Yitzhak Shamir, Opening Statement
But it was not the Holocaust which made the
world community recognize our rightful claim to the Land of Israel. In
fact, the rebirth of the State of Israel so soon after the Holocaust bas
made the world forget that our claim is immemorial. We are the only people
who have lived in the Land of Israel without interruption for nearly 4,000
years. We are the only people, except for a short Crusader kingdom, who
have had an independent sovereignty in this land. We are the only people
for whom Jerusalem bas been a capital. We are the only people whose sacred
places are only in the Land of Israel. No nation bas expressed its bond
with its land with as much intensity and consistency as we have. For
millennia, our people repeated at every occasion the cry of the
psalmist : If 1 forget thee, Jerusalem, may my right hand lose its
cunning. For millennia, we have encouraged each other with the
greeting : Next year in Jerusalem. For millennia, our prayers,
literature, and folklore have expressed powerful longing to return to our
land. Only Eretz Yisra'el, the Land of Israel, is Our true homeland.
Any other country, no matter how hospitable,
is still a diaspora, a temporary station on the way home. To others, it
was not an attractive land ; no one wanted it. Mark Twain described
it only 100 years ago as a desolate country which sits in sackcloth and
ashes-a silent, mournful expanse which not even imagination can grace with
the pomp of life.
The Zionist movement gave political expression
to our claim to the Land of Israel, and in 1922, the League of Nations
recognized the justice of this claim. They understood the compelling
historic imperative of establishing a Jewish homeland in the Land of
Israel. The United Nations organization reaffirmed this recognition after
World War II.
Regrettably, the Arab leaders, whose
friendship we wanted most, opposed a Jewish state in the region. . With a
few distinguished exceptions, they claimed that the Land of Israel is part
of the Arab domain that stretches from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf.
In defiance of international will and legality, the Arab regimes attempted
to overrun and destroy the Jewish state even before it was born. The Arab
spokesmen at the United Nations declared that the establishment of a
Jewish state would cause a bloodbath which would make the slaughters of
Genghis Khan pale into insignificance. In its declaration of independence
on 15 May 1948, Israel stretched out its hand in peace to its Arab
neighbors, calling for an end to war and bloodshed. la response, seven
Arab states invaded Israel. The UN resolution that partitioned the country
was thus violated and effectively annulled.
The United Nations did not create Israel. The
Jewish state came into being because the tiny Jewish community in what was
Mandatory Palestine rebelled against foreign imperialist rule. . We did
not conquer a foreign land ; we repulsed the Arab onslaught,
prevented Israel's annihilation, declared its independence, and
established a viable state and government institutions within a very short
time.
After their attack on Israel failed, the Arab
regimes continued their fight against Israel with boycott, blockade,
terrorism, and outright war. Soon after the establishment of Israel, they
turned against the Jewish communities in Arab countries. A wave of
oppression, expropriation, and expulsion caused a mass exodus of some
800,000 Jews from lands they had inhabited from before the rise of the
Islam. Most of the Jewish refugees, stripped of their considerable
possessions, came to Israel. They were welcomed by the Jewish state, they
were given shelter and support, and they were integrated into Israeli
society, together with half a million survivors of the European Holocaust.
The Arab regimes' rejection of Israel's
existence in the Middle East and the continuous war they have wagged
against it are part of history. There have been attempts to rewrite this
history, which depicts the Arabs as victims and Israel the aggressor. Like
attempts to deny the Holocaust, they will fail. With the demise of the
totalitarian regimes in most of the world, this perversion of history will
disappear.
In their war against Israel's existence, the
Arab took advantage of the cold war. They enlisted the military, economic,
and political support of the communist world against Israel, and they
turned a local regional conflict into an international powder keg. This
caused the Middle East to be flooded with arms, which fueled wars and
turned the area into a dangerous battleground and a testing arena for
sophisticated weapons.
At the UN, the Arab states mustered the
support of other Muslim countries and the Soviet bloc. Together, they bad
an automatic majority for countless resolutions that perverted history,
paraded fiction as fact, and made a travesty of the UN and its charter.
Arab hostility to Israel bas also brought
tragic human suffering to the Arab people. Tens of thousands have been
killed and wounded ; hundreds of thousands of Arabs who lived in
Mandatory Palestine were encouraged by their own leaders to flee from
their homes. Their suffering is a blot on humanity. No decent person-least
of all a Jew of this era--can be oblivious to this suffering. Several
hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs live in slums known as refugee
camps in Gaza, Judaea, and Samaria. Attempts by Israel to rehabilitate and
house them have been defeated by Arab objections. Nor has their fate been
any better in Arab states. Unlike the Jewish refugees who came to Israel
from Arab countries, most Arab refugees were neither welcomed nor
integrated by their hosts. Only the Kingdom of Jordan awarded them
citizenship. Their plight has been used as a political weapon against
Israel. The Arabs who have chosen to remain in Israel-Christian and
Muslim--have become full-fledged citizens, enjoying equal rights and
representation in the legislature, in the judiciary, and in all walks of
life.
We, who over the centuries were denied access
to our holy places, respect the religion of 0 faiths in our country. Our
law guarantees freedom of worship and protects the holy places of every
religion.
Distinguished cochairmen, ladies, and
gentlemen. 1 stand before you today in yet another quest for peace-not
only on behalf of the State of Israel, but in the name of the entire
Jewish people that bas maintained an unbreakable bond with the Land of
Israel for almost 4,000 years. Our pursuit of accommodation and peace bas
been relentless. For us, the in gathering of Jews into their ancient
homeland, their integration into our society, and the creation of the
necessary infrastructure are at the very top of our national agenda.
A nation that faces such a gigantic challenge
would most naturally desire peace with all its neighbors. Since the
beginning of Zionism, we formulated innumerable peace proposals and plans.
All of them were rejected. The first crack in the wall of hostility
occurred in 1977, when the late President Anwar al-Sadat of Egypt decided
to break the taboo and come to Jerusalem. His gesture was reciprocated
with enthusiasm by the people and government of Israel headed by Menahem
Begin. This development led to the Camp David Accord and a treaty of peace
between Egypt and Israel. Four years later in May 1983, an agreement was
signed with the lawful government of Lebanon.- Unfortunately this
agreement was not fulfilled because of outside intervention. But a
precedent was set, and we look forward to courageous steps, similar to
those of Anwar al-Sadat. Regrettably, not one Arab leader has seen fit to
come froward. and respond to our call for peace.
Today, s gathering is a result of a sustained
American effort based on our own peace plan of May 1989' which in turn was
founded on the Camp David accords. According to the american initiative,
the purpose of this meeting is to launch direct peace negotiations between
Israel and each of its neighbors and multilateral negotiations on regional
issues among all the countries of the region. We have always believed that
only direct bilateral talks can bring Peace. We have agreed to precede
such talks with this ceremonial conference, but we hope that Arab consent
to direct bilateral talks indicates an understanding that there is no
other way to peace. In the Middle East, this has special meaning because
such talks imply mutual acceptance, and the root cause of the conflict is
the Arab refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the State of Israel.
The multilateral talks that would accompany
the bilateral negotiations are a vital component in the process. In these
talks, the essential ingredients of coexistence and regional cooperation
will be discussed. There cannot be genuine peace in our region unless
these regional issues are addressed and resolved. .
We believe the goal of the bilateral
negotiations is to Sign peace treaties between Israel and its neighbors
and to reach an agreement on interim self-government arrangements with the
Palestinian Arabs. But nothing can b achieved without goodwill. . I appeal
to the Arab leaders-those who are here and those who have not yet joined
the process : show us and the world that you accept Israel's
existence. Demonstrate your readiness to accept Israel as a permanent
entity in the region. Let the people in our region hear you speak in the
language of reconciliation, coexistence, and peace with Israel. In Israel,
there is an almost total consensus for the need for peace. We only differ
on the best ways to achieve it. In Most Arab countries, the opposite -
seems to be true. The only differences are over the ways to push Israel
into a defenseless position and ultimately, to destruction- We would like
to see in your countries an end to poisonous preachings against Israel. We
would like to see an indication of the kind of hunger for peace which
characterizes Israeli society.
We appeal to you to renounce the jihad[
against lsrael ; we appeal to you to denounce the PLO Convenant which
calls for lsrael's destruction ; we appeal to you to condemn
declarations that call for Israel's annihilation, like the one issued by
the rejectionist conference in Tehran last week ; we appeal to you to
let Jews who wish to leave your countries go. And we address a call to the
Palestinian Arabs : Renounce violence and terrorism. Use the
universities in the administered territories, whose existence was made
possible only by Israel, for learning to and development, not agitation
and violence. Stop exposing your children to danger by sending them to
throw bombs and stones at soldiers and civilians.
Just two days ago, we were reminded that
Palestinian terrorism is still rampant, when the mother of seven children
and the father of four were slaughtered in cold blood. We cannot remain
indifferent and be expected to talk with people involved in such repulsive
activities.
We appeal to you to shun dictators like Saddam
Hussein who aim to destroy Israel. Stop the brutal torture and murder of
those who do not agree with you. Allow us and the world community to build
decent housing for the people who now live in refugee camps. Above all, we
hope you finally realize that you could have been at this table long ago,
soon after the Camp David Accords were first concluded, had you chosen
dialogue instead of violence, coexistence instead of terrorism.
Ladies and gentlemen, we come to this process
with an open heart, sincere intentions, and great expectations. We are
committed to negotiating without interruption, until an agreement is
reached. There will be problems, obstacles, crises, and conflicting
claims, but it is better to talk than to shed blood. Wars have not solved
anything in our region ; they have only caused misery, suffering
bereavement, and hatred.
We know our partners to the negotiations will
make territorial demands on Israel but, as an examination of the
conflict's long history makes clear, its nature is not territorial. It
raged well before Israel acquired Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and the Golan in a
defensive war. There was no hint at recognition of Israel before the war
in 1967, when the territories in question were not under lsrael's control.
We are a nation of 4 million. The Arab nations
from the Atlantic to the Gulf number 170 million. We control only 28,000
square km. The Arabs possess a land mass of 14 million square km. The
issue is not territory, but our existence.
It will be regrettable if the talks focus
primarily and exclusively on territory. It is the quickest way to an
impasse.
What we need first and foremost, is the
building of confidence, the removal of the danger of confrontation, and
the development of relations in as many spheres as possible. The issues
are complex and the negotiations will be lengthy and difficult. We submit
that the best venue to the
for the talks is in our region, in close
proximity to the decision-makers, not in a foreign land. We invite our
Partners to this process to come to Israel for the first round of talks.
On our part, we are ready to go to Jordan, to Lebanon, and to Syria for
the same purpose. There is no better way to make peace than to talk in
each other's home. Avoiding such talks is a denial of the purpose of
the negotiations. I would welcome a positive
answer from the representatives of these states here and now. We must
learn to live together. We must learn to live without war, without hatred…
Madrid 31 october
1991
http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/cahier/proche-orient/madrid-shamir-en