The Prime Minister traveled to Lisbon to deliver an address to the OSCE. He sought to discern some parallels between recent developments in Europe after the end of the cold war and the peace process in the Middle East. This process must be based on agreed fundamental norms and the commitment of the parties to refrain from threat or use of force in the resolution of political differences. The second is that peace must encompass the entire region, not just the Israel-Palestinian segment. The third lesson of the Helsinki process is that contact between former adversaries must be maintained at all times. In Lisbon the Prime Minister met with Egypts Foreign Minister Amr Moussa and sought Egypts help to persuade the Palestinians to return to the Hebron talks. Text:
Twenty-one years ago, the two great military blocs of the Cold War met at Helsinki to chart a course that would take them from the abyss of conflict to the fertile ground of reconciliation and cooperation.
The decade in which the superpowers launched the Helsinki Process was marked by both high hopes and the threat of severe setbacks.
They spoke of détente, yet continued their struggle by proxy in Angola and the Horn of Africa, and more directly in Afghanistan.
Arms control was accompanied by menacing military deployments and counter-deployments on the European continent.
Prospects for booming East-West trade were overshadowed by the continuing denial of human freedoms across the Soviet bloc.
You, the governments involved in this process, did not ignore these contradictions, nor did you allow them to become a source of despair. You created a framework that transformed the European continent: the OSCE.
You sought a peace for Europe based on solid standards of mutuality and security, and not peace at any price.
By your persistence, all of you won a real and durable peace for East and West. You also set an example for all nations seeking to build a permanent and stable peace.
Today, five years after the launching of the Madrid Peace Process, the Middle East is in some ways in a situation similar to that of Europe when the OSCE was born.
The peoples of the Middle East have high hopes for the future, but they wonder whether the forward momentum for peace can be maintained.
The reason for this uncertainty is that we live in a period of basic contradictions. In the last three years the Middle East has witnessed great diplomatic breakthroughs in the peace process.
But the people of Israel have also witnessed an unprecedented, savage upsurge of terrorism in the heart of our major cities and along our northern border. This violence emanated from areas under the control of our negotiating partners.
And while at the negotiating table we have been speaking about the need for confidence-building, on the ground we have witnessed military movements that have precisely the opposite effect.
Business elites across the region seek to cooperate for greater prosperity. But their vision is rarely reflected in the statements of many of the political and military leaders in the Arab world.
Despite these challenges to the peace process, Israel will not be dissuaded from its main strategic aim to reach a comprehensive peace with all its neighbors.
The people of Israel will not let their hope be replaced by cynicism or despair. And we will take our cue from the peace process between East and West in Europe.
What is clear from the European experience is that contradictions can be overcome by energetic and patient efforts.
The first lesson the Middle East can learn from the Helsinki process is that diplomacy must be based on agreed fundamental norms. The most important of these is the absolute commitment of all parties to refrain from the threat or use of force in the resolution of political differences.
For too long Arabs and Israelis have debated the objectives of negotiations without addressing the rules they will follow to reach these objectives.
A peace process cannot be successful if violence, incitement to violence, and provocations leading to violence hover over the negotiating table.
Unless the renunciation of violence is unequivocal, any settlement reached will become a new platform for further conflict instead of a point of accommodation.
This was understood by the late Egyptian President, Anwar Sadat, who boldly declared "No more war. No more bloodshed" as he and Prime Minister Menachem Begin began their peace initiative.
He acquired the trust of Israelis precisely because he led with this fundamental statement of reconciliation, rather than resorting to incessant threats of a return to violence and war if Egyptian terms in the negotiations were not fully met.
The second lesson of Helsinki is that the broader the peace, the broader the security achieved. For peace and security to become a fact in Europe it had to reach from the Atlantic to the Ural Mountains.
The borders of military planning for NATO and the Warsaw Pact had to become the borders of peace of the OSCE.
Similarly, the Arab-Israeli conflict was not limited to a single front; it encompassed various coalitions of states across the entire Middle East.
As the Gulf war demonstrated, conflict in one part of the Middle East cannot be isolated from other sectors. Aggression by Iraq against Kuwait can end up with missiles striking Tel Aviv.
In that sense, bilateral treaties can only produce partial security. For a solid, comprehensive security to prevail in the Middle East, our quest for peace must cover the entire region from Morocco to the Gulf.
And this larger peace is the goal of the present government of Israel, even if we reach it in steps.
The third lesson of Helsinki is that contact between former adversaries must remain constant.
Even in the darkest days of Soviet-American tension after the invasion of Afghanistan, the OSCE continued to meet.
Representatives of East and West sharply disagreed. Often they engaged in hot debate. But they did not sever their lines of communication. They did not place any conditions on maintaining their dialogue.
The road from conflict to reconciliation is always strewn with disappointments, setbacks and even crises.
A peace process that endures such disagreements is a peace process that will last, and one which will eventually succeed.
Above all, the parties to the negotiations must understand that once a decision for peace is made, all other options for settling differences must be discarded.
Today, there are many proposals to apply the Helsinki model to the Middle East. We are committed to this idea. We have made this clear in our Treaty of Peace with Jordan.
We are fully engaged in the Barcelona Process and we have accepted the recent British initiative for an OSCE in the Middle East.
The Helsinki process is an important diplomatic tool for the resolution of international conflicts.
But it is up to the states of the Middle East to infuse it with their own unique content. Our neighbors must give up their reflexive habit of unilaterally and unfairly criticizing Israel at every moment, and they must especially discard the habit of issuing threats which undermine the peace so needed by all.
The quest for peace in the Middle East has made great strides since Madrid.
Now is the time to ensure its continued success. A peace built on norms, comprehensiveness, and constant dialogue may not lead to instant ceremonies of peace, but it has the best chance of ensuring peace for generations, the kind of peace that our children and grandchildren will celebrate every day of their lives.