need remains what I tried to impress on my negotiators then: realism. A meticulously informed, utterly unvarnished, understanding of the threats we face, of each altered situation after every success or a failure, and an ability to set aside the background noise and political pressures and chart a way forward.
So what is that way? It begins with the mindset. On more than one occasion in the past few years, after Prime Minister Netanyahu had warned our country of a nuclear Iran or the spread of Al Qaeda-style hatred and violence, as if prophesying the coming of Armageddon, I would say to him: “Stop talking like that. You’re not delivering a sermon in a synagogue. You’re Prime Minister.” Having been privileged to live my own life along with the entire modern history of our country, I went further. Zionism, the founding architecture of Israel, was rooted in finding a way to supplant not just the life, but the way of thinking, which hard-pressed Jewish communities had internalised over centuries in the diaspora: in Hebrew, the galut. We would instead take control of our own destiny, building and developing and securing our own country.
Now, I told Bibi, he was back in the mindset of the galut. Yes, al-Qaeda, and more recently Islamic State, were real dangers. The prospect of a nuclear Iran was even more so. “But the implication of the way you speak, not just to Barack Obama or David Cameron, but to /sraelis, is that these are existential threats. What do you imagine? That if, God forbid, we wake up and Iran is a nuclear power, we’ll pack up and go back to the shtetls of Europe?”
Of course not. Israel, as my public life has taught me more than most, remains strong militarily. We are, still, fully capable of turning back any of the undeniable threats on our doorstep. Keeping that strength, developing it and modernizng it, are obviously critically important. But as Israel’s founding Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, used to say, the success of Zionism, and of the Israeli state, required two things: strength and “righteousness.” He didn’t mean the word in purely religious terms. He meant that Israel, if it were to retain international backing and internal cohesion, must be guided by a core of moral assumptions as well.
That, in itself, would be reason enough to pursue every possible opportunity for “end of conflict” with our neighbours. And, at home, to protect and re- inforce our commitment to Israel as both a Jewish and a democratic state. But Israel’s simple self-interest — its hope for prosperity, social cohesion, and growth in future — makes this nothing short of imperative.
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