BICOM

On Thursday 25 July, Israel’s Minister for Strategic Affairs Yuval Steinitz was interviewed by BICOM Senior Research Fellow Alan Johnson, on the security requirements for Israel in forthcoming peace talks with the Palestinians. The following is an edited transcript of his remarks. To listen to his remarks click here.

Alan Johnson: We’re on the eve of talks about talks in Washington about the peace process so can I ask you a question relating to your capacity as security minister. Why has Prime Minister Netanyahu put such a heavy emphasis on security concerns with regards to the peace process? It’s often interpreted in the West as a ploy to avoid making a deal. What are Israel’s key concerns in the negotiations and how will Israel want to address them?

Yuval Steinitz: Quite the contrary, it’s the only way that will enable us to promote a real peace process and reach an agreement. Israel will be ready to make concessions including difficult concessions on our side. PM Benjamin Netanyahu said that the final peace agreement will be brought to a referendum and I am confident that most Israelis will support it on two conditions.

First, of Israel will be confident that this is a conflict ending agreement: end of the conflict; end of all claims; no right of return; recognition of Israel as it is – as a Jewish state as it was established – by the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world.

Secondly and no less important is security. We will have to secure our future in our own hands, and to assure the future demilitarisation of the territories given back in the West Bank and Gaza. We cannot trust the United Nations forces because we have had a very negative experience, quite recently in Lebanon, where very massive UN forces were deployed in South Lebanon after the Second Lebanese War, with the mission to prevent the rearmament of South Lebanon. And we pulled out, and since then 40,000 missiles were deployed by Hezbollah in the area between the Litani river (in South Lebanon) and the Israeli border. None of those approximately 40,000 rockets were confiscated by the very strong UN forces there.

The same happened to us in Gaza. We pulled out from Gaza. Abu Mazan (Mahmoud Abbas), the Palestinian Authority President said he’s in charge and he’s responsible and there’ll be no hostilities once the Israeli occupation of Gaza ends. He deployed his forces in Gaza, European inspectors came to inspect the border area of Rafah (between the Gaza Strip and the Egyptian controlled Sinai Peninsula) and Egyptian forces that we allowed in (to the Sinai) were patrolling on the Egyptian side of the fence. Since then, 11,300 rockets were launched into Israel

So we cannot take the risk that this will repeat itself, this time in Israel’s centre, in the West Bank. And therefore, I think that Israeli forces will have to be deployed in the Jordan valley and in other strategic spots, in order to secure our future survivability and security. It is not easy for the Palestinians to accept this but if they want an independent state, we want to survive and we cannot trust anyone else with our security.