"Until 1967, Israel did not hold an inch of the Sinai Peninsula and the West Bank, the Gaza Strip or the Golan Heights. Israel held not an acre of what is now considered disputed territory. And yet we enjoyed no peace.
Year after year Israel called for pleaded for a negotiated peace with the Arab governments. Their answer was a blank refusal and more war... The reason was not a conflict over territorial claims. The reason was, and remains, the fact that a free Jewish state sits on territory at all."
Prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, before a joint session of the US Congress, January 28, 1976
Mr. Vice-President, Mr. Speaker,
Until 1967, Israel did not hold an inch of the Sinai Peninsula and the West Bank, the Gaza Strip or the Golan Heights. Israel held not an acre of what is now considered disputed territory. And yet we enjoyed no peace. Year after year Israel called for – pleaded for – a negotiated peace with the Arab governments. Their answer was a blank refusal and more war.
The reason was not a conflict over territorial claims. The reason was, and remains, the fact that a Free Jewish State sits on territory at all.
It is in this context that the Palestinian issue must be appraised. That issue is not the obstacle to peace as some would suggest. Certainly, it has to be solved in the context of a final peace. But to assert that this is the key to peace, the formula for peace, or the breakthrough to peace, is to misread the realities. It is to put the cart before the horse.
The Palestinian issue began with, and is a product of, the overall Arab posture on the legitimacy of a Jewish State of Israel. Only when that posture changes will the Palestinian issue be constructively and finally tackled.
The clock of history cannot be put back. It was not Israel that prevented the establishment of a Palestinian State in 1947, as the Partition Plan had proposed. What did prevent it, was the Arab declaration of war on the Plan itself, because it called for the creation of a Jewish State.
For nineteen years no Arab government saw fit to establish a Palestinian State, even though the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were under Arab control. Neither was there a Palestinian demand to do so. In January 1964, the organization that calls itself the P.L.O. was established by Arab Heads of State. Yet, even then, statehood in those territories, then held by Jordan and Egypt, was never the objective. We know what the objective is. It is written large into the Palestinian Covenant which is their binding constitution. Every paragraph of it spits out the venom calling for Israel’s destruction.
These are the truths that lie at the heart and the core of the Arab-Israel conflict. And since, to date, the Arab version of peace does not depart from these truths, no honest being can blame us for refusing to cooperate in our own national suicide.
I do not know when peace will finally come. But of this I am certain: it will be our future strength that will largely determine the resources of peace in our region. Weakness is no prescription for negotiation. If it be perceived that Israel is not weak, so shall our neighbors perceive the wisdom of mutual compromise, reconciliation and peace.