[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 101 (Wednesday, July 10, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H7160-H7162]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




ADDRESS BY HIS EXCELLENCY, BINYAMIN NETANYAHU, PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL

  Prime Minister NETANYAHU. If I can only get the Knesset to vote like 
this.
  Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, this is not the 
first time that a Prime Minister of Israel addresses a joint meeting of 
Congress. My immediate predecessor, Shimon Peres, addressed this body, 
and before him, the late Yitzhak Rabin, who fell, tragically cut down 
by a despicable, savage assassin. We are grateful that Israeli 
democracy has proved resilient enough to overcome this barbaric act, 
but we shall always carry with us the pain of this tragedy.
  I recognize, Mr. Speaker, that the great honor you have bestowed on 
me is not personal. It is a tribute to the unshakable fact that the 
unique relationship between Israel and the United States transcends 
politics and parties, governments and diplomacy. It is a relationship 
between two peoples who share a total commitment to the spirit of 
democracy, an infinite dedication to freedom. We have a common vision 
of how societies should be governed, of how civilizations should be 
advanced. We both believe in eternal values; we both believe in the 
Almighty; we both follow traditions hallowed by time and experience.

  We admire America not only for its dynamism and for its power and for 
its wealth. We admire America for its moral force, as Jews and as 
Israelis. We are proud that this moral force is derived from the Bible 
and the precepts of morality that the Jewish people have given the 
world.
  Of course, Israel and the United States also have common interests. 
But our bonds go well beyond such interests. In the 19th century 
citizens for all free states viewed France as the great guardian of 
liberty. In the 20th century every free persons looks to America as the 
champion of freedom.
  Yesterday my wife and I spent a very moving hour at Arlington 
National Cemetery, and we saw there the evidence of the price you paid 
for that freedom in the lives of your best and brightest young men, and 
it is a toll that is exacted from you, from all of us, but from you 
these very days.
  I think it was the terrible misfortune of the Jewish people that in 
the first half of this century the United States had not yet assumed 
its pivotal role in the world, and it has been our great fortune that 
in the second half of this century, with the miraculous renewal of 
Jewish nationhood, the United States became the preeminent power in the 
world. You, the people of America, offered the Jewish state, a 
fledgling Jewish state, succor and support. You stood by us time and 
time again against the forces of tyranny and totalitarianism, and I 
know that I speak for every Israeli and every Jew throughout the world 
when I say to you today: Thank you, people of America.
  Perhaps our most demanding joint effort has been the endless quest to 
achieve peace and stability for Israel and its Arab neighbors. American 
Presidents have joined successive Israeli Governments in an untiring 
effort to obtain this peace. The first historic breakthrough was led by 
Prime Minister Begain and Presidents Carter and Sadat at Camp David, 
and the most recent success was the pact with Jordan under the auspices 
of President Clinton. These efforts, I believe, are clear proof of our 
intentions and our direction. We want peace.
  We want peace with all our neighbors. We have no quarrel with them 
which cannot be resolved by peaceful means, nor, I must say, do we have 
a quarrel with Islam. We reject the thesis of inevitable clash of 
civilizations. We do not subscribe to the idea that Islam has replaced 
communism as the new rival of the West, because our conflict is 
specific. It is with those militant fanatics who pervert the central 
tenets of a great faith, toward violence and world domination. Our hand 
is stretched out in peace for all who would grasp it.
  We do not care about the religion. We do not care about their 
national identify. We do not care about their ideological beliefs. We 
care about peace, and our hand is stretched out for peace.
  Every Israeli wants peace. I do not think there is a people who has 
yearned or prayed or sacrificed more for peace than we have. There is 
not a family in Israel that has not suffered the unbearable agony of 
war and, directly or indirectly, the excruciating, everlasting pain of 
grief. The mandate we have received from the people of Israel is to 
continue the search for an end to wars and an end to grief. I promise 
you, we are going to live up to this mandate.
  We will continue the quest for peace, and to this end, we are ready 
to resume negotiations with the Palestinian Authority on the 
implementation of our interim agreement.
  I want to say something about agreements. Some of you speak Latin, or 
at least study Latin. Pax est summa servanda. We believe agreements are 
made to be kept. This is our policy. We expect the Palestinian side to 
abide by its commitments. On this basis, we will be prepared to begin 
final status negotiations as well. We are ready to engage Syria and 
Lebanon in meaningful negotiations. We seek to broaden the circle of 
peace to the whole Arab world and the rest of the countries of the 
Middle East.
  But I want to make it clear that we want a peace that will last. We 
must have a peace based on security for all. We cannot, and I might say 
we dare not, forget that more men, women, and children have lost their 
lives through terrorist attacks in the last 3 years, than in the entire 
previous decade.
  I know that the representatives of the United States sitting here, 
the people of the United States, are now becoming tragically familiar 
with this

[[Page H7161]]

experience. You have experienced it in places as far afield as New 
York's World Trade Center and, most recently, in Daharan. I notice also 
the recent torchings of the Afro-American churches in America, which I 
must tell you strike a familiar and chilling note among Jews. But I 
want to try to put the Israeli experience in perspective, and one has 
to imagine, to do so, to imagine such attacks occurring time and time 
again in every city, in every corner of this great country.
  So what we are saying here today is as simple as it is elementary: 
Peace means the absence of violence. Peace means not fearing for your 
children every time they board a bus. Peace means walking the streets 
of your town without the fearful shriek of Katyusha rockets overhead.
  We just visited with the wife of a friend of mine, the deputy mayor 
of Kir yat shemona, who was walking the streets of Kir yat shemona when 
the fearful shriek of a rocket overhead burned her car, nearly burned 
her, and she was miraculously saved, and she is alive and she is 
getting better. But peace means that this does not happen, because 
peace without personal safety is a contradiction in terms. It is a 
hoax. It will not stand.
  What we are facing in the Middle East today is a broad front of 
terror throughout the area. Its common goal is to remove any Western, 
and primarily any American, presence in the Middle East. It seeks to 
break our will, to shatter our resolve, to make us yield.
  I believe the terrorists must understand that we will not yield, 
however grave and fearful the challenge. Neither Israel nor any other 
democracy, and certainly not the United States, must ever bend to 
terrorism. We must fight it. We must fight it resolutely, endlessly, 
tirelessly. We must fight it together until we remove this malignancy 
from the face of the Earth.
  For too long the standards of peace, used throughout the world, have 
not been applied to the Middle East. Violence and despotism have been 
excused and not challenged. Respect for human freedoms has not been on 
the agenda. It has been on the agenda everywhere else, everywhere else: 
In Latin America, in the former Soviet Union, in South Africa. And that 
effort has been led by successive American administrations and by this 
House.

  I think it is time to demand a peace based on norms and on standards. 
It is not enough to talk about peace in abstraction. We must talk about 
the content of peace. It is time, I believe, for a code of conduct for 
building a lasting Middle East peace. Such a peace must be based on 
three pillars, the three pillars of peace.
  Security is the first pillar. There is no substitute for it. To 
succeed, the quest for peace must be accompanied by a quest for 
security.
  Demanding an end to terrorist attacks as a prerequisite for peace 
does not give terrorists veto power over the peace process, because 
nearly all of the terrorist acts directed against us are perpetrated by 
known organizations whose activities can be curbed, if not altogether 
stopped, by our negotiating partners. This means that our negotiating 
partners, and, indeed, all of the regimes in the region, must make a 
strategic choice: either follow the option of terror, follow the option 
of terror as an instrument of policy or diplomacy, or follow the option 
of peace. But they cannot have it both ways.
  This choice means that the Palestinian Authority must live up to its 
obligations it has solemnly undertaken to prevent terrorist attacks 
against Israel. This choice also means that Syria must cease its policy 
of enabling proxy attacks against Israeli cities, and undertake to 
eliminate threats from Hizbollah and other Syrian-based groups. This 
means that the fight against terror cannot be episodic, it cannot be 
conditional, it cannot be whimsical, it cannot be optional. It must 
become the mainstay of a relationship of trust between Israel and its 
Arab partners.
  The second pillar of peace is reciprocity. This means an unshakeable 
commitment to the peaceful resolution of disputes--including the border 
disputes between Israel and its neighbors.
  The signing of a peace treaty should be the beginning of a 
relationship of reciprocal respect and recognition, and the fulfillment 
of mutual obligations. It should not trigger round after round of 
hostile diplomacy. Peace should not be the pursuit of war by other 
means.
  A peace without pacification, a peace without normalization, a peace 
in which Israel is repeatedly brought under attack, is not a true 
peace.
  But reciprocity, reciprocity means that every line in every agreement 
turns into a sinew for reconciliation. Reciprocity means that an 
agreement must be kept by both sides. Reciprocity is the glue of mutual 
commitment that upholds agreements, and this is the second pillar of 
peace.
  The third pillar of lasting peace is democracy and human rights. I am 
not revealing a secret to the Members of this Chamber when I say that 
modern democracies do not initiate aggression. This has been the 
central lesson of the 20th century. States that respect the human 
rights of their citizens are not likely to provoke hostile action 
against their neighbors. No one knows better than the United States, 
the world's greatest democracy, that the best guarantor against 
military adventurism is accountable, democratic government.
  The world has witnessed the bitter results of policies without 
standards in the case of Saddam Hussein. Unless we want more Saddams to 
rise, we must apply the standards of democracy and human rights in the 
Middle East. I believe that every Muslim and every Christian and every 
Jew in the region is entitled to nothing less.
  I do not think we should accept the idea that the Middle East is the 
latest or the last isolated sanctuary that will be democracy-free for 
all time except the presence of Israel. I realize that this is a 
process. It may be a long-term process, but I think we should begin it.
  It is time for the states of the Middle East to put the issue of 
human rights and democratization on their agenda. Democratization means 
accepting a free press and the right of a legal opposition to organize 
and express itself. It is very important for the opposition to be able 
to express itself, Mr. Speaker. I have just learned that, and we will 
accord that same right, as you know.
  This is democracy. It is to be able to disagree, to express our 
disagreements, and sometimes to agree after disagreements. It means 
tolerance. It means an inherent shift away from aggression toward the 
recognition of the mutual right to differ.
  I will admit, the Middle East as a whole has not yet effected this 
basic shift, this change from autocracy to democracy. But this does not 
mean that we cannot have peace in the region now, peace with 
nondemocratic regimes. I believe we can. It is a fact that we have had 
such peace arrangements. But such peace arrangements as we can now 
arrive at can only be characterized as a defensible peace in which we 
must retain assets essential to the defense of our country and 
sufficient to deter aggression.
  Until this democratization process becomes a mainstay of the region, 
the proper course for the democratic world, led by the United States, 
is to strengthen the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel, and to 
encourage moves to pluralism and greater freedom in the Arab world. I 
want to make something clear. We do not want merely peace in our time. 
We want peace for all time.

                              {time}  1030

  To the message of peace now, we do not just want peace now. We want 
peace now and later. We want peace for generations. There is no divide. 
That desire is heartfelt. It should be a point of unity, not of 
disunity. I believe this is why we must make the pursuit of human 
rights and democracy a cornerstone of our quest.
  So these, then, I believe are the three pillars of peace: security, 
reciprocity, and the strengthening of democracy.
  I believe that a peace based on these three pillars can be advanced. 
Yet, ladies and gentlemen, I would be remiss if I did not refer to a 
major challenge facing all of us.
  I have touched on the problem of the Middle East that is largely 
undemocratic, and part of it is strongly antidemocratic. Specifically, 
it is being radicalized and terrorized by a number of unreconstructed 
dictatorships whose governmental creed is based on tyranny and 
intimidation.
  The most dangerous of these regimes is Iran, that has wed a cruel 
despotism

[[Page H7162]]

to a fanatic militancy. If this regime, or its despotic neighbor Iraq, 
were to acquire nuclear weapons, this could presage catastrophic 
consequences not only for my country and not only for the Middle East 
but for all of mankind.
  I believe the international community must reinvigorate its efforts 
to isolate these regimes and prevent them from acquiring atomic power. 
The United States and Israel have been at the forefront of this effort, 
but we can and we must do much more. Europe and the countries of Asia 
must be made to understand that it is folly, nothing short of folly, to 
pursue short-term material gain while creating a long-term existential 
danger for all of us.
  I believe that only the United States can lead this vital 
international effort to stop the nuclearization of terrorist states. 
But the deadline for attaining this goal is getting extremely close.
  In our own generation, we have witnessed how the United States 
averted, by its wisdom, tenacity and determination, the dangerous 
expansion of a totalitarian superpower equipped with nuclear weapons. 
The policy it used for that purpose was deterrence. Now we see the rise 
of a similar threat, similar and in many ways more dangerous, against 
which deterrence by itself may not be sufficient. Deterrence must now 
be reinforced with prevention, immediate and effective prevention.

  We are confident that America, once again, will not fail to take the 
lead in protecting our free civilization of this ultimate horror. But, 
ladies and gentlemen, time is running out. We have to act, responsibly, 
in a united front, internationally. This is not a slogan. This is not 
overdramatization. This is the life of our world, of our children and 
of our grandchildren. And I believe that there is no greater, no more 
noble, no more responsible force than the united force of democracy led 
by the greatest democracy, the United States. We can overcome this 
challenge. We can meet it successfully.
  Let me now say a word about a subject that has been on your mind and 
ours, and that subject is the city of Jerusalem.
  Countless words have been written about that city on the hill, which 
represents the universal hope for justice and peace. I live in that 
city on the hill. And in my boyhood I knew that city, when it was 
divided into enemy camps, with coils of barbed wire stretched through 
its heart.
  Since 1967, under Israeli sovereignty, united Jerusalem has, for the 
first time in 2,000 years, become the city of peace. For the first 
time, the holy places have been open to worshipers from all three great 
faiths. For the first time, no group in the city or among its pilgrims 
has been persecuted or denied free expression. For the first time, a 
single sovereign authority has afforded security and protection to 
members of every nationality who sought to come and pray there.
  There have been efforts to redivide this city by those who claim that 
peace can come through division, that it can be secured through 
multiple sovereignties, multiple laws, multiple police forces.
  This is a groundless and dangerous assumption, and it impels me to 
declare today: There will never be such a redivision of Jerusalem. 
Never. We shall not allow a Berlin Wall to be erected inside Jerusalem. 
We will not drive out anyone, but neither shall we be driven out of any 
quarter, any neighborhood, any street of our eternal capital.
  Finally, permit me to briefly remark on our future economic 
relationship. The United States--how can I tell it to this body? The 
United States has given, apart from political and military support to 
Israel, munificent and magnificent assistance in the economic sphere. 
With America's help, Israel has grown to be a powerful, modern state. I 
believe that we can now say that Israel has reached childhood's end, 
that it has matured enough to begin approaching a state of self-
reliance.
  We are committed to turning Israel's economy into a free market of 
goods and ideas. I believe that such a free market of goods and ideas 
is the only way to bring ourselves to true economic independence; and 
this means free enterprise, privatization, open capital markets, an end 
to cartels, lower taxes, deregulation.
  There is not a Hebrew word for deregulation. By the time this term of 
office in Israel is over, there will be a Hebrew word for deregulation.
  But may I say something that unites all of us across the political 
divide? I am committed to reducing the size of government; and I am 
quoting Speaker Gingrich, quoting President Clinton, saying that the 
era of Big Government is over. It is over in Israel, too.
  I believe that a market economy is the only way to effectively absorb 
immigrants and realize the dream of ages, the ingathering of the Jewish 
exiles.
  To succeed, we must uphold the market economy as the imperative of 
the future. It is a crucial prerequisite for the building of the 
promised land.
  We are deeply grateful for all that we have received from the United 
States, for all that we have received from this Chamber, from this 
body. But I believe there can be no greater tribute to America's long-
standing economic aid to Israel than for us to be able to say: We are 
going to achieve economic independence. We are going to do it.
  In the next 4 years, we are going to begin the long-term process of 
gradually reducing the level of your generous economic assistance to 
Israel, and I am convinced that our economic policies will lay the 
foundation for total self-reliance and great economic strength. In our 
Hebrew scriptures, which spread from Jerusalem to all of mankind, there 
is a verse, ``HaShem oz l'eamo yiten; HaShem yevarech et amo 
bashalom.'' ``God will give strength to His people; God will bless His 
people with peace.'' This is the original, inspired source for the 
truth that peace derives from strength.
  In the coming years, we intend to strengthen the Jewish people in its 
land. We intend to build an Israel of reciprocal dialog and peace with 
each and every one of our neighbors. We will not uproot anyone, nor 
shall we be uprooted. We shall insist on the right of Jews to live 
anywhere in the land, just as we insist on the right of Jews to live 
anywhere in any other place of the world. We will build an Israel of 
self-reliance. We will build an Israel with an undivided and 
indivisible city of hope at its heart. We will build a peace founded on 
justice and strength and amity for all men and women of good will.
  And I know that the American people will join us in making every 
effort to make our dream a reality, as I know that the American people 
will join us in prayer: ``God will give strength to his people, God 
will bless his people with peace.'' Thank you very much.
  [Applause, the Members rising.]
  At 10 o'clock and 46 minutes a.m., the Prime Minister of Israel, 
accompanied by the committee of escort, retired from the Hall of the 
House of Representatives.
  The Assistant to the Sergeant at Arms escorted the invited guests 
from the Chamber in the following order:
  The members of the President's Cabinet.
  The Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.
  The acting dean of the diplomatic corps.

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