TEL AVIV, 4 March 2004 — The first intifada surprised Israel and the whole world. Actually its existence exposed the intensity of the violence and despair which it set in motion. From this same intifada, the Oslo Accords were born. In secret, in intimacy, far from view, its proponents conjured up the Declaration of Principles that surprised the world and us, and Oslo became an actual political fact. Immediately, without paying attention to details and repercussions, the two societies, the Israelis and the Palestinians, adopted the option of hope.
But as is always the case here, no one prepares for the day after. We invest blood and souls, victims and money, in order to argue over yesterday, and we’re not prepared to give the slightest attention to what the next day will bring. Both of us, Israel and Palestine, neglected what was most sensitive and painful to the other side. Israel did not understand how much the settlements were like a barbed wire, wounding and lethal to the flesh and spirit of the Palestinian revival. On the other hand, the Palestinians did not understand what incitement does to us. This was how life was then: The political Oslo of the newspaper headlines, and the settlements versus the incitement in the alleyways. The souls of the two peoples did not internalize the chance they had been given. Collision was only a question of time and collapse was written on the wall.
Since then, for three long, cursed years, a blight has hung over the Middle East. “There’s no one to talk to and nothing to talk about”. And in the absence of a partner and a partnership, swords have been drawn and death has received an official license to go crazy on the streets. Suddenly, the moment has arrived when the two nations, the two civil societies upon which the political system is built, have felt the “fatigue of despair.” They are fed up with being desperate when it is obvious to them what the solution is and what it can bring in its wake.
It is fortunate that at this moment, Geneva was waiting for us. Two people, my friend, colleague and partner, Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo did not give up — not when Barak erred nor when Arafat erred. They said to themselves: If we, who are so close to the vision of peace, are not capable of building a bridge, no one will ever be able to do so. Slowly by hard work, with patience, the peace camp re-emerged. After three years, we have succeeded in reaching an agreement. For the first time, we have placed before the two communities the final image. Throughout the years, and during all the agreements the final image was just hot air with very little content: “painful prices,” “historic compromise,” and “agonizing decisions.” These empty words allowed the leadership to evade their historic responsibility and that of their people. The Geneva Accords are the true picture. That is how the relationship between us and you will seem on the day that the governments rise to the level of responsibility of the planners of the Geneva Accords.
The Geneva assumptions are simple and striking. I do not want a victory for one side at a price of an insult and humiliation for my former enemy and my partner for the future. I want an agreement with dignity for everything that is holy and precious to the other. And I expect the very same treatment from him. Geneva is an agreement of mutual respect, not of shared affront. It is impossible to escape from the truth within Geneva. Each of the parties has wonderful dreams, dreams of a great homeland, historic rights and age-old religious dimensions. But a political agreement is not the place where dreams come true. On the contrary, an agreement is the place where dreamers meet and determine for themselves, by agreement, the limits within which their dream becomes a possibility. As a Jew, I will never give up my dream regarding the return of God to his sanctuary in the Third Temple. But, until He returns, I don’t have to exercise my sovereignty in the place of God’s sanctuary. I prayed to a place that was once Persian, Arabic, Roman, Mameluk, Crusader, Turkish, British and Jordanian. It is not hard for me at all to relate and appeal to my “God of all the nations” even when the sovereignty in the place of the sanctuary will be Palestinian — my spiritual dream and the political sovereignty of another, whose faith I respect and who respects my faith.
For my part, I know how piercing and painful is the prayer of the Palestinian heart to return to the villages and towns from which they were exiled because of the tides of war and history. The dream of return has always been the backbone that has carried the Palestinians’ chances of resurrection. The chance has arrived, it is here and you must not miss it. Geneva is an opportunity for resurrection and independence. This is the time to separate the dream and build the possibilities. I expect each of my Palestinian colleagues to know and acknowledge that a prayer is one thing and implementation is another. No one can take away an individual’s yearning to win the right of return. This is his right which is in his heart. But the actual realization will not happen, just like my Temple will remain in the kingdom of dreams until another history arrives. Because Geneva says to both parties: Only someone who knows how to leave his dreams in the realm of dreams will be able to create a better vision and a much more wonderful future for his children. And anyone who insists on living out the dream will end up living a perpetual endless nightmare. Even the proudest among the mothers of the martyrs, is a mother of flesh and blood, and I want to offer her the life of her children in this world, the smiles and joy of grandchildren in the coming years instead of the suffering and funerals, black garb and endless yearning for a child who committed suicide and murdered so many innocent men, women and children on the altar of stupidity and revenge.
Geneva has replaced hope in the equation of despair of the Middle East. Suddenly, therefore, everyone has woken up. There is forty percent support in Israel and Palestine. Stubborn opposition of extremists in the two camps persists, because they know that the hope of Geneva is the alternative to religious extremism, which is killing us all in the name of everlasting life. Therefore, the international community has woken up and embraced us — since Geneva is the hope of the region and of the whole world for political stability and for the future of mutual peacemaking and respect.
The next stages are absolutely clear to me. Geneva must become an integral part of the international formula — like 242 and 338. Geneva must be the political declaration that the mass of citizens on both sides demand from their leadership. Not a fence of illusions, not the terrorism of murders and heartless deviants, not one-sided separation and not empty words from an old leadership that has no future here. Geneva is against all this terrible despair. Geneva is for the great hope. We will again say yes to the agreement and, this time, we will do all we can to be successful.
— Avraham Burg was speaker of Israel’s Knesset from 1999 to 2003 and is a former chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel. He is currently a Labor Party Knesset member.
