A Durable Peace

by Benjamin Netanyahu

  That Israel’s existence was a bigger issue than the location of its borders was brought home to me in the first peace negotiations that I attended as a delegate to the Madrid Peace Conference in October 1991. In Madrid, the head of the Palestinian delegation delivered a flowery speech calling for the cession of major Israeli population centers to a new Palestinian state and the swamping of the rest of Israel with Arab refugees, 1 while the Syrian foreign minister questioned whether the Jews, not being a nation, had a right to a state of their own in the first place. 2 (And this at a peace conference!) Grievances over disputed lands and disputed waters, on which the conference sponsors hoped the participants would eventually focus their attention, receded into insignificance in the face of such a primal hostility toward Israel’s existence. This part of the conference served to underscore the words of Syria’s defense minister, Mustafa Tlas, who with customary bluntness had summed up the issue one year earlier: “The conflict between the Arab nation and Zionism is over existence, not borders.” 3

  This remains the essential problem nearly a decade later. The fact that the Syrians place such immense obstacles before the resumption of peace talks with us, and the fact that the Palestinians resisted for more than a year my call to enter fast-track negotiations for a final settlement, underscores their reluctance to make a genuine and lasting peace with us. To receive territory is not to make peace. Peace requires that you also give something in return, namely arrangements not to use the land that is handed over to you as a future staging area for attacks against Israel. Equally, peace requires that our Arab partners educate their people to an era of mutual acceptance, something we have failed to see in many parts of the Arab world.

  To begin resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict, one must begin here. The Arabs must be asked forthrightly and unconditionally to make their peace with Israel’s existence. The Arab regimes must move not only to a state of nonbelligerency but to a complete renunciation of the desire to destroy the Jewish state—a renunciation that will gain credibility only when they establish a formal peace with Israel. This means ending the economic boycott and the explosive arms buildup, and signing peace treaties with Israel. The Arab states must resign themselves to something they have opposed for so long: not merely the fact but the right of Israel’s permanent presence among them. This necessarily means that they will have to accept mutual coexistence as the operating principle in their relations with the Jewish state.

  A policy of coexistence between the United States and the Soviet Union was of course promulgated in the heyday of the Cold War, and we have become so used to hearing the phrase that we are inured to its profound importance. For even at a time when the Communists were possessed by doctrines of global domination, they were saying that they understood that there was a higher interest, higher even than the Marxist cause: the survival of their own society and of the planet as a whole.

  This is a rational attitude since it allows warring societies to live, evolve, and eventually resolve the antagonisms between them. The crucial idea of mutual coexistence is setting limits to conflict. Yet for close to a century Arab society and Arab politics have been commandeered by an anti-Jewish obsession that has known no limits: It harnessed the Nazis, promoted the Final Solution, launched five wars against Israel, embarked on a campaign of global terrorism, strangled the world’s economy with oil blackmail, and now, in Iraq and elsewhere, is attempting to build nuclear bombs for the great Armageddon. This obsession must be stopped not only for Israel’s sake but for the sake of the Arabs themselves and for the sake of the world.

  It will not do to obscure the primacy of this existential opposition to Israel as the driving force of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Such obfuscation is fashionable in current commentaries on Israel and Arabs, in the form of a neat symmetry imposed on their respective needs and desires. These commentaries hold that Israel’s demand for Arab recognition of its right to exist should be met in exchange for various Arab demands, especially for land. Yet to treat these demands as symmetrical, as the two sides of an equation, is to ignore both history and causality. Worse, it sets a price tag on the lives of millions of Jews and their nation.

  To see this clearly, imagine the situation in reverse. Suppose Israel refused to recognize Syria’s right to exist and threatened to destroy the entire country unless Syria were to evacuate a swatch of territory controlled by Syria that Israel claimed as its own. This would be widely and correctly viewed as lunacy. Yet the Arabs’ refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist unless it caves in to their territorial demands for lands from which they have attacked Israel is accorded serious consideration, even respect, in current diplomacy. What is overlooked is that Israel’s right to exist is no more negotiable than is the right of Syria or Egypt to exist.

  The Arabs often say that the wrong done to the Palestinians is so great that they cannot come to terms with Israel’s existence until it is set aright. But this argument, too, is intended only to confound the issue. The Palestinian Arabs were offered a state by the United Nations in 1947, and they rejected it. So did the Arab states, which not only unanimously opposed Palestinian statehood but sent their armies into Palestine to grab whatever they could—for themselves. Further, when the West Bank and Gaza, which Jordan and Egypt captured in 1948, were in Arab hands, barely a whisper about Palestinian statehood was ever heard in either place. Thus, there is no shred of a historical connection linking the demand for Palestinian statehood to the Arab refusal to recognize Israel.

  The issue of the Palestinian Arabs requires a fair and forthright solution that takes into account their full situation and the question of their civil status, alongside the cardinal issues of Jewish rights and Israeli security. But one thing must be said clearly at the outset: The grievances of the Palestinian Arabs, real or imagined, cannot be a loaded gun held to Israel’s temple. Today, after five major wars, Egypt and Jordan have signed peace treaties with Israel and some of the other Arab states are prepared to recognize Israel, but only in exchange for a Palestinian state bordering Tel Aviv that would obviously jeopardize Israel’s existence. This prerequisite, which is now demanded in nearly every corner of the Arab world, shows the distance that the Arabs must still travel in permanently reconciling themselves to the presence of a Jewish state in their midst.

  This is not surprising if one considers the enormous anti-Israel propaganda that has been directed at the Arab and Moslem masses, in which 150 million people have been endlessly told that a tiny country in their midst has no place under the sun, that it must be “excised like a cancerous tumor” and “thrown into the dustbin of history,” as I heard my Iranian counterpart at the UN say in 1984. When this notion is repeated again and again, day in and day out, for half a century, there is no reason why the Arab masses should alter their hostility toward Israel. To be sure, the Madrid Conference, despite its disappointments, also offered some glimmers of hope. Haltingly, awkwardly, Arabs and Israelis began a direct, face-to-face dialogue that started a process that may lead to peace. But Teheran had been touched by none of the stirrings toward change. Instead, it tossed up a resolution, signed by delegates from all over the Moslem world, including representatives of various PLO factions, calling once again for the annihilation of Israel. 4

  This is a symptom of a political pathology. Its essence, like that of certain psychological pathologies in the individual, is an escape from reality and the summoning of violence to act out irrational impulses. The first requirement of peace is that this fanaticism not be brooked. It should be condemned and excoriated in most vigorous terms wherever it appears. (The Islamic conference in Teheran received hardly a murmur of protest from any of the Western capitals.) It cannot be dismissed as posturing because, if left unchallenged, it contaminates the views of the pragmatists and realists among the Arabs and further inflames the passions of the “Arab street” of which the realists must be continually wary.

  While there are many in the West who are prepared to admit the moral necessity of Arab reco
gnition of Israel, there is also a widespread acceptance of the Arabs’ utterly utilitarian rejoinder: What’s in it for us? If not territorial concessions from Israel, then what do the Arabs get out of peace? Setting aside momentarily the issue of disputed territory (I will soon return to it), the Arabs have plenty to gain from the state of peace in and of itself.

  First, they can avoid the escalating costs of war. As the Gulf War showed, war is becoming extremely expensive and exceedingly destructive. With the advance of military technology, precision bombing, laser-guided missiles, and the sheer firepower packed in today’s artillery and tanks, an Arab leader bent on war could find his army destroyed, his capital in ruins, his regime threatened, and if he is not lucky, his own life in jeopardy. Saddam, after all, was very lucky. What could he have possibly put up against Norman Schwarzkopf’s divisions if the American general had received the order to march on to Basra and Baghdad? At best he himself could have sought a hiding place in Iraq or escaped the country altogether, as Mengistu of Ethiopia did when his military collapsed (although given the skills in assassination of several of Saddam’s Arab adversaries, it is not clear that he would have survived very long in hiding or exile).

  But war today carries not only military and personal risks, it invites unparalleled economic desolation. The bombs may be smarter, but they are also more destructive. According to a UN report, the obliteration of Iraq’s infrastructure of roads, bridges, railway lines, power plants, oil refineries, and industrial enterprises meant that “food… cannot be distributed; water cannot be purified; sewage cannot be pumped away and cleansed; crops cannot be irrigated; medicines cannot be conveyed where they are required.” In short, the report concluded, Iraq had been “relegated to the pre-industrial age.” 5 This may have been an exaggerated assessment, but it is nevertheless sobering to realize that this was a level of damage inflicted by an adversary that was discriminate in its use of force. Iraq—which was, to say the least, less discriminate in using force—exacted an economic toll from Kuwait estimated to be as high as $30 billion. 6 The pursuit of modern warfare therefore entails the triple risk of military, political, and economic devastation on a scale that is constantly escalating. Surely after the Gulf War the Arab leaders must ask themselves whether Israel would again sit back in the case of armed attack. And just as surely they must know that the answer is no. Further, if Israel were to face a threat to its existence, it would respond with awesome power—something that no sane person, Arab or Jew, could possibly desire.

  As the cost of war rises, the benefits of avoiding war and establishing peace rise accordingly. Not only does peace allow a country to avoid devastation, it enables it to build on its existing economic foundation rather than devote several years and untold resources to rebuilding ruins. And it allows it to cooperate with its neighbors for mutual betterment.

  Herein lie the greatest benefits of peace: the tremendous possibilities inherent in mutual cooperation between Arabs and Israelis. While this fact was always clear to Israel, it has yet to penetrate the thinking of most Arab leaders, to the obvious detriment of their societies. For the Arab world stands to gain as much from making peace with Israel as Israel stands to gain from making peace with the Arabs.

  What would peace be like if the entire Arab world truly believed in it? There is no area of life that would not be affected. Take trade, as an obvious first example. Since the Six Day War, Israel’s “open bridges” policy created a flourishing trade between Israel and Jordan across the Allenby Bridge over the Jordan River. The signing of the peace treaty between Jordan and Israel significantly expanded this trade. Such trade could be further expanded and its scope with Jordan and with other Arab countries substantially broadened. Equally, the Arab world could have access to Israel’s ports on the Mediterranean and to technology and to other advances in the Israeli marketplace.

  Water, too, looms large as a potential benefit of peace. This second precious liquid (the other is oil) will be the focus of much contention in the coming years. Agreements on water will be harder to achieve in an increasingly parched Middle East, whose growing populations will put mounting demands on a limited water supply. It is thus in everyone’s interest to negotiate water agreements early on. The first to enjoy the benefits of peace in this regard has been Jordan. With only 150 cubic meters of water per capita per year (as compared to Syria’s 2,000 cubic meters), Jordan is an exceedingly dry country. Israeli-Jordanian cooperation has increased the available water supply for Jordan, and enhanced cooperation could expand available water for both countries. This is especially true in the Arava region, the long valley connecting the Red Sea to the Dead Sea. The Arava is neatly divided down the middle between Israel and Jordan, and both countries draw waters from the wells dug into its sandy soil that exceed the capacity of the aquifer to replenish itself. This is leading to increasing salin-ization, endangering the future water supply. A coordinated policy could greatly ameliorate the situation. Israeli and Jordanian scientists could study the problem and devise a joint water policy for mutual benefit; after all, the subterranean water table does not recognize national boundaries. Equally, peace could enable Israel and Jordan to cooperate in the construction of a single desaliniza-tion plant of appropriate scale on the Red Sea, a project that could prove far more economically sensible than separate, smaller Israeli and Jordanian facilities. Such an effort could be joined by another water-starved neighbor bordering on the Red Sea—Saudi Arabia. 7

  Syria, while on the face of it much more plentiful in water, nevertheless feels pressed by Turkey’s plans to dam the Euphrates, which provides a sizable amount of Syria’s water. This in turn has led to increased tensions among Syria, Jordan, and Israel over the existing division of the waters of the Yarmuk tributary to the Jordan River, which is bordered by all three countries. Peace agreements would of course require review of the Yarmuk arrangements originally negotiated by President Eisenhower’s emissary, Eric Johnston, in 1955; but they could also assist Syria in using its other available water much more efficiently. Israel has devised methods such as drip irrigation to ensure that 85 percent of its irrigation water actually reaches the crops (15 percent is lost to evaporation and runoff). In Syria the efficiency is less than 40 percent. With the establishment of peace, Israel could teach Syrian farmers the techniques for more efficient water usage, just as it taught Arab farmers in Judea and Samaria to increase their irrigation efficiency from 40 percent to today’s 80 percent. And Israeli engineers could also help Syria build the national projects it now lacks to carry water to arid sections of the country, just as Israel did in building its National Water Carrier. 8

  Among the other regional benefits of peace would be unfettered tourism and even broader access of Israel’s medical facilities to the Arab states. This is one of the best-known yet least-discussed secrets in the Arab world. On any given day you can find in Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem members of the Saudi royal family, Jordanian jet-setters, and patients from virtually all the rest of the Arab world who come for both routine and special medical treatment. What are now incognito sojourns for selected patients could become, especially if accompanied by training programs for doctors from the Arab countries, an open service that could substantially improve health care throughout the region. The Israeli presence on the West Bank has resulted in a significant improvement in this regard, dramatically reducing infant mortality and improving other health indicators. Peace could bring overall effects like this to many Arab countries, literally improving millions of lives.

  This discussion of the benefits of peace remains largely theoretical because it assumes a genuine transformation of Arab attitudes toward Israel. But such a transformation is so difficult to achieve that even the establishment of a formal peace with Egypt has not produced it. Egypt continues to keep Israel at arm’s length, maintaining a “cold peace” consisting of a low-profile and extremely circumscribed relationship that has prevented the realization of the full gamut of possibilities for both countries. If peace wi
th Israel could bring such enormous benefits to the Arab states, why has virtually no Arab leader stepped forward to explain these benefits to his people and obtain it for them? Could 150 million people be blind, almost to a person, to something so obvious?

  The answer is that they are not. In every Arab society there are those for whom no explanation is needed concerning the urgent need to end the state of war, recognize Israel, and get on with the joint task of bringing the Middle East into the twentieth century before the twentieth century is out. But two obstacles stand in the way of such realism. First, while the benefits of peace are understood by isolated individuals, such a perspective is uncommon. Many Arab leaders who profess a desire for “peace” think of it as a means to an end, such as regaining lost territory or securing military supplies from the West, rather than as an end in itself. (Such payoffs to Arab governments should not be confused with the permanent benefits that real peace would bring to every citizen.) For much of the Arab world, peace is a coin with which one pays in order to get something else. As such, it is expendable at a given moment and under the right circumstances, and it need not last very long. Peace can be signed one day and discarded the next, once the immediate payoff has been pocketed—much to the astonishment of Westerners, including Israelis, who have a completely different understanding of what it means to “make peace.” (For Israelis, peace is the goal and everything else is a means to it.) Those few Arabs whose view of peace is more Western find themselves fighting against the tide in Arab countries that have never known this Western concept of peace from the day they gained independence, and which are much more familiar with the kind of peace occasionally offered by Arafat to Israel, the “peace of Saladin,” 9 which is merely a tactical intermission in a continuing total war.