23 Address by Foreign Minister Peres on Nation States and Nationalism in the Middle East- 1 November 1992

Your excellencies, the mayor of Jerusalem, ladies and gentlemen. If history created nationalism, science and technology created universalism and we can see an uneasy settlement between the two of them and changes which are still being continued and changing the relations among nations, the emphasis in each nation, the meaning of nationality and so on. A final settlement has not yet been reached between the universal approach and the nationalistic approach. May I say that universality is not cosmopolitanism. It is really an orientation for the potentials of the future and not just a commitment to the combined and collective memories of nations.

When we took at the Middle East right now we can see the strength of the change, the call of the new era going over from one place to another place and really changing everything we knew until now where everything we considered as permanent and important. The last week was an important week. Progress was done on all the fronts of negotiations. I think with the Jordanians, we have achieved for the first time an open and a written exchange of documents that has the nature of the plan for a future peace. With Syria, in spite of all the difficulties, again progress was done. We had the courage to say "withdrawal" and they had the super-courage to say "peace" with great difficulties. So I must admit that this very day when they speak about withdrawal, they are very earthly and pragmatic and when they speak about peace, they are very heavenly and abstract, but it is a way of negotiation and I think we shall meet somewhere in the middle again.

With the Palestinians, in spite of the fact that we didn't reach yet a written agreement much progress was done and I do believe that in spite of the official pessimism that the Palestinians are being ordered to show around and in spite of the difficulties, they have inside their own organization to reach a consensus, and understanding. We are very near to reach an understanding whether orally or in a written way to make the first step. Then again, there were two important meetings on the multilateral level of negotiation: a working group on ecology met in The Hague and a working group on economy met in Paris for the first time. There were more or less 40 nations that participated in it. Among them, 12 Arabs, three international organizations - the United Nations, the European Community, the World Bank. May I say it wound up with a taste to continue, with a feeling that peace is not just cutting organization, to cut the hand or to cut a leg, but peace is a recovery process where all the nations can emerge from it better off, more up to date with a promise to their own people.

It is not easy. It is not simple for any of us. No norms. We have to give up tested experience. We have to embark upon a new voyage on a road which wasn't yet mapped yet we know from our experience that most of the people prefer memories upon thinking. It is much warmer to remember something that you know than to think about something which is new and unknown. Yet it is a time to think, not just a time to remember.

Returning to the subject of nationalism in the Middle East, may I say the distinction is not just between universalism and nationalism but between two sorts of nationalism - the democratic one and the totalitarian one. Both may be called "nationalism" but they-have nothing in common. They are two things totally apart and the: process of democratization which is spreading all over the world doesn't change maybe the concept of nationalism but changes the fate and the prospects of nations that until now thought that nationalism is the main call and the most important answer to their own destiny. Because each of us of the nations must make a major decision. Are we going to sail with the ships of the future or are we going to remain behind in a terrible and incomparable past which will decide the future of our children?

When we talk about the process of democratization of nationhood, let's have a look what do we mean by what are the real problems before us because democracy can be of two sorts. The one that comes from up, either from heaven or from dictators and the other that comes from within, from the people, from their wish. Today, most of us, I believe, are becoming more and more skeptical about the future of the totalitarian nationality, about nationhood which is submitted to the whims and caprices of ignorant rulers, of misunderstandings in the destinies and calls and challenges of the day.

We may say clearly that each of us, every person practically has a Trojan horse in his home and the name of this horse is the television. The television brings us news that no censor can anymore stop. It forces us to compare our fate with the fate of others, our standard of living and freedom with the standard of living and freedom of the others and today even Syria is open to CNN. Maybe CNN may affect Syria more than all of us because the young man in Damascus, as the young man in Jerusalem, or the young man in Washington or Moscow, can watch by cable television if not from his own country, at least from a neighboring country a program that nobody can stop and the call that nobody can satisfy unless the right conclusion will be drawn.

May I say also there is a basic difference between technology and nationality even if we shall have a look, a good took at the television. What is the strength of nationalism? History, memory. We remember that our fathers and forefathers used to live together, to fight together, to work together, to drink together, to speak the same language, to pray with the same prayer book. Television is a great force but it cannot show anything that belongs to the past. Television is an instrument of today. When it deals with yesterday, it is a very poor second proposition. It is impatient with the past and for that reason even one can distinguish between a generation that was educated and used to reach to books and a generation that was impressed and is reacting to the quickness and fastness and the changing mood of television.

Nationality can no longer attack. It must compete. You cannot keep a nation together unless the nation gains the talent to c in speed, in quality, in promise and in hope. Then again, not only did media the relation between past and

present, namely between history and future, but also it has affected all the other ingredients which were so important to maintain a nationalist spirit. For example, there is no longer in real terms national economy. Either you have an open economy with the rest of the world or you are deeply in crisis - much unemployment, poverty - and this affects the life and the fate of every individual person in those nations.

Either you have a modern economy which guarantees a long life expectancy, the right way of life, a quality of life or you are lagging behind and you feel discriminated in a very demanding state of life.

The economic challenge, namely an economy which is based upon the reality that markets are more important than countries, that speed is more telling than frontiers and that also economy is something democratic. In America, you elect the president once in four years. In economy, you elect your commodities every second minute and you decide which economy becomes stronger and which economy becomes weaker and there is no way to force because the markets must be open in a symmetrical manner. You cannot close your borders for the influx of foreign goods unless you are ready to give up the capacity to export your own goods elsewhere.

Now when the economy is lagging behind and the economy is based on a deficit and unemployment, it creates clearly a protest. In our region, the name of this protest is fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is not a religion. Fundamentalism is a religious protest against various phenomena in life and there is nothing like fundamentalism equal at all places. Fundamentalism in Baka al-Garbia or Um el-Fahm is totally different from fundamentalism in Algeria or Egypt or Gaza. Let's remember the beautiful beginning of "Anna Karenina" where Tolstoy describes the difference between happy and unhappy families. He says all happy families are happily alike but every unhappy family is unhappy in a different way. Fundamentalism is an unhappy religion and it protests in different ways against different phenomena though most of them are known. It is poverty, corruption, oppression, ignorance and totalitarian approaches.

I do not believe that we can fight fundamentalism as a phenomenon. We have to tackle the roots of fundamentalism which is namely a rotten or a weak or a corrupted society. Fundamentalism has a universal aspect. It has the same name and it has also a very dangerous combination. It is a match between religion and daily protest. With religion, you cannot argue. So unless you shall change in a very specific manner the economy and embark upon an economy that can produce money instead of remaining in an economy that consumes money endlessly, we don't have a chance to face this terrible danger all over the place.

Now you cannot have an economy which as I have said is national. An economy must be supernational, either regional or global because the market is open, the speed is high and the competition is real. But not only that, if we shall have another look not just at the economy, we shall have a look at the political aspect of it, again we shall see that the old time nationalism cannot withstand the test of the new parameters and challenges of our time. You know occasionally I'm asking myself what are we struggling so much to satisfy three kings, four presidents, three generals, two dictators and ignore the rest of the people. We have created a politics of leaders instead of a politics of people. Instead of emphasizing what is necessary for the people, we are living to satisfy the prestige of the leaders and we are on the verge of total bankruptcy. We cannot do it for any length of time. The time has come that we shall have the capacity to introduce a new hope and a new attention in the politics of the Middle East.

Now the leaders too are beginning to understand that their durability is reaching its logical end. You know many of the leaders in the Middle East, they are really residing on the conflict between the two superpowers. In the beginning after the war, between the French and the British and later on between the Russians and the Americans. From there, they won their strength, their money, their arms, the legitimation, their prestige, their raison d'etre and their capacity to introduce hope to their own people. We go with the Russians. We go with the Americans. We go our way, they go with us.

Fortunately or unfortunately, an end came to the world conflict. The world conflict doesn't supply anymore food or arms, at least not on a gratis assumption to the old time leaders. They have to look for a new orientation if they want to remain and if they want to exist, if they want to function. They must admit that small nations cannot really create foreign policy. They are influenced by foreign policy. They do n't create it. We have had here the foreign minister of China and in an after-dinner speech very charmingly, he said: "I must admit that, as a Chinese, proportionally speaking, Israel is not a very large country." Which I think was the understatement of the year. You are not a very large country and all of us are affected by large countries and the large countries have changed their course of relations. They are looking for a world of peace and prosperity. They know that the third aspect of nationalism again is disappearing and disappearing fast and that is the military strategy. The military strategy is losing its meaning first of all because whatever is important cannot be won by war neither science nor technology - and whatever can be won by war is no longer so important - neither territory nor natural resources nor markets.

The Soviet Union was by far larger than Japan yet Japan is greater than the Soviet Union in economic terms. If we should write new textbooks, I would suggest to mark nations not by geographic dimensions but by economic dimensions. What makes a country great, small, or not necessarily the size of its land or the wealth of its resources. What makes a nation great or powerful is its scientific potential and its economic talent and it is going to be more and more so, affecting the standard of living of every person.

Not only that but to maintain today an army is a very expensive matter and that we hear more and more expensive. Even if we shall reduce the number of planes, the cost of each plane will again call for the increase of the military budget which is already quite heavy upon many nations, particularly nations who are engaged with their defense. Not only is the army expensive but running a war is even more expensive. The modern technology, the shelling or the firing of a single missile that cost one million or four million or five million dollars apiece. My God, when you see them flying, you say: Here my fortune flies away. And then the cost of the war maybe something very terrible. In the Gulf War, we saw a confrontation between people and technology. Technology won completely but to maintain such a technology you must be the United States of America. We saw that the Americans or the coalition of the Americans, the Europeans and the Arabs suffered very few victims, very little casualties. Then again, we discovered from a strategic point of view, that you cannot secure your country unless you secure your region. You cannot be in a situation where the range of your national defense is shorter than the range of the danger which is facing your country and the range of the danger is the range of the missiles. If the range of the missiles is 1,000 kilometers, thousands of kilometers, and the range of your national defense is limited by frontiers, which is maybe tens or hundreds of kilometers.

So when you look at the economy and when you look at the politics and when you look at the army and when you look at the media representing the today, and the nationality representing the yesterday, you must come to the conclusion that nationalism shrunk a great deal. The nationalism stopped to be an exclusive framework and actually nationalism can prevail only if it is capable of establishing supranational supports or supranational connections or universal orientation. Each of us has today to carry a double passport, a national passport and the universal passport. With one passport, you can travel to the past. With the other passport, you must travel to the future. Yes, we do agree that every person has the right to pray to the Lord he believes in, in the language he prefers, that every nation should and can maintain its spirit but all nations must answer new challenges and new calls. You know we are celebrating today the 500 years of the discovery of America. I have my own doubts about it. Occasionally I'm thinking in my heart what would happen if we would invent planes before we had invented ships and Columbus would fly to America instead of sailing to America. It would take him 12 hours. I think history wouldn't take any note about this flying over to a new territory.

America was not discovered, in my judgment, by Columbus but rather by man like Lincoln or Benjamin Franklin or Wilson. People who didn't discover a new territory but people who have created a new society, a new nation. And actually they weren't the ones who did but the Europeans being tired of their own experience enabled, proforced some of its best men to go over to a new land and build. At the beginning they called it New Amsterdam. That was the name of New York and later, one may say a new Europe, a united Europe in America. The experiment had much success and now the Europeans are trying to copy America on their own and create what at the beginning they used to call a United States of America. Now this is not just a vision, neither a whim. This is need of an entirely new area. When one looks ahead, my impression is that America, the United States, is going to orient itself on the American continent. Europe will be united with many of the features that have characterized the United States. Asia will create a region of its own and here in the Middle East, either we shall keep our nations and have a unified region or all the nations will belong to the past without a message for the future.

So when we are talking about peace, we have to consider not just the prize of the peace which is important but very much the fruits of the peace which is the real story and the fruits of the peace must be a new Middle East.