 Thank you very much. Thank you for coming to this meeting and I'm very grateful to my friend and colleague Boaz Mouda'il. It's now almost 30 years since I was in between missions. I was head of mission Beirut and then I was sent to Hong Kong to try and open up relations with China and in between I had the spite of a few months which I asked to do some work for the diplomatic school and one of the outstanding by measure and by brain was Boaz Mouda'il and we had many hours together and I knew that one day he'll meet again and he'll make it. Three years ago it so happened that I was recalled from the shadows to do something for a combined effort of the Jewish world and the foreign ministry regarding the memory of the Holocaust and the eldest property of the Jews killed in the Holocaust in the conference in Prague and Boaz became my chief assistant and then I was glad to hear that people sent here and I'm sure that life in Ireland has changed ever since. For me sir. Now it so happened that I was lucky enough to start my public service at the age of 17 when I finished high school because I was picked out from preschool and I went to the army at a very early age and then served on the kibbutz for a while and then went to study Islamics because I knew from a very early age that we have to find ourselves a safe place in the area to know our neighbors to live with them and to follow the maxim which was coined by the father of Zionism Theodor Herzl who in 1897 convened about 100 Jewish leaders from Europe to the first Zionist Congress in Basel and one of the the Basel program included very important principles. One of them was a national home for the Jews in Palestine and the second one that national home should act according to the international law. It was understood very well understood by Herzl who was the man of the world that we cannot be a stand-alone phenomenon. We have to be part of the family of nations. We have to abide by international rules. We have to accept international norms part of which we in our own tradition have established many many years ago. For instance the principle of the liberty of the human being, the liberty of thinking, the liberty of exchanging rules as we celebrate every year in Passover which we recite every year in a very important tradition which we everyone secular religious hold until this day and looking back at what Herzl did then when Herzl did these things there was no Palestine. It was part of what was called Great Syria was various provinces in the southwestern part of the Ottoman Empire and I'm going to have a look at it a very brief look what happened to the Ottoman Empire since 1914 and after all it's not much time it's a bit over it's a it's a hundred years a hundred years of history is the oldest town in recorded history is Jericho seven thousand years recorded history written recorded history five six thousand years human history is hundred fifty thousand years it's not a fraction so hundred years is not a second but look what happened in these hundred years we had two world wars we had the war of independence of Ireland we had the war of independence of Israel the world has changed four empires were broken into pieces and we live in a different world all together and the changes have not yet ended we are in the constant process of changes and as such we have to regard we we must see our world because that's the situation where which is now look at Europe there was the australian empire which after the first world war out of that empire came Yugoslavia Yugoslavia was then since then united reunited and fragmented twice now out of one Yugoslavia you have got seven out of one Czechoslovakia you had two then you had one and now you have two again etc etc etc it's not yet over it's not yet over borders have changed populations have moved these all these are results of the of the crumbling of great empire now let's go east to the to the to the Ottoman empire which has ruled the area for almost five hundred years from the let's say 14th century and to the and to the 20th century could the the first map you see very clear after the all the changes which happened with the strong retreat of the Ottoman empire from from from from Europe don't forget that in 1683 the Ottomans came as far as Vienna when we eat the croissant for our breakfast the croissant in the chamber of the gift of bakers who celebrated the retreat of the of the Ottomans from from uh from Vienna to resemble the crescent and this is since then the Turks have slowly retreated back to the mainland keeping only this part of Adriano Bonadirne which is 20 000 square kilometers in Europe all the rest which we used to belong to them the Balkan which they conquered since 1389 when they won the Battle of Kosovo and all the other 1526 when they the Battle of Moatch and Hungary all this they lost already but this they still kept this is the whole of Anatolia the whole of what they call Turkish Arabia which is Iraq Hijaz and of course these parts of Greater Syria this was the Ottoman Empire 1914 Egypt they have lost control of through the British who because of their control of the Swiss canal took over the slowly Egypt first through a a resident from a consul general actually ruling Egypt did directly though there were some some kings there kings who were actually descendants of an Albanian tobacco merchant by the name of Muhammad Ali who bought the who bought the the residence in in Egypt for a lot of money so he can divide the taxes between himself and the Ottoman Empire anyway so this is what we have in 1914 today the second night now this is what happened after the First World War there was a division of the southern parts of the empire between France and Britain and this is how what I call the tailored states came about stage which were tailored by the imperial powers of the time according to their needs and according to what could be done in these territories one is Iraq which was composed of three billionths three provinces the northern one the central one the Sunni and the northern the Kurdish the center of the Sunni and the southern the Shiite and then was Syria which was composed of four provinces which were related to the main four cities and the Alawite area Lebanon which was a agglomeration of 17 communities held together by its weakness and then there was Palestine which until 22 included eastern Palestine and western Palestine western Palestine eastern Palestine and then the Saudis the Saudi family who was ruled the center of the Saudi of the peninsula in 25 took over the Hijaz and the English remand with the Hashimid family which was ruling Hijaz before and then they had to place them somewhere so they placed Faisal in Baghdad in Amman and someone they left here the sheriff was not so important that's the situation as it was and these tailored states could hold water for 50 60 years a tailored state can hold water as long as the forces from its outside are strong enough to keep it and as long as the forces from the inside are not strong enough to to dismember it now in Iraq you had all these tournaments you had the first revolution in July of 58 when the Hashimid family was kicked out in Jordan you had all these approvals but they're still holding water and in Syria what you had you see what you see what very soon Syria will not exist as one united tailored state the Kurdish part here will go to be united somehow with the Kurdish minority of of Iraq the other white part will be separated that alone will be kept as it is because it's too weak to to be independent and its weakness keeps it together and the question of Palestine will have to wait a bit we'll speak about it later about the Arab Peninsula I mean there's no question about it so the Arabian is strong enough to to keep it let's not forget that Saudi family until 1938 got 5 000 pounds sterling a month a year from the British crown to maintain its rule until they found oil they couldn't do anything Turkey was the Turkish although they were beaten badly in the first world war they had this genius Mustafa Kemal who then became to be atatürk the father of the Turks he united Turkey he took all these parts and other the Greeks had some future attempts to reconquer parts of the former Greek Anatolia he repented them and realized that Turkey secularized and brought Turkey to a path of progress on which it is still now despite the shakes and the trembling of the recent years could I have the third man here I just wanted to illustrate what I've shown before the European scene the Austria Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia the changes and so on you can you can you can go please go ahead yeah that's the plastic illustration of what I've shown before please go ahead now we come to Palestine in Britain there were there were two political the British politics as such in 1917 recognized the Jewish right for a national home in Palestine and then came church in the secretary of the colonel in 1922 and said okay Eastern Palestine for the Arabs Western Palestine for the Jews he separated them and put Abdullah here first as a as a governor under the high commissioner in Jerusalem but then as an independent emir and that's the way it was supposed to continue and as far as the Palestinians are concerned there were supposed to be negotiations which dragged on for a while at the same time there was a beginning of a revival of the Palestinian movement which began actually practical terms I would say 1912 1915 1920 but it was to a great extent a reaction first of all to what happened in the whole world and to what happened with the Jewish immigration to Palestine because the Arabs of Palestine felt themselves threatened by the Jewish immigration into Palestine now since 1920 until 1947 there were ongoing negotiations at various levels between Jews and Arabs sometimes mediated by the British the pink commission sometimes mediated directly done directly between Arab leaders and Jewish leaders and others I don't want to go into it it's boring too many footnotes until the matter came to the UN in 1947 and there was a petition plan of petition the plan of petition was adopted by the Jews rejected by the Arabs then you had the war and you can go to the next step this was the petition this is church in uh 22 that's where the best time please you can go ahead this was the plan of petition the room for the Jews the ground for the Arabs this was accepted by the Jews in 47 I was a child of 11 years at that time and remember the Jews dancing in the streets of high no one can take away memories a genuine memories of the child of 11 when he sees grown up people dancing in the streets and then uh you had the declaration of the Arab League the Arab League came into being in 1945 previously in 1937 the Arab state so within fledgling states with little amount of independence the the Arab leadership of Palestine decided to hand over their case to the United States then they decided when once the Arab League was established to hand over to them the resolution and the unanimous resolution of the Arab League and the leadership of Azar Masha was to invade Palestine and the rest of the history come 1548 and the Arab invasion started we say seven armies it was actually five armies and the Jews were the 600 000 Jews but there were lots of voices but one one right because they were united and the Arabs were not united they were disunited there were lots of problems with them they had a real united command and the the result of that was please this was the this was the end of the war of independence in 48 and when the armistice agreement of 49 48 49 which should be the prologue of peace and then peace negotiations started first thing was done and then in other places and they ended nowhere and they ended nowhere until we came to the situation of 67 and I don't want to go into it you can go one more ahead it ended up that you have one Palestine here one Palestine here one is running out and the situation around us described more or less Jordan is still holding water though it's very difficult Egypt you have seen all these thermals over the years there were many attempts to reach peace agreements within neighboring countries with Egypt we had a peace agreement in 79 finalized in 82 and then finalized again in 89 when I was the one who signed the last agreement regarding Taba here and then the we had the agreement of 94 with the Jordan which still holds water and we were supposed to discuss with Syria it never materialized and you had that also you had you had contaminated all these things I wasn't contaminated in the year 2000 I can tell you the offer we gave to Arafat to give him 95 percent of the as a basis of negotiation for the establishment of a mysterious state was a good offer to start with it was rejected and the rest is against me please go ahead now this is as much as I want to say about about Israel in a in a nutshell about the Kurds the only nation in the Palestinians have a national expression the Jordanians have a national expression the Iraqis have one the Syrians have one the Lebanese have one the only national entity or national I would say personality if you could say that's right it doesn't have a representation in the Middle East are the Kurds 35 billion of them 15 million in Turkey 8 million in Iran 8 million in Iraq and about 2 million in Syria can you go ahead please the maximum they have achieved at the now is an autonomous area in the north of Iraq which is not only autonomous it's semi-dependent because they have oil and they can sell the oil and they get money you have this area in Syria with two million people which eventually I think will be somehow federated with the one in Iran you have this area in Iran which try to get some kind of independence in 46 when they formed the Republic of Mahabad which was then crushed by the Iranians but they're still there and then of course you have all these people 15 18 million in Turkey Turkey is never going to give it up they will give them some autonomy they'll give them some until a few years they couldn't use their language they couldn't teach Turkish Kurdish any Kurdish organization would be illegal it's all you can put it it's just it's not a political zone it's just I would say to give you a vision how it looks it's not a map it's not a political prophecy it's not a proposal is nothing it's just a reality how these people are divided and there was only one statesman in the west whose name was Woodrow Whipson who said they should get some kind of self-definition but they never got it but in their side they didn't theorize the terms they wanted the the powers that be which means the the British and the French were not interested and of course the Turks were not interested so that's the situation about the Kurds it's besides the point but it is there it's not going to leave the scene we are going to hear more of it in the future and I hope it will not lead to wars I'm very I was very happy to read that in Turkey the situation is somehow a a better is that that first of all they have not executed of Jalal and secondly they gave more autonomy as far as teaching Kurdish is concerned with so forth I hope this trend will continue can you please go ahead now let me go back to the crux of the matter this is the temple mount the whole of the area of the old city of Jerusalem is less than one square kilometer it's it's a less than one square kilometer out of this 15 percent of the temple mount these walls being were built by hell of the great the dome of the rock was built in the in the eighth century an axamos was built on the foundation of the Byzantine church also in the seventh eighth century by the omayans the omayans were then ruling the airwards from from Syria wanted to have a counterweight to hijab this was political religious whatever and the fact remains that back for a short period of 200 years in which this was in the hands of of of of the crusaders since 638 this was always in muslim hands and that's the way it's going to remain because two days after the end of the sixth day war the keys of the al-Aqsa of all this area were handed over to the muslim what they keep the keys until this day the israeli police keeps the perimeter in over 43 years or whatever only three or four occasions the police broke in because there were disturbances because topographically if this is the wailing wall and here thousands of people converge and storm are being thrown at them from above the police has to do something to avoid it but otherwise the name al-Aqsa in the father is a lie because the al-Aqsa is in muslim hands and was in muslim hands and will remain muslim hands this is an assurance this will remain so and it's also purchased by a religious ruling by the chief element which said the jews are not supposed to pray here why because nobody knows where the temple was we know that the temple was here but perhaps if someone prays here or here he threads on the place where the holy scripture where in the temple and this is a sacrilege so this is why there is a religious ruling forbidding jews to pray here jews can come and visit here when they come they come at certain hours which are dictated by the wax the post immortality the georgians have a say here they pay part of the service of the of the gods here and of the administration but al-Aqsa is in muslim hands now Jerusalem is today a city of 750,000 people 250 to 160,000 of them are Arabs over 500,000 of jews there will be no solution to the problem of the Middle East and if there is a settlement for the problem of Jerusalem and convinced of that because we have borders we have security we have settlements we have right to return we're in Jerusalem Jerusalem is the most sensitive one and we we shall have to deal with it on the basis that the less sanctity we deal with the better we are and there is a very small area which is less than one square man where you have all the sanctity of the world in Jerusalem and this you can administer you can deal with you can say overall sovereignty we live for god like the red kick who said sovereignty over holy places is with god it's true it will go but let someone administer it because someone has to control if there is no one who wants to bring a bomb then be it a muslim or a jew because a bomb on the temple mount will be not a world war but it will be a cataclysmic event cataclysmic event and if you remember what happened over the last 43 years all the attempts to blow up what this very sensitive powder came here and we should play every day three times and believe you me the government of Israel is doing whatever it can to avoid any any catastrophe here and it will have to wait we'll find a settlement for that we'll find some kind of a settlement and I think we should understand there was a Syrian president we found out the incoming president his name was Hafiz el-Assad he died about ten years ago he once said he has a discussion with the jews leader of leberlon Waleedjumlat who may eventually kill because your mom these things you didn't see i do i you know a certain method and then the syrians that would have been very harsh way but this Waleedjumlat said after he spoke to el-Assad he said there's a place for everyone in the Middle East but there are no place for all the admissions and I go back to what herzen used to say we have to go by the international law and we have to buy by international law we have to buy by agreement we have to reach honest agreement all the women and respect them and we have reached the certain agreements with the Arab countries we reached a very good important agreement with the Egyptians back in the 70s and the 80s it's not respected always we are very sorry about it but we are lucky to have the battle zone of the Sinai agreement between Egypt and us we reached an agreement with Hussain in 94 it is respected that we are lucky that the Jordanian regime is strong enough to keep it we were on the verge of reaching agreement with the syrians a few years ago and I hate to think what would happen if we had reached that agreement and we would have come to this chapter position now with the turmoil in Egypt we'll see what would happen out of this agreement now I am a veteran of agreements with the Chinese but the Chinese answers into a discussion with the British in 82 about the about Hong Kong that for two years of the question for two years of the question of sovereignty and then they understood that the Chinese are not going to give to give to give up on the question of sovereignty but then they said okay both sides will put the agreements to the test of time from 84 to 97 no change everything remains in place in 97 sovereignty will go over to the Chinese for another 50 years to spend the test of time all together you've got 67 years to put the agreements to test 67 years is not a long time but that's more than three years more than five years more than 30 years we live in an historic area where things have historic roots every nation has its historic narrative and everyone has its problems if we go to an historic agreement after years of of strife and of worship and of conflicting narratives we have to put the things to test of time to go stage by stage to put into the test of time to see what materializes what assurances we have and how we can go back otherwise all these agreements will remain as we say a script on ice in the Sahara nothing will remain this is how I regarded from here and then I want to say something about our own question with the Palestinians but for this I don't think the map as you well know the area of western Palestine is 26,000 square kilometers about six thousand square kilometers are the Palestinian Authority additional three or four square kilometers are Gaza which is now ruled by a separate entity and about 20,000 Israel in the area of Israel we have proper we have over a million Arabs mostly Muslim who enjoy full rights with 10 members in the parliament out of 120 I'm proud to say that four months ago before the elections a certain lady by the name of Hanim Zubi she presented the candidacy to the parliament of the Knesset and was rejected by the Central Election Committee which is a political body headed by Supreme Court Justice and this committee disqualified her said because she's anti-Israeli and she participated in the flotilla and so on and she speaks against Israel everywhere and she she undermines the existence of the state of Israel so there was a special session of the court of Supreme Court nine judges out of 14 were on this session and unanimously they said that she can be eligible to run for parliament because we have the freedom of speech this is democratic state and that's a basic right to express abuse the same day we had news that in Syria four hundred people were killed because of intercommunal strikes which were expressed in in shootings between the army and certain communities in Hamad now we live in a very wide area and I'm telling you as a Jew as an Israeli and as a strong Democrat that our only right to exist is if we hold these values of being three people living at liberty side by side with our neighbors honoring our agreements with them and not robbing them but I don't see any reason if by any statement agreements Jews cannot live in the Middle East or even in Palestine where they've been living for four generations because don't forget that in 1948 we've taken in about 700 000 Jews from Arab lands who lived there for generations and who had to leave their places because of the Palestinian Arab this is my view and I'll tell you one thing more about settlement because I know there's going to come a question about settlement this is what I'm saying to Israeli extremists people can live wherever they like as long as they don't rob anyone of his rights but I'll tell you something more suppose I were to inherit tomorrow a flat in the most orthodox quarter of Jerusalem and this flat belongs to me rightfully and the title deed and I got everything it's registered and got an agreement and everything but I cannot ask my son to live there because his son his life there will be unbearable because he cannot open television on a Saturday he can come he cannot come by car to his place on Saturday and so on I mean his environment does not tolerate him so I would advise them take a flat 500 meters aside don't live there because the question between what you are what is rightful to do and what is feasible to do so I have no question that Jews have the right to live wherever they want in Palestine or in the Middle East the question is if they can exercise the right everywhere and if they cannot exercise the right and if they exercising the right and tames more troubles and most right I would I would wait with it this is my opinion about this now let me give you one more I have a few minutes more as long as there was a cold war and the Middle East became the testing ground for eastern west weapons and political stripes and political contests with the strife in the Middle East was very important because the Soviets used Egypt as a testing ground for the mix and we got the American weaponry and used it and lesser success greater success and I mean it served our purposes it served also the purpose of the west of NATO it served the purpose of others and it served its purpose but these days are over the days are over and this is no more the case and today the question is the question of values the question is of there's no question any more of the existence of these words is that eight million people almost seven thousand seven million Jews many of the earth serve somehow not in the army but in some kind of civic services we have a much fuller participation of the Arab population in the labor force if you go to Israeli hospitals sometimes you find that 30 or 40 percent of the doctors and the nurses are hurt and also to other professions in courts and everything it is a long way to go but we are we are we are not there but we are on the way not to mention the right of vote and so on and let us not forget the Zionist movement one of the first international political movement that granted the vote to women in 1987 this was 25 years before the American and 75 years before the Swiss so in that respect we have a very solid tradition and today I was for a while heading a college in the north part of Berlin where 20 percent of the students were Arab 40 percent of these Arab students were women they already came to to this university to the college driving a car and they would after graduating they would have their own profession and they won't have nine children they will have three or four I mean this is progress in the being in the making and this is part of the society nobody asked them to be damaged but they are asked they are part of the democratic liberal open society and they exercise and there is and they they appreciate it now if you look at the area around us it is a far cry because there is democracy in Turkey not the one we have in Israel but democracy in Turkey there is certain amount of democracy in Egypt that's it that's it because if in Syria there was a very nice constitution which was worded by Swiss and French juries and it was changed within 12 minutes to allow Bashar and Assad to become president although it was not yet 35 this is not constitutional and not to mention other not to quote other examples so we live in a very very wide environment and it is very very difficult to keep to maintain your own lifestyle and your own values in an area which seems an entirely different term because I was I served now for two years on that commission which was investigated the tortilla incident of Gaza in May of 10 if you see what happens in Gaza how the Hamas is ruling the place how it's collecting taxes from the food that the UN is supplying there for free how they're coercing the people how they how they they allow certain factions in the south of Gaza to shoot at Israel despite the fact that we have evacuated the place and seven in the year 2005 leaving all these places empty I mean this is this is not a way to to pay to to to work on peace and we'll have we have a long way to go and I hope we shall reach it I hope we shall reach it together but we have to be patient and it is very difficult to gauge or to measure all these things in European standards because don't forget Europe is going long way and when you think of it that Germany and France were fighting for thousand years and now they have joined military units under the same command they've gone a long way we are not yet there one more thing about energy because this I was asked about that question energy is losing its importance in the Middle East it's still very important for Iran because for Iran it is 85 percent of its income every dollar increase the price of the barrel of oil gives a billion dollars to Ahmadinejad and as long as he financially independent he can subsidize his people of 75 percent of the Iranian population live in the cities they get subsidized food and oil to the to the tune of 67 percent and they are no more illiterate 80 percent literate to 85 percent literate and he's just they're just maintaining this regime by the force of the money this is the importance of the sanction and I'm not one who belong to to the crowd who said that whenever Ahmadinejad says something few stupid we should cry holocaust holocaust there was one there will never be a holocaust again this is why we are there but come on there are things which we cannot afford in this world and we cannot afford someone in the area who says such thing and builds such power and he's a threat to all the area and that's a global question not all the outage and the dependence of the Americans on the Middle Eastern oil is shrinking our dependence on on on the exterior oil is shrinking because we have found this fantastic quantity of gas in the Mediterranean which we share with with the with the Cyprus eventually with Turkey and we are on the way up because look what this country what our country is producing is almost like we can take tiger in better days so we don't have we don't have oil what we have is what we have between our ears and the mentality of our people and let me tell you one more thing a late prime minister with whom I used to work for two or three years Shamir had his underground code name was Michael he was named after Michael Collins and he mentioned to me once or twice why he chose that name and it is the spirit of liberty which brings small nations to great achievements and I think this is a great common denominator between us and you thank you very much