Premier Yitzhak Rabin stressed Israel’s commitment to peace in a message to world Jewry on the occasion of the 29th anniversary of Israel’s independence.
“We work and pray for peace even as we must continue to defend ourselves until peace with security is achieved,” Rabin declared. He said that “Israel is ready to join in any reasonable initiative that will bring our sovereign neighbors to the negotiating table face-to-face with us at the Geneva peace conference.”
But, he added: “The central theme of such a conference must be the ending of the Arab-Israel conflict once and for all. If this be the goal, Israel will seek mutual compromises for the sake of a secure peace. We shall be ready to take risks, but never to the point that our vital national security will ever again be placed in jeopardy.”
Rabin noted that this year Yom Ha’atzmaut coincides with the 10th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem. “Both events register revolutionary episodes in the contemporary Jewish calendar,” he said. “They dramatize the march forward of the liberation movement of the Jewish people in our times. They are the Jewish answer to those who seek to defame Zionism, who attack the centrality of the Jewish State in our Jewish lives and who declare war on the unique place of our people in history.”
Rabin emphasized that Israel’s independence made it possible for the first time for Jews to determine their own future. “Never before have we, the Jewish people, been so equipped to make our own decisions by our own self-determination,” he said.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
