November 16, 1997 NETANYAHU: I want to thank the LA World Affairs Council and the people here on the dais and here in the audience. We are, as I said, in California. And many of you who’ve visited Israel have remarked on the similarity of the scenery and of the climate. Now, that, that actually may be a myopic view, because there’s one small difference between California and Israel — the neighborhood. It’s a different neighborhood. Now, I know you have some tough neighborhoods here, but ours are tougher. And you have a reminder, these days, of exactly what kind of neighborhood we live in, and what kind of neighbors — some of them, at least — adjoin us. We, we know that to secure peace in this kind of area requires the ability, first, to deter war. Now, what I’ve just said ought to be absolutely obvious. Because it’s, after all, the central lesson of this century. The central lesson of this century is that if you live in a different neighborhood than the one we’re talking about, a nice neighborhood, you don’t have to do anything to keep the peace — peace is kept by itself. In North America, you have disputes, I understand, between America — the United States and Canada and America — and the United States and Mexico. And I understand that — well, I understand that you have some problems with your southern neighbor, and I gather that you’re not happy with a few things that pass the border — illegal drugs and things like that. But I understand that the reason you don’t go to war against Mexico is because you’re afraid of Mexico’s military might. No, of course not. The reason you don’t go to war to Mexico, and the reason that Canada doesn’t go to war against you — because they have some complaints against you — pollution, and so on. By the way, much greater wars have been sparked by lesser causes. The reason no one contemplates it is not a balance of power, it’s not a balance of deterrence, it’s not military prevention. It is that you are democracies. And democracies — at least in the post-Colonial period, which is almost a century now — don’t go to wars. They don’t initiate them. They might respond if attacked. And sometimes, you have to attack them in Pearl Harbor — you know, really poke them in the eye. After all of Europe is conquered. To get them to go to war. Democracies respond to attacks — they generally don’t initiate them. Not true of dictatorships. For example, Saddam Hussein. You remember him. He didn’t exactly take a poll in Baghdad before he decided to devour Kuwait. And when Kuwait was extricated from Iraq’s gullet, and he was defeated, he then sued for peace. And then he waited for the next opportunity — now. And he’s trying again. Whatever he’s trying. Now, we support fully the position taken by President Clinton and the United States and the international community — much of it — to face Saddam down, because he is in fact engaging in the attempt to build the weapons of aggression, contrary to his solemn obligations. But the main point that I want to make to you today is that in order to secure the peace in an area where there are no democracies, where peace is not inherent, where there’s no check of public opinion, or of the voting booth against an aggressive regime or an adventurous regime, there is only one check, and that is an external check. Peace through deterrence. Or, if I can borrow a phrase from somebody who used to be a governor of California — peace through strength. That is the central lesson of the 20th century. In the first half of this century, the democracies forgot this lesson, and all of humanity, and especially the Jewish people, paid the worst of prices for it. In the second half of this century, opposite a greater dictatorship than Nazi Germany, they remembered this lesson, and created peace in Europe. Through the deterrence of NATO, we received half a century of global peace. And now that the Soviet Union is gone and Central Europe is democratizing and indeed, Eastern Europe is democratizing, there’s a different kind of peace. You’re not exactly afraid that the former Warsaw Pact countries will invade Western Europe. It’s becoming the peace of democracies. The main point that we face, or the main problem that we face in achieving peace in the Middle East is that we are not ringed with democracies. We are the only democracy. And therefore, the basis of any peace that we can make with our neighbors — and they are not all uniform; some of them have gone further to pluralism and moderation than others. But when we think of the principles that guide us in peace-making, the central point that must be understood is that, precisely as Governor Wilson said, it is not enough to want peace. That peace must be buttressed on the ability to secure the peace and prevent its violation. That is, that peace must built, built on a solid foundation of security. For example, our peace with Egypt. That peace has had its ups and downs in normalization for the last 20 years. I remember the late Yitzrach Rabin, whose tragic assassination we commemorated in Israel a week ago. I remember him, and I remember Shimon Peres complaining bitterly to me, when I was opposition leader, about the vagaries of Egyptian normalization. All sorts of complaints. But what has held fast and strong in the last two decades since the signing of the Camp David Accords are the security arrangements that we built into the peace, in the form of a vast demilitarized Sinai Desert, early warning, other forms of deterrence, other forms of ensuring Israel’s security against any potential violation of the peace. That has held durable, it has not changed one bit in two decades. This is the kind of principle that we have to build in to our future peace agreements, whether it be with Syria or with Lebanon or with the Palestinians. This is in fact the main promise of the Oslo Accords. When Yitzrach Rabin presented the Oslo Accords to the Israeli people, he said, in his characteristically blunt way, he said, “It’s a very simple deal. We give them territory; they give us a pledge to fight the terrorists from within that territory.” That deal has not been kept. It wasn’t kept in the first two-and-a-half years of Oslo, when after the deal that, or the agreement that was supposed to enter, we experienced terror on the scale of which we have never seen before in Israel. We had the equivalent of 10,000 Americans — in Israeli terms — dying in our streets, in our cities, in bus explosions, and so on. And the people of Israel said, wait a minute. Where is the deal? Where’s the deal? Because surely, if we’re going to have peace, it must be based on security. And surely, when we had peace with Egypt, we had terror from Egypt, many years ago. We had felahin bases. But those bases were wiped out well before we signed the peace. We had felahin terrorist bases in Jordan — those were wiped out before we had the peace. We have terror bases now in Lebanon — hisballah bases. But surely everybody understands that if we have peace with Lebanon, those bases will be wiped out. Because it’s inconceivable to have peace with Lebanon and terror attacks from Lebanon. Inconceivable. There may be a solitary terror attack here and there. There was a terrible tragedy in Egypt yesterday — a terrorist attack. That can happen. And I phoned President Mubharak today to express our condolences to the Egyptian people, to the Egyptian government. But there are no terror bases inside Egypt operating against Israel. That is a thing of the past. It is not possible to coexist with peace — it is not consonant with peace. This is the central demand that we put before the Palestinian authority. It wasn’t easy for me, before the elections, to say, yes, we will accept the Oslo Accords. But we did it. But we said, we will follow the Oslo Accords, providing you follow it. Which means, in the first instance, fight terrorism. Capture the leaders. Put them in jail. Capture the operatives. Put them in jail. Confiscate the firearms — they’re all illegal. Extradite the murderers — there are 36 that are pending under the agreement to be extradited to Israel. Stop the incitement for violence in the Palestinian-controlled media. Oh, by the way, the Palestinian-controlled media is controlled. The Israeli media is not exactly under my control. Sometimes I hear that this is not true, because the Palestinian media is a free media, and it reminds me of a play I saw by, I think by Tom Stoppard, in which a Third World ruler struts on the stage and he says, “We have a relatively free press in my country.” And somebody asks him, “What’s that?” And he says, “It’s a press run freely by my relatives.” NETANYAHU: Well, they have a relatively free press in the Palestinian authority, and it incites for violence and terror, or sometimes even worse. All of that was promised, solemnly pledged, by the Palestinian authority. We gave territory — NETANYAHU: I’m trying to understand the nuance of that statement. NETANYAHU: Now, all of that was pledged and not kept. Terrorists are being released in what is called a “revolving door.” They come in, sit for two days, out the door. Including, for example, the mastermind of the Visingoff bombing, the Tel Aviv bombings that you remember from two years ago, that claimed the lives of dozens of innocent people in Israel. The incitement continues, the firearms haven’t been collected, the, the institutions, the infrastructure — those organizations that give money and support and logistics to the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist organizations continue to work unabated. And this is what we have demanded to be corrected. And it’s not easy to do. Because if you’re nice and you don’t demand, people will be nice to you. They’ll pat you on the back. If you give, rather than demand to receive, everybody will love you. Try it. Go to the closest street intersection, take out a dollar bill and start handing out one after the other. People will love you. They’ll pat you on the back. The minute you stop giving, they won’t like you, and they’ll say, “Give more.” We stopped giving. We said, we will give only when we receive. We will advance only when you advance. And we insist on the foundation of peace, which is security. And this obviously… NETANYAHU: This obviously is tougher than to continue unilateral concessions that are not reciprocated. Now, here is a paradox built into what I’ve said, and I’m sure those of you have already discerned it. It’s called “The Oslo Paradox.” Israel, which keeps the Oslo Accords, is accused of violating it. And the Palestinian authority, which violates the Oslo Accords, is credited with keeping it. I described to you their violations — I didn’t describe to you how we kept it. We did the Hebron Accords. The previous government couldn’t do it, and wouldn’t do it, or couldn’t and wouldn’t re-deploy in Hebron, but we did, and handed over 80% of that ancient city to the Palestinian authority. We released women prisoners — terrorist prisoners with blood on their hands — because this was part of the post-Hebron Accords. I didn’t like it. I didn’t sign that agreement, but I honored it. We have lifted the closure on Palestinian cities, we allowed a record number — 160,000 Palestinian workers — to work in our cities, up from 25,000 that we received. We fulfilled our part of the deal. So the question you have to ask yourself is, how is it possible that Israel, that keeps the accords, is accused of violating it? And vice-versa, vis-à-vis the Palestinians. And the answer immediately comes to mind — well, of course — it’s settlements. You build settlements. Settlements being the towns and villages that are adjacent to Israel’s major cities, many of them bedroom communities. And the answer is yes, we do. But it so happens that that is within the accords. The late Yitzrach Rabin, again, stood before the Knesset and said — very proudly, I may say — “We’ll build. We can build new settlements, and we can continue to build in the existing communities.” Now, we haven’t built new settlements. But people get married and they have children. People move — in, out. We don’t bus anyone — there’s no public housing of any kind that we do. Private contractors build. If there is demand, people go there. Just as they live and build in Kilkilya, in Bethlehem, in Tulcarum — in any of the Palestinian cities. People live. Communities are living organisms. Suppose you told a community here, a neighborhood here, no more houses. No more refurbishing, no more new houses built anywhere. You will choke a community immediately. And Oslo stipulated very clearly that Israel has the right to continue, and under no circumstances did it abridge that right. And I’m talking about the Labor Government, before us. So Israel now is asked to undertake limitations outside the agreement in order to secure Palestinian fulfillment of provisions inside the agreement. You follow me so far? Fine. And the question is, why is that? And people say, “Well, it may not be in the agreement, but you are preempting a final settlement, because you’re gobbling up the land.” A question for you. How much land do all the settlements constitute out of the West Bank? All together. Percentage. Somebody heard my speech before. Oh, not fair. Attentive souls here. Well, the clue is that all the Palestinian cities together, absent Hebron, account for 2.8% of the total territory of the West Bank. The settlements probably account for 1%, 1 ½%. I haven’t measured exactly, but something on that order. The incremental housing is one-tenth of 1%, two-tenths of 1%. The incremental housing was greatest under the Labor Government that increased the population of the territories by 50%. Here is one of the incrementals. Mayor Ron Nachman of Ariel, stand up, please. SPEAKER: that breached the peace. NETANYAHU: I’ll talk about that in a minute — thank you. Now, the important thing is, the important thing is that this issue, by itself, is not an issue. It’s certainly not in the contracts, and it’s certainly not that significant a factor on the ground. And if it is, it should be a factor of symmetry on both sides. Now, the reason this is not mentioned is, of course, because many people think you shouldn’t be here in the first place. You may be right. You may be right that you keep the agreement. You may be right in demanding security. You may be right that the settlements don’t amount to much. But you shouldn’t be there in the first place, and therefore, you’re in the wrong. So there is this distinction between what I call “the lower truth” and “the higher truth.” The lower truth is the day-to-day facts. But the higher truth is, justice is not on your side, so therefore, don’t bother us with the facts. We are supposed to be, I suppose, in a strange land, much like Algeria was colonized by the French, or the Americans were in faraway Vietnam, or the British in India. Can you imagine? That’s what they say about Judea. The word “Jew” comes from Judea. Our ancestors came from Judea. My great-grandfather came back to this land a hundred years ago — there was no one there. Now, that could be Zionist propaganda, so we have to turn to another Zionist propaganda called Mark Twain. He was there, 20 years before my grandfather — great-grandfather — came there. He said, “Nothing is here.” He said, “When will the Jews return so this land will come back alive?” Well, Arthur Penrun Stanley, the greatest British cartographer of the 19th century, he was there. On the day that Yasir Arafat, on the year that Yasir Arafat says the Zionist invasion began, in 1881, into the verdant Palestinian homeland. And Arthur Penrun Stanley says — and other Zionist propagandists know that — “Not a soul in Judea.” Note the word, Judea. Not a soul. Miles and miles and miles — not a soul. It’s the Zionist restoration that restored this land. It’s the Zionist restoration that produced Jewish immigration and a great deal of Arab immigration, all of whom are welcome in this land. But I’m not gonna get into a detailed polemic, or a detailed study of the perversion of history that has taken place by the oft-repeated falsehoods about Israel, and our right to live in Judea, in the hills around Jerusalem. That I won’t do now. I will charitably say it’s an issue in dispute. That dispute has not been decided. And if it’s not been decided, how can anyone ask us, against the facts of history, and I tell you, against the facts of international law, against the British mandate, against the League of Nations, against even the United Nations’ own resolutions up to 1947, it’s so. How can anyone ask us to pre-judge this? Well, they shouldn’t. |
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