| November 29, 1998 The agreement brokered by President Clinton at Wye River has given a much needed kick-start to the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. The stalemate had gone on since early last year, and was threatening the stability of the whole region. Well last week, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid a brief official visit to London to meet Tony Blair and update him on the recent progress. Just a few hours before he left, I spoke to him and asked him if the Wye River negotiations were being followed up and had put the whole process, broadly back on track? BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: Yes, I think they are, but I want to be sober and clear about it and at the same time, hopeful. The hope is based on realism, you know, you have to have a vision of where you want to go, but you have to have your feet planted on the ground to make sure you are actually going there. Where I want to go, is to have peace between us and the Palestinians in which they undertake to commit to fight terrorism in the territories they have received. Peace and terrorism cannot co-exist. For example, today we had a tragic loss of additional soldiers in Lebanon. And we want to end the conflict there, we want to get the Israeli army out of Lebanon, have the Lebanese army move into the South. If I told you that we will have peace with Lebanon and Hizbollah would continue to attack Israel, that Hizbollah terrorists in the South of Lebanon would continue to shell Israeli towns and villages with Katyusha rockets, you would say "Well, that is not peace". If I tell you that we made peace with the Palestinians five years ago when we signed the Oslo Accords, but terrorists continue to operate in increasing numbers from Palestinian areas, you would say, "that is not peace". That is what the Israeli public said when they elected me. They said "we want a real peace", and what I did in the Wye River conference that we have just had, is to say to Arafat, "All right, I am prepared to hand over additional territory that was promised to you by my predecessors, but I will only do that, if you show me, demonstrate to me, prove to me, that you are actually carrying our your responsibility to fight terrorism. And that is the gist of, the substance of our policy which is "reciprocity and security". The Palestinians not only need to sign a piece of paper, but they have to have compliance. President Clinton said that about Iraq, he said it is not enough to have an agreement, you have to have compliance and in this case, what I am seeking, and we so far, had it for two weeks, is Palestinian compliance. Now I have to see that we have it for the next period as well. DAVID FROST: But at the same time, really Hamas, for instance, is as much an enemy of the Palestinian Authority and Yasser Arafat, as it is an enemy of yours. I mean they are not on their side. They are a threat to them. BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: That is my precise point to Arafat. I said, "we have these terrorists who are threatening both of us, and it is time to get off the fence". You cannot make peace with terrorism and make peace with Hamas at the same time. It is one or the other but not both. The Peace Agreement, Oslo Accords, the Hebron Accords, which I signed and most recently the Wye Accords, say that Arafat must choose, that he must take a stance against Hamas and the terrorist organizations that it fosters. And if he does that, then, yes, peace will move forward, I guarantee you that. DAVID FROST: And there is positive indication that that is happening, that they are trying. BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: So far, in the last two weeks, we saw that they did more or less what they promised to do. We will still see that over the next two and a half months of implementing this Accord. But the question is that many Israelis say is "all right, what happens after the Palestinian Authority receives the territory". This is a lot of criticism that is directed to me. They say, "what will happen after they receive the territories, what will assure us that they will still keep their side of the deal and not make some bargain with Hamas, to restart terrorist attacks against us". And I have said that to the Palestinians. I have said, "you know what the biggest pressure on you not to violate your word is, you will lose the Israeli public forever". If we give you territory, and you end up just pocketing it and allowing it to be used again, as a staging area for terrorists, you will never have the goodwill of the Israeli people that you need to move further down the road in realizing your aspirations. You will have the Israeli people line up, like a solid rock, saying 'we will not be fooled again'". DAVID FROST: But at the same time, if one group got through, created a small atrocity, hopefully no atrocity, but if they have tried and failed, if the Palestinian Authority try and fail in one case, just as tragically as happened in Israel itself, where Mossad could not stop them all, whatever it was, if they really try and fail, one failure does not blow this deal. BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: No, no, it is the effort we look into and we have as you know, very good intelligence so we know if they are trying. And what we want to see is 100% of effort which unfortunately has been missing up to now. I have taken a lot of personal beatings for standing up on this principle, that they must do their part on security. They must do their part in fighting terrorism. Because basically, until we came to the scene, it was a one way deal, Israel would give and never receive anything and you know changing that, in creating some responsibly and creating some mutuality, in what was essentially a one way deal, is very hard to do. It did not make me particularly popular in Arab circles or European circles, but it made very clear what I wanted to achieve. A real, durable, and reciprocal peace. DAVID FROST: Do you expect that the Covenant, the anti-Israel "destruction of Israel" covenant will be removed on schedule? BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: Well, in three weeks time the Palestinians will have a meeting in which they will invite all the members of their Palestine National Council, that is their supreme body, and we said at Wye they will have to affirm the annulment of those charter provisions which call for the destruction of Israel. Can you imagine, we sign the Oslo Accords five years ago and week one, Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, were supposed to tear up this "charter of hate" that calls for our annihilation. And they have not done it. I came to Wye and I said "It has got to stop". It is because my children, the children of Israel, my country, has a right to exist. If you want to make peace with me, you have to recognize, officially recognize that right. Well, they did not want to. They said "We already did that, "we do not want to". I said "So what? ... you did not. But quite apart from that, you should stand up there, in front of the entire world and say in Arabic, on Palestinian television, so every Palestinian home, every Palestinian child hears you saying, "It is over" just like Sadat said in the Israeli Knesset. "No more war, no more bloodshed" and he endeared himself to all the Israeli hearts since then. But I want to see, finally, 35 years after this Charter to annihilate Israel was accepted by this body, five years after the Oslo Accords were supposed to make peace with Israel and annul this Charter, I insist that the Palestinians recognize the right of my country, my people, my family to live in peace in the Middle East. DAVID FROST: And that is coming up in just three weeks time. BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: Yes, indeed. DAVID FROST: Early next month, also, is scheduled negotiations formally launched on the "end game" as some people say, on the huge issues that remained to be resolved, like Jerusalem, powers of a Palestinian State, whether it is a state or not, etc., as well as return of refugees, water agreements, and all of those other agreements, and so on. Given that Wye River was quite hard work, can you be at all optimistic about this next round of the major negotiations? BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: Yes, if there is goodwill and seriousness on the other side. You know to achieve a permanent peace beyond Wye, to achieve a permanent peace between Israel and the Palestinians, we would have to strike a balance between Israel's needs to protect its vital interests, especially security, and the Palestinians desire to govern their own lives. They want to govern their own lives, we want to protect our lives. And there has to be some equitable balance struck between the two. It is impossible to arrive at such a balance in a way other than negotiations. At the end of the implementation of the Wye River accords 99% of the Palestinians will all live under Palestinian rule. So it is not a question of human rights or of removing an occupation. The Palestinians, for better or worse, now live under Palestinian rule. But we will have a debate on the remaining territories which are part of our ancestral homeland and equally important, are vital for Israel's defenses. Suppose I said, I do not like the way the negotiations are going, I do not like the pace of the negotiations. I am going to annex the remaining territories, that is the way I feel about it. Well, there would be an immediate furore in all the Foreign Ministries of the world and in Parliaments and the press and so on. And you know what, they would be right. This is not a unilateral decision, we are committed to a negotiating process, yet this is exactly what Arafat is saying to them. He is saying, "on May 5th, no matter what happens in the negotiations, if I am not satisfied, I will declare unilaterally a Palestinian State" which could have unlimited powers, the powers to make a deal with Saddam Hussein, the powers to bring Iraqi soldiers on the hills above Tel Aviv. Clearly unacceptable. So I have said to Arafat, and I said this to President Clinton too in the Wye River negotiations, "We must be committed to unconditional and continued negotiations until a permanent peace is achieved, until white smoke comes out". That is the way to negotiate this. We have to rid ourselves of the notions that we can dictate to one another a result or that we can threaten violence as unfortunately the Palestinians did the other day. We just have to sit there and negotiate. And the answer to your question is, therefore, "Yes". If there is a parallel commitment on the part of the Palestinians to negotiate unconditionally and continuously, I believe we are capable of achieving this final settlement. DAVID FROST: To what extent has this process, I mean having been at the center of all of these pressures, to what extent has it been a learning experience. Have you learnt something in the time you have been Prime Minister. BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: Oh, yes, very much so. At the end of the day you stand alone with your beliefs. We now have a peculiar coalition of attacks against the Agreement and against me from the political partisans of the left who want to find a way to bring down the Government at any cost, going against their own self professed advocacy of peace. They say, "we want the peace process to go forward but want to bring down the Government that brought peace". And they make an alliance with the far right flank, to my right, who opposes any deal. And so you have the strange alliance and they end up shooting at you from both sides and on a balmy morning when you are sitting in the genteel environment of the Israeli Knesset, [that is a joke by the way David, you are not laughing] and when you hear these attacks, you ask yourself what should guide me and why. And the answer is the same, what you believe is the right thing to do. That is the pursuit of peace with security and reciprocity. These are not empty words from me, they are the compass, the map which I intend to bring a better future for my country and for its citizens. |
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