Uri Savir, the director-general of the Israeli foreign ministry who was among those negotiating accords with the Palestinians in Oslo and Cairo, told leaders of American Jewish organizations that they should not “sit on the fence,” neither supporting nor opposing the Israeli government’s current peace initiatives.
“We invite you to be on the voyage with us, rather than standing on the shore with the skeptics who are hypnotized by past weakness,” Savir told the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in a meeting that was held Monday.
“It’s your responsibility to follow us now. You may have questions, we have questions. But I know I am speaking to a group that doesn’t sit on the fence. It’s important to us. You were with us in times of war, and now in times of peace.
“I believe your support — to stand up and be counted for the peace process — is as important for the American Jewish community as it is for us,” he said.
Savir said he respected those ideologically opposed to the peace process, but not those who sit on the fence.
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres “cannot sit on the fence. For a leader, there is no ‘yes-but.’ One has to make decisions,” said Savir.
Savir began the meeting by describing three questions he would not answer — because, he said, they were irrelevant: Do you really trust the Palestinians? Are you optimistic or pessimistic? And do you believe the Palestinians can make it work?
The first question is irrelevant, he said, “because what is at stake is not trust. What matters is self-interest. If we invoke Palestinian self-interest to live side by side with Israel, they will live side by side with Israel.”
The question of optimism or pessimism, said Savir, is based on the mistaken premise that “we don’t affect our own future. The question stems from a very difficult fatalism in Jewish life and Israeli life.”
‘WE WERE RUNNING THEIR LIVES’
What the Oslo process is about, said Savir, is that Israel discovered that “we are a very strong country, a regional superpower.” Israel, he said, is self-reliant not only in its security, but in being able to shape its future with its neighbors.
As to whether the Palestinians can govern the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho, Savir said the question reflects “a sudden heartbreaking Jewish anxiety about how the Palestinians can run their own affairs.”
Israel, he said, made a strategic decision that it is strong enough to run its own affairs and let the Palestinians run theirs.
“We were running their lives against our will, because it was imposed on us by Arab rejectionism in 1967. Ultimately, it’s their business. We have enough challenges to run Jewish life,” he said.
Savir added that it is a mistake to look at the Palestinians every hour with a stopwatch to examine “have they done well, have they done badly.
“Anyone who expects the Palestinians to turn overnight into a Jeffersonian government, a Swiss economy and a London-type police force is mistaken.
“The internal problems and internal struggles will go on for years,” he said.
He added that terrorism will not stop under Palestinian self-rule. “We’re better at (stopping) it than they are, and we don’t stop all of it.”
Savir said that the year of negotiations, first secretly in Oslo and now publicly, developed empathy on both sides.
“We discovered Israel and Jews don’t have a monopoly on suffering. There are deep wounds on both sides. If you don’t analyze them carefully they will probably never go away,” he said.
Just as an Israeli child orphaned by a terrorist attack will probably never forgive or trust Palestinians, so too, said Savir, a Palestinian child who has seen his father humiliated by a soldier –no matter how valid the reason — may perhaps never forgive Israelis.
“If we want peace for Israel, we have to start to heal the wounds. It won’t start tomorrow. It may be a full generation before Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation.”
In response to a question by Lester Pollack, chairman of the Conference of Presidents, about the Israeli soldiers missing in action since the 1982 War in Lebanon, Savir said, “You shouldn’t be concerned that we don’t do enough.
“A lot is happening that can’t be told. Not only with (Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser) Arafat, but with different elements that are much less partners of ours,” he said.
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