This news was reported by Uri Avnery (Gush Shalom) in a recent column: the complete turn about in the thinking of a long time Likud politician and the recent prime minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert.
According to Avnery, after resigning as the prime minister of Israel, while waiting for Tzipi Livni to set up a new government, Ehud Olmert said some “astounding things – not astounding in themselves, but certainly when they come from his mouth.”
Here is what he said:
“We must reach an agreement with the Palestinians, the essence of which is that we shall actually withdraw from almost all the territories, if not from all the territories. We shall keep in our hands a percentage of these territories, but we shall be compelled to give the Palestinians a similar percentage, because without that there will be no peace.”
“… including Jerusalem. With special solutions, that I can visualize, for the Temple Mount and the historical holy places … Anyone who wants to keep all the territory of the city will have to put 270 thousand Arabs behind fences within sovereign Israel. That won’t work.”
“I was the first who wanted to impose Israeli sovereignty on all the city. I admit … I was not ready to look into all the depths of reality.”
“Concerning Syria, what we need first of all is a decision. I wonder if there is one single serious person in Israel who believes it is possible to make peace with Syria without giving up the Golan Heights in the end.”
“The aim is to try and fix for the first time a precise border between us and the Palestinians, a border that all the world [will recognize].”
“Let’s assume that in the next year or two a regional war will break out and we shall have a military confrontation with Syria. I have no doubt that we shall smite them hip and thigh [an allusion to Judges 15:8] … [But] what will happen when we win? … Why go to war with the Syrians in order to achieve what we can get anyway without paying such a high price?”
“What was the greatness of Menachem Begin? [He] sent Dayan to meet with Tohami [Sadat’s emissary] in Morocco, before he even met Sadat … and Dayan told Tohami, on behalf of Begin, that we were prepared to withdraw from all of Sinai.”
“Arik Sharon, Bibi Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Rabin, his memory be blessed …each one of them took a step that led us in the right direction, but at some point in time, at some crossroads, when a decision was needed, the decision did not come.”
“A few days ago I sat in a discussion with the key people in the decision-making process. At the end [I told them]: listening to you, I understand why we have not made peace with the Palestinians and the Syrians during the last 40 years.”
” We can perhaps take a historic step in our relations with the Palestinians, and a historic step in our relations with the Syrians. In both cases the decision we must make is the decision we have refused to face with open eyes for 40 years.”
” When you sit on this chair you must ask yourself: where do you direct the effort? To make peace or just to be stronger and stronger and stronger in order to win the war … Our power is great enough to face any danger. Now we must try and see how to use this infrastructure of power in order to make peace and not to win wars.”
“Iran is a very great power … The assumption that America and Russia and China and Britain and Germany do not know how to handle the Iranians, and we Israelis know and we shall do so, is an example of the loss of all sense of proportion.”
“I read the statements of our ex-generals and I say: how can it be that they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing?”
Those who come late to reality are perhaps not a total loss. When Bush announced, that as part of the Annapolis initiative, Israel must stop the 40 year long occupation of the Palestinian people, and must create a viable, independent and contiguous Palestinian state, it too must have sounded like a religious conversion. Now a former prime minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, is saying the same thing.
In the words of Uri Avnery, in colloquial Hebrew, “when someone discovers something that everyone else already knows,” they say, “Good morning, Elijahu! That’s what I said to myself,” said Avnery, “when I read the sensational interview that Ehud Olmert gave this week on the eve of the Jewish New Year, to the newspaper, Yediot Aharonot”.
