Israeli author Amos Oz gave a landmark address on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the recent eighth international conference of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. You can watch this landmark address below in Oz’s exacting, poetic Hebrew with English subtitles. But here are the trenchant highlights of his very quotable speech, translated here by Elise Shazar. Read the full speech here. The video is below.
1. “The idea of a bi-national state is a sad joke. If two states don't come into existence now and fast, there will be one state. If one state comes into existence, it will be an Arab one from the sea to the Jordan River. If an Arab state is established, I do not envy our children and grandchildren.”
2. “In the last 100 years or so (you can call them our 100 years of solitude) we have never had a better opportunity than now to end the conflict. Not because the Arabs have become more Zionist, not because they are ready to suddenly recognize our historical right to this Land, but because Egypt and Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, the Maghreb States and even Syria of Assad have a current enemy that is more immediate, destructive and dangerous than the Jewish state.
Twelve years ago the Saudi peace proposal, which is the Arab Peace Initiative, you all know, was put on the table. I do not recommend that Israel rush to sign the dotted line of this proposal, but it is a proposal worthy of negotiations and bargaining. We should have acted thus 12 years ago, and if we had, circumstances would be different today.
If we had received such a proposal in the days of Ben Gurion, or Levi Eshkol, or the times of the three no's of the Khartoum Summit, we would have danced in the streets.”
3. “Many Israelis, too many Israelis, believe –or are brainwashed to believe– that if we only take a huge stick and hit the Arabs one more strong blow, they will be afraid and leave us alone for all time and everything will be alright. For the last hundred years we have been raising a bigger and bigger stick, and it has not helped.”
4 “I want to criticize myself and some of my friends from the dovish left. There are millions of Israeli citizens who would give up the territories for peace but they don’t believe the Arabs. They don’t want to be suckers. They are afraid. We should never decry that fear or mock it (and we have done this). You can try to defuse it, try to calm it and perhaps it won't hurt the dovish left to participate in this fear a bit, because there is room for fear.”
5. “My Zionistic starting point has been for years as follows: We are not alone in this country; we are not alone in Jerusalem. I say the same to my Palestinian friends. You are not alone in this country. There is no choice but to divide this small house into two even smaller apartments.”
6. “The long dispute between the Palestinians and Israel is not a Hollywood western portraying good against bad, but a Greek tragedy about justice versus justice, and often, unfortunately, injustice versus injustice.”
7. “I will say now something which is controversial, and will be controversial. Since the 1967 war (at least), we have not won any wars. Not even the Yom Kippur war.
8. “And that is the difference between Ramle and Ramallah, between Haifa and Nablus, between Beersheeba and Hebron. Most of the world, including most of the Arab and Muslim world, acknowledges today, happily or not, that Haifa and Beersheba are ours. Except for Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, everyone accepts this. But no one in the world, except for the settlers, and maybe their extreme supporters in America, acknowledges that Nablus and Ramallah are ours. And that is the difference between a right and a claim. The settlers and their supporters say that we have a right to all of the Land of Israel and of course the Temple Mount, but they are telling us something else altogether. Not that we have a right but that we have a religious obligation to hold on to every inch of it.
If I go to an ATM, I have the right to withdraw 2,000 shekels. But that doesn’t mean I have to withdraw the NIS 2,000 every time I go by an ATM.”
9. “And I ask you and I ask myself: to die for the right to pray on the Temple Mount? There is nothing about this anywhere in the Jewish writings. Under no circumstances. To those who want a world war on the issue of the Temple Mount, I say do it without me or my children or grandchildren. Also, the war against all of Islam is not enough for them. There are those who are trying to lead us into war with the whole world.”
10. “Contrary to many of my friends in the dovish left, I cannot guarantee that if we leave the territories with a peace agreement, everything will be wonderful. But I believe that if we stay in the territories, it will be worse. If we stay in the territories an Arab State will be eventually established from the sea to the Jordan River.’
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