A Durable Peace Read online

  BOOKS EDITED BY BENJAMIN NETANYAHU

  International Terrorism: Challenge and Response

  Terrorism: How the West Can Win

  Self-Portrait of a Hero: The Letters of Jonathan Netanyahu (with Iddo Netanyahu)

  BOOKS WRITTEN BY BENJAMIN NETANYAHU

  Fighting Terrorism

  Copyright

  The song, “Jerusalem of Gold,” on page 195 is printed by permission of Naomi Shemer

  Warner Books Edition

  Copyright ©1993, 2000 by Benjamin Netanyahu

  All rights reserved.

  Warner Books, Inc.,

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue,

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook Edition: October 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-446-56476-2

  TO YONI

  I grieve for thee, my brother Jonathan;

  A great comfort hast thou been to me.

  Thy love to me was wonderful….

  II SAMUEL 1:26

  CONTENTS

  Copyright

  Dedication

  List of Maps

  Preface

  Introduction

  1. The Rise of Zionism

  2. The Betrayal

  3. The Theory of Palestinian Centrality

  4. The Reversal of Causality

  5. The Trojan Horse

  6. Two Kinds of Peace

  7. The Wall

  8. A Durable Peace

  9. The Question of Jewish Power

  Chronology

  APPENDIXES

  A. The Arab-Jewish Agreement at Versailles

  B. Feisal-Frankfurter Correspondence

  C. The League of Nations Mandate 24,1922

  D. Ribbentrop Promise to Mufti to Destroy Jewish National Home

  E. The PLO Charter

  F. Security Council Resolution 242, November 22,1967

  G. The Pentagon Plan June 29,1967

  H. Security Council Resolution 338, October 22,1973

  I. The Phased Plan

  Notes

  Acknowledgments to A Durable Peace

  Acknowledgments to A Place Among the Nations

  LIST OF MAPS

  1. Israel and the Arab World

  2. Israel’s Relative Size

  3. 1920: The Jewish National Home Under British Administration

  4. 1920: The Jewish National Home After Creation of Trans Jordan

  5. 1947: UN Partition Plan

  6. 1949: Armistice Lines After War of Independence

  7. 1967: Armistice Lines After Six Day War

  8. 1992: Israel Before the Oslo Accords

  9. Israel’s Strategic Vulnerability, 1949–1967

  10. Israel’s Exposed Shoreline, 1949–1967

  11. The Pentagon Plan for Israel’s Security Needs, June 18, 1967

  12. 1998: Israel After the Oslo Accords

  PREFACE

  Writing anything while you are still in office is a hazardous task. Writing anything after leaving office can be equally hazardous. For one is supposed to have the perspective of detachment and introspection to secure the desired objectivity. I profess at the outset: While I have done a great deal of thinking since leaving office, I am neither detached nor objective when it comes to securing the future of the Jewish state. In fact, I plead unabashed and passionate partisanship in seeking to assure the Jewish future. This is the conviction that guided me as the Prime Minister of Israel between 1996 and 1999, and this is the conviction that will guide me for the rest of my life.

  The historical imperative of preserving the Jewish state was reinforced on a visit to China in 1999. The President of China, Jiang Zemin, expressed to me his great admiration for the legacy of the Jewish people, who produced such geniuses as Albert Einstein. “The Jewish people and the Chinese people are two of the oldest civilizations on earth,” he said, “dating back four thousand and five thousand years respectively.”

  I concurred, adding India to the list.

  “But there are one or two differences between us,” I said. “For instance, how many Chinese are there?”

  “1.2 billion,” replied Zian Zemin.

  “How many Indians are there?” I pressed on.

  “About 1 billion.”

  “Now how many Jews are there?” I queried.

  No answer.

  “There are 12 million Jews in the world,” I said.

  Several Chinese jaws dropped in the room, understandably, given that this number could be contained in an enlarged suburb of Beijing.

  “Mr. President,” I said, “since the Jews have been around for thousands of years that is a remarkably low number. Two thousand years ago the Jews constituted ten percent of the population of the Roman Empire. Today there should have been 200 million Jews.”

  “What happened?” asked the Chinese president.

  “Many things happened,” I replied. “But they all boil down to one big thing. You, the Chinese, kept China; the Indians kept India; but we Jews lost our land and were dispersed to the four corners of the earth. From this sprang all our calamities, culminating in our greatest catastrophe in the twentieth century. This is why for the last two thousand years we have been trying to retrieve our homeland and re-create our independent state there.”

  I was trying to impress upon the Chinese leadership the importance of refraining from supplying Iran with nuclear weapons technology. That would jeopardize not merely the modem State of Israel but threaten to wipe out forever an ancient and admired civilization. (Jiang Zemin assured me that China was not selling such technology to Iran, something I verified with our intelligence just in case.)

  This, then, is the perspective that guided me as Israel’s Prime Minister and that ought to guide anyone concerned with the future of the Jewish State: assuring that the people of Israel have what they need to survive and thrive in the next millennium, the fifth of their existence. I am convinced of one thing: The Jewish people will not get another chance. There are only so many miracles that history can provide a people, and the Jews have had more than their share. After unparalleled adversity the Jews came back to life in the modern State of Israel. For better or worse, the Jewish future is centered on the future of that state. Therefore we must be extra careful not to toy with Israel’s security or jeopardize its defenses, even as we pursue peace with our neighbors, for what is at stake is the destiny of an entire people.

  In the long run, what will stand are not the passing praises of those who seek a quick fix for the Middle East’s problems, but the bulwarks of a durable peace—one that can be credibly defended by a strong Israel. Any other kind of peace will not last. Achieving peace treaties with the Arabs is relatively easy. All you have to do is give in to the Arab demands. Achieving peace agreements that will stand the test of time is much harder to do.

  This is what I set out to achieve as Prime Minister. I insisted on a secure peace, stressing the fundamental principle that in the Middle East peace and security are intertwined. A peace that undermines Israel’s defenses and leaves unresolved central issues, such as the fate of Jerusalem and the Arab refugees, is one that is sure to crumble over time. It should be passed over until a more sustainable, more realistic peace is achieved.

  This “stubbornness” in defense of a tough-minded peace did not make me, nor would it make any leader of Israel, popular in the diplomatic and press salons of the world. But it is the right policy and it is worth fighting for. If one possesses a millennial perspective, the slings and arrows of criticism are meaningless compared to the awesome responsibility of protecting the Jewish people and their one and only state.

  I am confident that such persistence will pay off. The Jewish people have shown a
remarkable capacity to overcome hardship, and surely they have the will and intelligence to pursue a genuine peace. The second half of the twentieth century offers indubitable proof of this.

  Neither the present nor the future are free of problems. But they pale compared to those that faced the Jewish people in the ghettos of Europe just a few decades ago. This tells us how far the Jewish people have traveled and it fires our imagination and infuses us with hope as we begin the next fifty years.

  This was the central fact of Jewish existence as Israel celebrated its first half-century. In the ancient Jewish traditions, jubilees were a time for both celebration and reflection. Indeed, there is much to celebrate. Half a century ago, at the close of World War II, it was not clear at all that the Jewish people would survive. A third of all Jews were consumed in the fires of the Holocaust, and the remaining two-thirds faced the dual threat of persecution and relentless assimilation. Stalin targeted the Jews of the Soviet Union as class enemies, and the Jews of America and Europe were rapidly embracing assimilation and intermarriage. Absent a vital center, Jewish numbers would have shrunk further, and the Jewish people, after four millennia of unparalleled struggle for their place under the sun, would have finally yielded to the forces of history and disappeared.

  This has not happened. The pivotal change in Jewish destiny occurred with the founding of the Jewish state. This seminal event of reestablishing Jewish sovereignty in the ancient Jewish homeland was preceded by nearly a hundred years of renewed Jewish settlement activity in the Holy Land and by over fifty years of Zionist agitation, heralded by the prophetic and inspired genius of Theodor Herzl. Indeed, the Jewish state changed everything for the Jewish people. From a fledgling beachhead on the Mediterranean coast, struggling to survive the Arab onslaughts aimed at exterminating the Jewish presence in the land, the Jews were able to repel the attack; build a state; create one of the world’s finest armies; defeat the much larger Arab forces in successive wars forced on Israel; unite their ancient capital, Jerusalem; bring in millions of immigrants and refugees, including a million beleaguered Jews from the former Soviet Union and the imperiled Jewish community of Ethiopia; revive an ancient language; build an astonishing scientific and technological capability; develop the most thriving economy in the Middle East, and one of the most advanced in the world; create a vibrant cultural life, which includes some of the leading artists and musicians of the world; and maintain a staunchly democratic ethos amidst a sea of despotic regimes.

  By any criteria, these achievements are nothing short of miraculous. But they are all subsumed under the one greater accomplishment: The Jewish people, after long centuries of exile, has once again seized control over its destiny. And within the next decade or two it will realize the dream of ages, the Ingathering of the Exiles. For the first time since the era of the Second Temple two thousand years ago, the majority of the Jewish people will live in the Jewish homeland. This is a momentous development, the one guarantor of the Jewish future. For it is also true that in the last fifty years, a significant threat to Jewish survival has been the accelerating rate of intermarriage, assimilation, and loss of identity among Jews of the Diaspora, especially the Jews of the West. While the Jewish population of Israel grew from 600,000 in 1948 to five million in 2000, the population of American Jewry stayed flat and is beginning to show alarming signs of steady decline. In Israel itself the threat of assimilation is nonexistent. And to the extent that Jewish identity has been maintained and strengthened in important parts of American Jewry, this is due to the strong identification that these Jews have with the State of Israel. In simple terms, the future of the Jewish people depends on the future of the Jewish state.

  For the Jewish people, therefore, the history of the twentieth century may be summed up thus: If there had been a Jewish state in the first half of the century, there would have been no Holocaust. And if there had not been a Jewish state after the Holocaust, there would have been no Jewish future. The State of Israel is not only the repository of the millennial Jewish hopes for redemption; it is also the one practical instrument for assuring Jewish survival.

  Assuring that survival is not free of problems. Israel has yet to complete the circle of peace around its borders, a peace that must be based on security if it is to last. I view this as the first task facing the country, and any prime minister must dedicate himself to its completion. This of course does not depend on Israel alone, but on the willingness of its Arab neighbors to forge a true compromise with Israel and genuinely accept its right to exist. Perhaps the most difficult agreements to be completed are the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians. This will require the Palestinians to keep their commitments, especially to fight terror, and Israel to maintain adequate security defenses. Much of this book was written before the Oslo Accords, and I have amended and added a few segments to indicate how I believe the Oslo process could be completed so as to provide Israel with peace and security.

  During my three years as Prime Minister (1996–1999), I firmly pursued these principles for a realistic peace, despite a torrent of criticism and abuse from those who cavalierly refuse to understand that in the volatile Middle East, peace without security is a sham. Such shortsightedness ought not to deflect Israel from pursuing a lasting peace that will endure not a flicker of time but for generations to come.

  Assuring its security will also require Israel to address new threats on the horizon, presented by radical regimes developing fearsome weapons and the means to deliver them. Even if Israel completes the circle of peace with its immediate neighbors, and it should strive to do so, this threat will loom large in the coming decades. What if Iraq or Iran detonates nuclear devices? This will send infinitely greater Shockwaves around the world than the addition of India and Pakistan to the league of nuclear nations. The possession of atomic bombs by Saddam Hussein or the Ayatollas of Teheran is not merely a mortal threat to Israel’s existence. It is a threat to the peace of the world. The community of responsible nations will have to make every effort to contain or eliminate this threat. But surely for Israelis, once again they recognize that the one guarantor of their survival against these dangers is their own strength and capacity to deter and punish aggression directed against the state.

  The transformation of the Jewish condition from one of utter powerlessness to one of effective self-defense marks the great change that the founding of Israel introduced into Jewish life, in fact making that life possible. As Herzl and the founding fathers of Zionism foresaw, the founding of the Jewish state would not necessarily stop the attacks on the Jewish people, but would assuredly give the Jews the means to resist and repel those attacks.

  Naturally, such a momentous change in the life of a nation does not occur without internal turbulence and turmoil. Israel is undergoing the adjustment pains as it moves from adolescence to maturity. If initially its governing socialist class wanted to strait-jacket all Israelis into one European socialist prototype, they have had a hard time accepting the fact that this will not happen, that the currents of life and the natural desire for unrestricted diversity and pluralism are more powerful than any rigid ideological construct. Israel after half a century is a rich tapestry of Jews from a hundred lands, each bringing to the national fabric its own unique strands of culture, folklore, and memory. Modern Hebrew is laced with Russian, Arabic, and English slang, and with expressions liberally borrowed from the Jews of Poland and Morocco alike. Each community affects the other, creating a dynamic synthesis that enhances the national culture. There are of course some lingering sharp divides, as between Israel’s Jewish majority and its non-Jewish minority and, in the Jewish population, between the secular majority and an ultra-orthodox minority. It takes a crisis in the Persian Gulf to remind Israelis that inflying Iraqi missiles do not distinguish between religious and non-religious Jews, and, in fact, between any of the groups that make up Israel’s population. Yet I believe that despite the inevitable frictions that accompany this extraordinary maturation of an immigrant nation,
the forces that unite the people of Israel are infinitely greater than those that divide them: a common past in a sacred ancestral homeland, and a millennial desire to return to this land and forge in it a common future.

  This of course is not the picture of Israel presented by many observers, as Israel celebrated its jubilee. The foreign press amplified the Israeli press, which regularly amplifies the grievances of the old elites that complain of giving way to the new realities. This chorus of gloom is an episodic and irrelevant footnote in the larger tale of Jewish revival in the last fifty years. After all that we have struggled against, and all that we have achieved, I have no doubt that Israel can meet with equal success the remaining challenges of external and internal peace.

  Israel at the start of the twenty-first century is undoubtedly one of the greatest success stories of the twentieth century. Communism, fascism, socialism, and so many other “isms” have crumbled into dust. But Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, the one true liberation movement amidst so many false ones, has far from crumbled. It has fended off powerful foes, and is on the verge of creating the second most successful technological society on earth, the “Silicon Wadi,” as it is becoming known. In a profound sense, Zionism has achieved its central purpose of securing Jewish independence in the Jewish land, and it can look to the future and its challenges with confidence.

  It can do so with the remarkable kinship and support of the American people. The friendship of the United States of America has been a cornerstone of Israel’s modern history. It is a partnership based on common values and common ideals, and it remains constant. The New York Times, which affords ample space for the discontent of the Israeli left, expressed in noteworthy honesty its surprise at a Jubilee year poll commissioned by the newspaper, which showed that instead of waning, American support for Israel had reached a twenty-year high. Non-Jewish Americans from every part of that great land identified with Israel and not with its adversaries. They deeply valued the special relationship between Israel and the United States. Many thought of Israel as the biblical promised land upon which America was modeled. They saw Jerusalem as the original city on the hill and strongly believed that it must never be divided again. They viewed Israel’s struggle as one of a solitary democracy surrounded by dictatorships, resolutely fighting terrorism. Beyond the swirl of daily events and the often tendentious coverage of Israeli affairs, this is what emerges in the American mind when the name of Israel is evoked. It need not surprise anyone for a simple reason: It is true.