Israel

I should like to congratulate you, Sir, on your election to the presidency of the General Assembly. We are pleased that the representative of Côte d’Ivoire - a nation for which Israel has high regard - has been elected to this distinguished post. I should like to express to the Secretary General our deepest appreciation 13 for his contribution to world peace in general, and to peace in the Middle East in particular. A year ago, I offered a concept for a new Middle East. Many applauded; more remained sceptical. What at that time seemed lofty is today a reality. I feel I can submit today an invitation to a further journey in the new Middle East. Last year was a year of remarkable events. The Palestinian people, as a result of our agreement, gained authority in Gaza and Jericho; Jordan and Israel agreed, in the Washington Declaration, to end the state of war and move towards an agreement of full peace; voices of promise are exchanged between Damascus and Jerusalem; multilateral meetings produced a network of regional cooperation; Morocco and Israel established formal relations; and an agenda for a new Middle East will emerge from an unprecedented economic conference in Casablanca next month. The desire for peace is rooted in the millenniums of Jewish existence. Generations prayed for it, and now a young generation in Israel is today engaged in making it. The search for peace is shared by young people all over the Middle East, Arabs and Israelis alike. We have to fulfil their hope. I am addressing this Assembly for the first time, not as a party to a controversy, but as a representative of a country that has shown a capacity to solve conflicts that seemed insoluble. The United Nations should play an increasing role facing the changing times. It can define new destinies. It can adopt new means. As the United Nations celebrates its fiftieth anniversary, it may adopt models for new endeavours by mobilizing builders to construct peace, not just by deploying troops to keep it. Economic structures will offer more than military deployment. Gaza, as an example, has a new authority. It needs a new economy. The United Nations can provide an answer. The 7,000 years of Gaza are mainly a history of suffering. Its population density today is among the highest in the world. There is a role for the United Nations in Gaza, and it has played one. It began by stationing troops - which were recalled, unfortunately, on the eve of the Six-Day War. Then UNRWA came and supplied food, health and education to the refugees. Then UNDP contributed greatly to the construction of an infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. The United Nations can help Gaza today become free from want. It can introduce there the necessary economic and proper social institutions. An enlarged allocation for Gaza, with the existing United Nations administration, will produce immediate results and may make Gaza a new model of United Nations endeavours. The world is moving from military might to social priorities. It is time to turn from political confrontation to economic cooperation. In the Middle East, economic growth can compensate for political compromises. We no longer live in a closed world. The intensive flow of information has opened the eyes of many people. No longer can tyranny blind their perceptions. Iron curtains can no longer bar the spread of the true story. Knowledge has finally overcome propaganda. This current is profound and lasting. The sources of strength and wealth are today universal rather than national, intellectual rather than material. The size of the territory, the number of its people, the wealth of its raw materials, no longer decide the fate of a nation. It is the scope of education, the level of science, applied technology and up-to-date information that make all the difference. Intellectual sources are no longer partitioned by traditional divides. Science has no territorial limits. Technology has no national flags. Information can travel without visas. Armies cannot conquer wisdom. Borders cannot protect knowledge. The talent of creation is replacing the strategies of destruction. Computers, not rifles, mark the difference. The hunting season in history is disappearing. This does not mean an end to agonies. Starvation, disease, terrorism, desertification, nuclear weapons, ecological damage and dangerous drugs overflow the boundaries of land and the boundaries of reason. Violence employs new tactics: it has not disappeared. Confrontations in the future may not necessarily be wars of conquest, but bloodshed of protest. 14 The strong know that they will not be strengthened by dominating the poor, or by owning their deserts. The poor cannot, and will not, comply with their conditions, tolerated by the indifference of the well-off. Existing institutions were initiated in a different time. They are based today on memories rather than on needs. Ministries of foreign affairs and defence were structured to confront enemies. Now we face dangers more than enemies, but without our being organized to handle them. We are not answering the need. Diplomacy and strategy should be mobilized to face the undefined dangers. Disease will not be overcome by traditional diplomatic démarches. Starvation cannot be eliminated by guns. Deserts will not bloom beneath air raids. Remedies will not arrive of their own accord: they should be invented and introduced. Israel is on the side of this tendency. We are committed to ending the conflicts. We are determined to uproot their causes. We do not intend to stop this momentum or allow its interruption. For the last five decades the mere existence of Israel has served as a temptation to try and destroy it. For half a century we had to give security top priority. To this very day, we shed tears on the tombs of our children, who paid with their young lives to overcome the menace. When wars became futile, suspicion succeeded fighting. The allegation was that Israel was trying to expand territorially and was unwilling to compromise geographically. Reality ended this allegation as well. Egypt, first to negotiate peace, found an Israel willing to exchange land for peace. The Palestinians, next in line, gained jurisdiction over territories they had never controlled before. With Jordan, we agreed to delineate a permanent border without one side encroaching on the land of the other. Syria was told at the outset of negotiations that the nature of peace would affect the depth of the withdrawal. Lebanon was told that Israel had no demands on its territory and no intention of compromising its integrity. Negotiations have not been easy. With the Palestinians, we negotiated on uncharted ground. Never had the Palestinian people experienced self-rule. Today they possess a territorial address and an administrative authority. For the first time in their history, their children’s education is solely in Palestinian hands. In the coming days Israel will hand over additional responsibilities to the Palestinian Authority. The Declaration of Principles will be fully implemented in the spirit and letter. We shall support a Palestinian readiness to hold democratic elections. Israel, as well as the Palestinians, may discover that Palestinian democracy and Israeli security are complementary. We have demonstrated that we are true in our moral choice not to govern the destiny of another people. We shall continue to negotiate with Syria. We are negotiating out of conviction, not weakness, and we hope to conclude the negotiations with a settlement that will respect the interests of both sides, without harming Syrian dignity or compromising Israeli security. Syria insists on a narrow path for the negotiations, postponing meetings between the leaders and thus slowing the pace of negotiations. Israel is ready for accelerated negotiations. We address the Syrians by saying: "Let us talk face to face. Let us negotiate, as proclaimed in Damascus, with courage to attain a peace of honour. By ending suspicion, introducing creativity and allowing flexibility, we can transform a promising climate into a solid terrain." Syria declared its strategy for peace. We appreciate it. Military threats and territorial positions should be transformed by security arrangements, diplomatic rapport, full peace and economic endeavours. That will erode the motivation for conflict. Without peaceful relations, balances of power are meaningless. The range of understanding can serve as the only answer to the range of ballistic missiles. President Clinton and Secretary of State Christopher are relentlessly pushing for peace. European, Russian and many other leaders are genuinely supportive. Important Middle Eastern leaders are actively engaged in the same direction. Still, much depends on direct negotiations. Yesterday’s enemies, tomorrow’s partners, should become today’s interlocutors. A peace treaty between Israel and Syria may produce a historic result greater than just an agreement between two countries. It may well become the crowning of a comprehensive peace. It may become an opportunity for the leaders of the region - Kings, Presidents, Prime Ministers, supported by the most prominent leaders of our time - to gather and announce the end of the conflict and to proclaim full peace throughout the region. Peace can hardly emerge from stinginess. By definition, it calls for generosity. Peace is more than a mere ceremony. It requires ongoing maintenance; it awaits a passionate cultivation of new relations. We hope that our neighbours, from Saudi Arabia to Lebanon, from Djibouti to Algeria, will become constructive partners in 15 it. Dark clouds are still hanging over the horizon - the shadows of missed opportunities. We have to build a coalition to prevent subversive turbulence from undermining legitimate Governments and harassing the stability needed for the inflow of investment. All countries of the Middle East face a choice: to remain politically divided and economically stagnant or to become economically advanced and politically just. A high standard of living for the people - all people - is the best promise for stability in our midst. Israel is willing to participate in achieving it. There are sceptics, we know, who do not believe that the Middle East is ripe for a common market similar to the European one. They forget that Europe did not do it in one leap. It started with a Community of coal and steel. We can start with a community of water and tourism. Nor do they believe that the Middle East is ready for a free trade zone like the one in North America. Yet the North American Free Trade Agreement emerged in a short while as a success by linking geographic proximity with economic growth. Those sceptics claim that generations are needed to cement a new market in the Middle East. Well, they can see what in 10 short years happened to Asian countries, which attained unpredicted prosperity. They achieved it by adopting a market economy. The profile of a market economy is clear. It is made of comprehensive education, open borders, free movement, science-based industries and competitive trade. A market economy is a fabric woven from political silk and durable threads of welfare. The time is ripe for its rendezvous with the Middle East. At the end of October, under the presidency of King Hassan II, we shall take the first step to implement a regional design. We shall try to establish instruments for development: a regional bank, channels for private investment and a framework for regional planning. The wealth of the Middle East should be convinced to remain at home. Over the last decade it has invested the better part of its fortunes abroad. Homebound wealth will attract foreign investment as well. We should cut the enormous expense - $70 billion annually - of the arms race. The savings can be directed to development. The arms race can be reduced only by regional consent. No single country will do it alone. To transform the region and make it a stable and attractive place we need the emergence of the region as a whole, committed to a new future. Nature, and not only politics, calls for it. The waters, the winds, the environment call for regional responsibility and cooperation, for desalinization plants, energy stations, highways, railways, runways, piers, telecommunication networks, high-tech industries, tourism infrastructure, banking systems, computer terminals and ecological considerations - a landscape that will meet the future will create a state of prosperity, and it is a regional challenge. The Middle East was the cradle of civilization and has a capacity to contribute. It experienced golden ages, economically and culturally. It should be our collective ambition to make it happen again and to make it happen soon. Today, shortages can be bridged rapidly. Computers can carry children not only from grade to grade but from age to age. The software of knowledge will better replace the hardware of weapons. I have served my country since its birth. I have learned that complex problems call for unconventional solutions. I feel that over the past year we have won a licence to build a new Middle East, to make it part of the globe in its new age, free of wars, free of enemies, free of terrorism; a Middle East which will be nuclear-free, missile-free, hunger-free, discrimination-free, tyranny-free; a constituency of peace, a domain of freedom, a land of prosperity. There is a morning awaiting us after a long night, calling us to direct our energies and our aims and our prayers towards that great opportunity.