

human values and modern education.

Israel itself is in good shape. We are strong militarily:

I do not deny it. We have an excellent economy — an

economy of brains, not of material resources. We have

absorbed a very large immigration of white and black Jews,

white Jews from Russia and black Jews from Ethiopia, and

nobody can understand what put Israel in such a relatively

good position.

What brought this about is, first of all, the return to

the moral choice. By the end of this year — at the latest

at the beginning of next year — not one Palestinian will

remain under our control. For the first time in the history

of the Palestinian people, they are educating their children

without intervention by us or anybody else. Nobody

forces us to do so. We are not weak. We are not poor.

We are not under pressure. We have had to take serious

risks because terror still continues. The Arab boycott is

still intact.

In our own country there is strong opposition to

what we are doing. We have had to spend a great part of

our budget to make peace — and yet, despite all this, we

decided to make a moral choice: not to dominate another

people. We stated in this Assembly that that was our

intention. Now we have done it and even politically, as

difficult as it may be at home — because, as a party, we

may win historically but we may also lose politically —

but then, winning peace is in our eyes more important

than winning elections. Why should you be elected if you

do not use the mandate of the people to change the course

of your history in a reasoned, moral way?

We believe that the strength of ethical judgement is

as important as military exercises or triumphs. We gave

up land and produced instead an economy of brains.

Today Israel is making out of its brains more than some

other countries in our vicinity are making out of oil.

And what we actually expect from the Palestinians

is for them to become democratic, to be prosperous, to

fight violence and terror, and we are giving our

neighbours a simple message: What we can do,

everybody can do.

For many years there was a legend that only the

North, which is white and wealthy and permanent, is a

success story, whereas the South is condemned to

backwardness, to poverty, to lagging behind. What has

happened in Asia, where the most vibrant economic

endeavours are taking place today, and what is happening

in Latin America show that the economy has nothing to

do with geographical location or the colour of the skin.

Make the right choice: serve your people and create a

new future.

What we are offering to anyone who is interested is

our experience — open, in a comradely way. We do not

want to dominate anybody and certainly not anybody’s

economy. We did not give up the domination of people

to gain domination of markets. And we are suggesting to

5

our neighbours — and we are happy that they have

accepted — is that the new frontiers — say, between

Jordan and Israel — will not be frontiers of mines and

hostile fences, but an occasion for joint ventures.

The whole rift of Africa, the whole valley which is a

desert that separates the Jordanians and us will become,

with God’s help, a source for work, for development. We

will build hotels and schools and desalination plants and

parks, and people will be free to move from one side to the

other, competing without hating, cooperating without

dominating.

We want to do the same about the dividing line

between us and the Palestinians: we want to build alongside

the line on the West Bank and Gaza eight industrial parks

so that the Palestinians will not have to cross the border

and go through Israel’s checkpoints: instead, work will

come to them, and together we shall invest and together we

shall develop.

A better economy is the best guarantee of peace.

Actually, there cannot be economic cooperation without

political understanding. Recently, while we were negotiating

we created three zones of security sensibility on the West

Bank — zone A, zone B and zone C. Then we turned to

water and electricity and we asked the water and the

current to submit to our political wisdom, but the electricity

and the water people said that they did not distinguish

between A, B and C. Water flows according to nature and

not according to artificial agreements, and electric current

does not stop at A or B or C. They serve everybody.

Today in the Middle East as elsewhere, the distinction

is no longer ideological or religious or national. There is

just one distinction between an old, poor, backward

economy and a new age where economies are based on

technology and science and where the natural resource is

schools for the children and not the mines of the Gulf.

Everybody can postpone the choice but nobody can escape

it.

Our aim is to have peace so as to serve our people; to

have education so as to equip our children to take

advantage of the new age, to be equal to others and to

compete with other children. It cannot remain a peace

between leaders: it must become a peace for the people,

now and in the future.

I started by showing what has happened in three or

four short years. It is a revolution. It is a beginning. We

should not stop in the middle. Let everybody pray to the

Lord in the language he is used to. Let everybody respect

his own tradition, his own heritage. Let everybody respect

the special experience of a people, of a nation. But let all

of us give up unnecessary hatred, untold suspicion. Let us

give up barricading ourselves behind old dogmas and

terrible prejudices. Let us help the people and the future.

Then the 50 years of the United Nations will offer not

just 50 years without war but the coming 50 years with

peace and prosperity.