Israeli ambassador on Iran, peace, Jerusalem
By Michele Alperin
April 11, 2008

Sallai Meridor, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, made two critical points to about 200 listeners at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School on March 26: that Israel and the Palestinians must redouble their efforts to make peace and that Iran must be prevented from becoming a nuclear power.

He spoke first about the Iranian government. "I don't need to mention Iran's human rights record," said Meridor, "along with mastering terror as a means of advancing policy. Its ambition is not like North Korea -- it is not anything like we've seen. That, together with a nuclear bomb, could change the world as we know it entirely."

Meridor pointed to a potentially devastating result if Iran develops nuclear capability.

"Nobody can seriously rule out the possibility that they might use a bomb," he said, adding that some suggest Iran could make a first strike. Former Iranian President Ali Akhbar Rafsanjani, for example, has said, "Israel can't survive one bomb."

Then Meridor asked rhetorically, "If the time comes that this regime feels they have nothing to lose and are about to go under, and people have a choice to make to face God after they take Israel or don't take Israel, who knows what they might think?"

Next Meridor laid on the table Iran's support for incitement and terror from Afghanistan to Iraq to Hezbollah to Hamas to radical groups in Syria, and their role in the bombing of the Israeli Embassy and Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Unfortunately, Islamists have strengthened their grip in the entire region, gaining confidence after throwing the Soviets out of Afghanistan and causing the Sept. 11 terror attacks. "The environment in which we reckon today," said Meridor, "may make the need to try to make peace more urgent and at the same time more difficult."

The radicals are trying to gain more dominance in the Muslim world and trying to confront the West, he said. "They are teaching hatred, translating disappointment to hate and violence instead of soul searching. And they have introduced the phenomenon of making murder in the name of Allah a religious commitment, thus enabling a very few with very little to kill very many and undermine every deterrence that every normal society has against attacks." 

Meridor is worried because more and more nations in the Arab world are starting to talk about nuclear energy. If other Arab countries believe that Iran is close to having a bomb, then they are likely to walk in the same direction, he said. "Then no one can guess the time it will take until such a capacity falls into the hands of a non-state regime or terrorist organization."

"What would it take to stop them? Is there a chance to stop them?" asked Meridor. Then he answered his own questions: "It takes for them to believe that America will not allow them to go nuclear no matter what it takes and that the world will cooperate with America." But he suggested this is not the case now, mentioning a new Swiss deal with the Iranians to become distributors of gas into Europe.

So, what does this incendiary context -- this dangerous combination between radical regimes and fundamentalist religious strains, some messianic -- say about the possibilities for attaining peace between the Israelis and Palestinians? "We live in a critical moment," Meridor said. "We could say, ‘This wave is coming at us. What's the sense of trying to make peace -- let's wait for the wave to complete its movement then let's try.' But this is not the decision of the people and government of Israel; we would like to make every effort to promote peace, being aware of the difficulties we are facing and being aware of the dangers and redoubling our efforts given those dangers."

Even given the whole laundry list of ways peace can be frustrated, based on previous attempts, Meridor said Israel will persist: "We want to make the effort because it is inherent in our value system, and it is our strategic choice."

Meridor emphasized the importance of two-sided strategic decisions in the Middle East, bringing to bear as evidence former Eyptian President Anwar Sadat and former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin's decisions to talk in 1977. They were responding to the agreement between Vance and Gromyko to reconvene a multilateral Geneva conference two months later. Both Sadat and Begin favored bilateral negotiations, with Egypt concerned in particular that internationalizing the issue would give the most extremist players in the Arab world veto power. And so followed Sadat's visit to Israel in 1977 and the historic handshake between Sadat and Begin on the White House lawn in 1979.

Today, strategy is just as important. Although any agreement must wait for a changed situation on the ground -- with a Palestinian Authority that has the capacity to deliver on its promises -- before being implemented, said Meridor, "given the trends in the region that I've described, we've decided that we can't wait for that to happen and we are ready to start in parallel." He talked about coming up with an agreement first and then waiting for the necessary changes, in hope that "an agreement will serve as an incentive to accelerate changes on the ground."

Meridor emphasized that Israel is ready for difficult compromises that he called heartbreaking. "We have to divide the land we believe was promised to us by God -- parts of this land that are part of our essence and history," he said. And giving up the land also means major risks, said Meridor, who quoted Woodrow Wilson in 1923 saying that for a Jewish state to be viable, it would need control of Lebanon, Hermon, and east of the Jordan River and of course Judea and Samaria.

But at the risk of Wilson "throwing him out" of the building that bears Wilson's name, Meridor said, "We are ready to cut out our heart for peace and for compromise. We are ready to accept that Jews will be able to return not to the entire land of Israel but only to those parts that are or will be the state of Israel. We know we will have to uproot tens of thousands of people, the best we have in Israel society. We know we will go through a nightmare in Jewish and Israeli society, and nobody's sure how we are going to get out of this nightmare. But we are ready to make those unbelievably painful concessions in order to be able to give peace a chance."

Then Meridor turned to the Palestinians, who must build the capacity to govern, prevent terror, and stop the incitement that is prevalent in their media and schools and statements. "They will have to make equally painful compromises," he said. "I'm not underestimating how difficult it will be for them; they will only get part not all of their land; they can return only to the part of the land that will be the future Palestine. They will have to tell their people that they have to respect Israel's security needs."

The Sunday before the lecture, Meridor recalled looking out from Defense Minister Ehud Barak's apartment high above Tel Aviv. To the northwest he saw the sea and to the northeast the West Bank. And in between is the nine-mile-wide strip that is Israel. Then he reemphasized that the Palestinians will have to respond to Israel's security needs. And he slipped in, without explanation or justification, "and our special connection with Jerusalem."

"It will be difficult for us and for them, but for both of us this is only way, in our view and hopefully in their view, for assuring a better life for our children," Meridor said.

He urged the Arabs to help by supporting moderates and separating themselves from extremists -- by backing compromise, by adding Israel to maps in their students' textbooks, by visiting Israel, by inviting Israelis to visit their countries, and by talking to Israeli officials. "The environment is very hostile," he said, "and they should stop sitting on the fence. It is not a time to look at things and hedge bets, it is a time to take sides against terror and for peace."