Shimon Peres Says Israel Could Face an Eternal War If Its Leaders Don't Pursue Peace with Palestinians

A voice of reason that is going extinct in the rabid Netanyahu era. He should have done more when he had the chance to set the right course. Now indications are that things are going to get worse not better. An Israeli soldier threatens to gas the rebellious locals while others shoot protesters at point blank range. The settlers are even more belligerent. The moral compas is beginning to harken back to South Africa and Europe. The mindset of no compromise besets the region. It has ripped apart Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen. Israel thinks itself above the fray but it's behavior as a rigid colonial power puts it smack into the zone of conflict. A festering crisis can explode where it's superior weaponry cannot fend for ever. Netanyahu should listen to his elder statesman and reverse. Regrettably, that is not going to happen.

AP Interview: Peres says Israel could face an eternal war

November 2, 2015

AP - Over a seven-decade career in politics, Shimon Peres has helped guide Israel through wars and existential threats. But now, with the country embroiled in a new wave of violence, the 92-year-old elder statesman worries that if its leaders do not get serious about pursuing peace with the Palestinians, it will be in an eternal state of war and risk losing its Jewish majority.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Monday, the former president stopped short of directly criticizing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But he also made no secret that the values he and the assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin inherited from Israel's founding father, David Ben-Gurion, were in jeopardy.

"Better to have a Jewish state on part of the land than have the whole land without the Jewish state," he said. "Israel should implement the two-state solution for her own sake because if we should lose our majority, and today we are almost equal, we cannot remain a Jewish state or a democratic state.

"That's the main issue, and to my regret they (the government) do the opposite."

Peres negotiated the first interim peace accord with the Palestinians in 1993, known as the Oslo Accords, which set into motion a partition plan that gave the Palestinians limited self-rule. But after a fateful six-month period in 1995-96 that included Rabin's assassination, a spate of Palestinian suicide bombings and Peres' own election loss to Netanyahu, the prospects for peace began to evaporate.

Today, senior members of Netanyahu's hard-line government have declared Oslo dead, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas irrelevant and a Palestinian state nothing but a dangerous fantasy.

Netanyahu only begrudgingly accepted the concept of a Palestinian state in 2009. But he never appeared to fully embrace it and has since distanced himself from the comments.

Netanyahu accuses Abbas of inciting a current six-week wave of Palestinian attacks and just recently said Israel had to accept that peace is unlikely and continue living "by the sword."

Those comments clearly rankled Peres, who had previously negotiated on Netanyahu's behalf with Abbas and still considers the Palestinian leader Israel's best potential partner for peace.

"The alternative to two states is a continued war and nobody can maintain a war forever. If you say we should live on our sword don't forget that there are other swords as well," he said.

Peres said that Netanyahu's peace overtures have never "escaped the domain of talking."

"A politician and a government should be judged by one way only, on the record of what you do or did, not on what you say," he said.

Peres has filled nearly every position in Israeli public life since he became the director general of the Defense Ministry at the age of 25 and spearheaded the development of Israel's nuclear program. A protégé of Ben-Gurion, Peres was first elected to parliament in 1959.

He has since held every major Cabinet post — including defense, finance and foreign affairs — and served three brief stints as prime minister. His key role in the first Israeli-Palestinian peace accord earned him a Nobel Peace Prize — along with Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat — and stature abroad as a revered statesman.

Since finishing his seven-year term as president last summer, Peres has continued promoting peace and development in the Middle East through his non-governmental Peres Peace Center.

A self-described eternal optimist, Peres says he doesn't like to think of the past, calling it a "waste of time."

But on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Rabin's killing by an ultra-nationalist Jewish extremist opposed to his peace efforts, he candidly recalled the night that many see as a turning point in Israeli history.

He said the massive peace rally in Tel Aviv on Nov. 4, 1995 was the happiest day in Rabin's life and the best moment in their decades-long tortured rivalry. 

"We were in a total agreement and really we were encouraged," he said.

He said moments before they were set to leave the stage together in a show of unity, Israel's Shin Bet security agency informed them of a threat to both their lives — from an Arab, not a Jew. Peres descended the stairs ahead of Rabin and stood in front of the open door of his car when the three deadly shots rang out. His security guards shoved him into the vehicle and whisked him away.

At the hospital, doctors informed Peres that Rabin had died, and he broke the news to Rabin's widow, Leah. Then they both saw the body and he kissed Rabin on the forehead.

"His face was happy, like a man who finally got complete rest," he said. "I am sure that if he were alive he would have made peace with the Palestinians as well."

Comments from Yahoo! 

The Congress should be working on ending welfare to Israel and other foreign countries while letting Israel know it's time for them to grow up. Congress is blindly support Israel because of majority of Evangelicals, AIPAC and rich donors, including numerous Israeli 1st'ers in American congress like Schumer, Cardin, etc. Enough. It's time for America to be America again and free itself from any domestic and foreign lobbyist. This will benefit both US and Israel, fostering opportunity for more constructive relationship, instead of the one ended "give me, give me." We are 19 trillion in debt and counting at 2 billion a day and Israel is "demanding" increase in foreign aid by 1.5 billion to total of 5 billion a year! It's amazing to what level of puppetry America has befallen in its blind support to what is becoming less of democracy and more of an apartheid. If we fool ourselves and believe that this blind support actually helps Israel and US, than our leaders is either corrupted, blind or religiously perverted to see the light.

Former Crime Minister Polish Simon Perski should have made peace then instead of continuing the ethnic cleansing campaign against the indigenous people of Palestine. He needs to tell that to the current Crime Minister Benevil Satanyahu whose original name also ends with Ski.It is really funny, I googled all the Crime Minster names of the illegal Zionist entity and almost all of them changed their polish or Russian names which ended with Ski or ...ov to conceal their true identities. I encourage yall to do that.

DNA shows the E. European Zionist Jews never were from Palestine, but are a Khazar people from the steppes who converted to Judaism around 900 AD. Look up the book by a Jewish professor in Tel Aviv, "Invention of the Jewish People." Best seller in Israel for six months.

Over 40 years ago in a college political science class I studied game theory. One of the models we investigated was the Middle East conflict. Applying the principles of game theory, the conflict was judged to be a zero sum game. In other words, conflict would ensue as neither party would relent. There would be war eventually. That has been the history of the Israeli Arab conflict and will continue to be so. Israel has technical military might so it will likely continue to stave off defeat, but it doesn't have the resources to conquer all the Arab nations and then occupy them in order to enforce a peace on the region. Unfortunately for Israel it has no geographic depth, and unlike the Arabs, cannot ever have the Arabs breach its defenses. With their much greater population and area the Arabs can lose without being annihilated. The Jews can't lose an inch. Forever is a long time and mistakes can be made. For Israel, a mistake cannot be tolerated.

Unfortunately with us getting Israel's back all the time, we are inadvertently pushing the prospects of peace further out. If Israel did not have us as the fall back, they would have made peace a decade ago. We feed the Israeli's arrogance by arming and financing them and ensuring their security, and in return the Israelis abuse this unprecedented incentive afforded to them by us by saying no to a true two state solution. Our politicians (I mean Israel's politicians in DC) have unfortunately washed their hands off the responsibility that we as the guarantor of Israel's security have, which is that Israelis need to be told that they are on a path of self-destruct if they do not make peace and get the two state solution going.

Israel doesn't have to have it this way, of seeing life as an 'eternal war'. Bibi has voiced Israel's own choice to 'live by the sword' - which historically means, you will be die by the sword. This kind of bravado language generally achieves and proves nothing, other than the solidification of your opponents resolve. It is a foolish in that sense. Israel's bravado is mostly a function of the US having its back. If Israel was its own defender, I doubt we would hear this kind of podium-posturing by Bibi. The 'eternal war' Peres refers to, is actually Israel's own choice. Israel is the most perplexing, conundrum of a place, because it behaves exactly the opposite that would promote peace, and then goes onto say, they see an 'eternal war' ahead. Its no wonder, is it?

The Israeli's seem to need the land that they are appropriating more than they need peace. As long as they have superior arms and technology supplied by the United States they will continue their aggression. They need the violence committed by the distraught Palestinians as an excuse to pound them into the ground. The Israeli lives are a necessary sacrifice for them. And they use any disagreement with their policies to label folks as "anti Semitic". What the USA needs to do is stop supplying Israel with arms and money. The folks they are fighting are using slingshots, knives and rocks. The Israelis have supersonic jets, tanks, helicopters and laser guided bombs.. Not a fair fight if you ask me. My legislators hear from me on this matter at every chance I get. I will not support a legislator that supports Israel.