When one looks back on the annals of humanity over thousands of
years, one sees a very sad history. Basically, it is a story of
wars, of killing, of overpowering the enemy. It is a history that
was replete with wars of existence, because the sources of life, of
wealth and strength depended so much upon land, upon fertility of
the land, upon its size, upon natural resources. People formed
armies, took to arms, and went to war either to defend their land,
or to extend it; either to protect their natural resources or to
win more. Thus, one can understand why, in the past, wars were so
frequent.
Not a Question of Size
Today, we live in a world where there is no longer any need to make
our living dependent upon territory. Today, what makes a country
strong or weak, rich or poor, is science, technology and
information. It has nothing to do with the size or wealth of your
own land. As an Israeli, I always compare our country to other
countries. It we compare Israel, say, to Japan, we see that the
Japanese have a country which is not more than 15 times the size of
Israel. They don't have oil, they don't have gold, they don't have
silver; the only thing they really have are their human resources.
With these human resources they became the second-largest economic
power in our time. All was the result of science and
technology.
When I compare Israel to the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union is a
thousand times the size of Israel. We are 24,000 sq. km and they
are 24,000,000 sq. km. Not only is their land vast, but they also
have abundant water. The Soviet Union has three million lakes; we
have two lakes, one dead. They have 100,000 rivers, 4 of them among
the largest in the world, like the Volga and the Dnieper. Israel
has a single river which has more history than water. It is a river
for public relations. The Russians really have everything,
including an extremely intelligent people.
Yet Russia does not have enough food, and Israel exports food. This
is not because we are a vast land with wealth, water and minerals,
but because our agriculture is based upon science and technology.
When we renewed our relations with Russia, the first thing the
Russians did was to buy cows from Israel. Why cows? Because it
turned out that the Israeli cows produce three times more milk than
the Russian ones. The difference is not in the animals, but in the
system.
And the moral of the story is that it is the system that counts.
Armies can't conquer wisdom; armies can't defend stomachs, and
nations can't make science and technology an exclusively national
matter, for they are international. We are talking so much about
globalization, but globalization was not a purpose, but a result.
Nobody can control the flow of knowledge or information. You can't
really have a national economy; the only thing that can be national
is poverty. If you want to remain poor, have a national economy. If
you want to advance, you have to be global. Today, science,
information and technology are global. They don't have any
sovereignty or any borders. Thus, all the reasons to stop fighting,
to stop bloodshed, are manifest. And when our children and
grandchildren ask us what we were doing, we should not be able to
say: Well, we were fighting. They will ask us: What for, why
weren't you learning, why weren't you teaching, or researching, or
renewing, or inventing, or creating, that's what you should have
done.
Dangers Instead of Enemies
I am not talking about the future; I am talking about the present.
Unfortunately, people prefer to remember, to remember the things
they already know, rather than to think. Thinking means confronting
the unfamiliar. It demands making assessments for the sake of the
future. I believe that we have to change much familiar thinking in
our own country.
In the world today, instead of enemies, we have dangers. We have
dangers of intercontinental ballistic missiles, of nuclear,
chemical and biological warheads. We cannot necessarily confine
them to a certain place. They are neither limited by borders nor
defined by national passports. They are all over the place. From a
world of enemies, to a world of dangers.
And when we begin to look straight into the face of the future, we
have to make some very clear choices. We have to make four major
decisions:
One, to continue war or to make peace. Outwardly, it looks as if
this is not a choice. Sometimes it is easier to go to war than to
make peace. When you are at war, the people are united; when you
have a dialogue with yourself, you are brilliant, you win all
points.
When you make peace, you have to make concessions; you have to make
compromises. And then some people say: Why are you making
compromises, why are you making concessions? We can do it cheaper
and better. If we want to have peace, we have to understand that
you can't have peace without the Palestinians. And you can't have
peace with the Palestinians until you take into consideration their
interests and not only ours.
The second choice is, should we go for one state without giving
back land, or should we go for two states? If we do not give back
anything, and if there won't be a Palestinian state, Israel will
immediately become a binational state - a binational state where
the two nations are not ready to live together, and where they will
fight and accuse one another, trying to overcome each other, trying
to win on every point of controversy. And we shall hand over to our
children a binational tragedy. That is why I believe that it is
better to have two states, an Israeli state and a Palestinian
state.
And we must understand that the Palestinian state has to enjoy
freedom, as we have to enjoy security. We cannot have a 100-percent
security without them having a 100-percent freedom. If we are
serious, and if we are honest with ourselves, it is in our interest
to help the Palestinians build their own independence. In Oslo, two
things happened, not one. Not only did we try to reach peace with
the Palestinians, but also a legitimate Palestinian identity was
formed. When we negotiated with the Egyptians, they had existed for
a long time. The same goes for Jordan. In the past, we tried to
solve the Palestinian problem without a Palestinian partner. And in
Oslo, I think it was clearly established that there is a
Palestinian partner.
Borders - A New Role
Here I get to the third point. If there are going to be two states,
and I am sure there are going to be two states, then I would not
like to see one state extremely rich and the other extremely poor.
If there will be a difference in the level of economic and social
development, if there will be discrimination and inferiority, it
will corrupt the horizons of our children. What used to be national
conflict, will emerge also as an economic conflict. It is because
of this, I believe, that it is in our interest to see the
Palestinian state become modern, flourishing and democratic, on the
same level as ours.
The fourth and last point is that borders were needed when you had
to defend the country against the mass influx of cheap labor, or
cheap commodities. Today, borders no longer determine economic
order. If you want the world to be open to you, you have to be open
to the world.
We no longer need the old partition among nations, and we don't
have to build barbed wire alongside the borders or to plant mines
there. Borders can become a factor for cooperation, for joint
ventures to enable people from all walks of life to come and work
together and live together. I got excited when I visited Venice for
the first time in my life, and I saw the bridges across the canals.
You have probably noticed that over every bridge you have shops and
workshops, so the bridge is both a link and a good venue for
business. What is happening over the bridges of Venice can happen
on the borders between us. Between us and the Palestinians and the
Jordanians and the Egyptians. I think we have to look at reality
and understand where we have to compromise, and where we have to
insist. And we must remember that we do not have the right to hand
over to our children an impossible situation of hatred, of arms, of
sickness, of fear, of misunderstanding. History changes; we are
marching towards a different world, towards a peaceful world.