Trainees in Israel - we have trainees, agricultural trainees, health care, environment training, tourist training, and so on. 1995, 7 Palestinian trainees in Israel. 1996, 280 trainees in Israel. 1997, 700. 1995, 7, in 1997, 700. Not a hundred percent, but a hundredfold increase.
You want me to continue? I'll continue; there's more.
Something is obviously wrong because when you still visit the Palestinian areas, they tell you how this government is choking the Palestinian economy. There has never been a more liberal, more conciliatory, more open, more generous treatment of the Palestinian economy than under this government. It's part of our philosophy. I said that to you before, but this was not a slogan. It's backed up by real numbers. We believe that if the Palestinians have a good economy, have a good life, then the chances for peace are increased significantly. We also believe in free markets.
Now as a result of all this, you're going to see this year probably for the first time since Oslo, a real upturn in the Palestinian GDP per capita, and in the GDP. I don't have final figures yet, but we will. We're very precise on this, very exact.
I don't know who's feeding you what information, but these are hard, rock-solid facts. And we're very responsible with facts. We don't have two sets of figures. The Central Bureau of Statistics in Israel is as impartial and as careful and objective as the Supreme Court. We're a modern state. We don't doctor numbers.
Now, I'm saying this because there's obviously a tremendous gap of perception. A tremendous gap of perception. And the tremendous gap of perception is not based on interpretation, but on lack of knowledge of the facts. These are the facts.
If the European Union officials, not the political leaders, but if the officials who are dealing with us do not have these facts, then something is obviously wrong and I take it as my responsibility to make sure that you have the facts. I'll be happy to provide you with more, this is just a sampling.
There has been a material change for the good in the Palestinian economy as a result of Israel's policies. This is what we can do.
We cannot change Palestinian internal business practices. It is up to them. I would hope that they would adopt the Egyptian model, because the Egyptian model has shown that the key to progress is freedom. I mean internal freedom.
Peace is tremendously important. It is something that we want, but not because of the economy. Sure, peace helps the economy. But it is not the main element of economic growth. We've had peace with Egypt for twenty years, but the Egyptian economy was stagnant.
People will come. At the signing of the peace treaty, businessmen will come to invest. Some of them might invest initially, but they won't stay unless you have a free economy. Freedom to move across boundaries, that we are arranging. But also free inside.
The Egyptian economy was stagnant for twenty years, and in the last two years there's been a tremendous boost in Egypt because President Mubarak should be commended for opening up the Egyptian markets. For deregulating, for debureaucratizing, for introducing competition, for allowing foreign investors to come in with no centralized controls. As a result of that, for the second straight, I think for the third year, the Egyptian economy for the first time is outstripping significantly the growth of the population. Now, that's progress.
I cannot affect and I don't intend to affect, and it's not my business to affect, the way the Palestinians do business inside the PA. But I can affect, along with my colleagues in the government, the way that we do business with each other. And to the extent that I have anything to do with it, we have opened up our markets, we have given our assistance including in training in Israeli facilities, with unlimited support, literally unlimited support, to the Palestinian economy.
Coincidentally, we've also doubled trade with Jordan, as you may know, and we are thinking that we can achieve another doubling this year. Again, because of the same policies. Making security regulations less stringent; that is, up to the point of necessity, of course. And encouraging all government ministries, all authorities, to facilitate movement, to facilitate the unfettered transfer of goods and people and the things that carry them - trucks and so on.
This is, I think, something that I wanted to bring to your intention, because it seems to me that one of the major problems that we have and perhaps the major struggle that we have, is a struggle with the absence of truth. This is true not only in the economic field; it is true in the political field as well. It is the fact that our true policies, the true facts, of what we do, the agreements that we're committed to, the policies that we wish to pursue, are misrepresented. At best, are misrepresented.
We seek prosperity; we seek peace with the Palestinians and with every one of our neighbors. One of the misrepresentations that have been created is not only that we are constricting the Palestinian economy, but also as a result of this government's policies and this government coming into power, peace has collapsed. Ladies and gentlemen, peace collapsed two years ago. It collapsed. It crashed. We had no peace. We had a collapse of peace; maybe not in the way this was perceived in various capitals around the world, but the way it was in practice here.
We had a collapse in the basic deal of Oslo. The basic deal of Oslo, as you know very well, was put forward by the late Yitzhak Rabin with startling clarity. He said, "We give the Palestinians territory, they fight the terrorists from that territory." We gave them territory. They didn't fight the terrorists. As a result, we had here an explosion of terrorism that we never experienced before in Israel that was a tenfold growth in fatalities. We had 250 Israelis killed in a period of two and a half years: an enormous increase in the number of people killed. No city was safe, no bus was safe, and these terrorists were centered and were dispatched - virtually all of them - from the areas that we had given to the Palestinians.
The Israeli people said, "This is not peace." They said that the deal must be upheld, and indeed we asked and stood and demanded that the deal be kept, that if we are to proceed, the deal must be kept. That was reiterated in Hebron when we agreed to cede additional territory to the Palestinian Authority and got a recommitment and specific assurances on ten provisions of keeping the deal on the Palestinian side.
The deal still has not been kept. There has been a significant reduction in terrorism, although we had some terrorist incidents here. However, there could be terrorism tomorrow. Because basically the dismantling of the terrorist infrastructure promised by Oslo I, Oslo II, and repeated again in the Hebron Note for the Record - that has not been kept.
There have been periodic efforts, usually because of internal considerations, twice. I appreciate them. Regardless of the motivation, I appreciate such efforts. One was after the Dizengoff bombings in Tel Aviv for a period of about six weeks, the other for a period of about four to five weeks after the death of Mukhadin Sharif. Partial, incomplete, and episodic. This is not what Oslo is talking about. It is talking about a systematic, consistent, effective battle against terrorism, day-in, day-out, 365 days a year. That has not happened, and is still not happening.
We also have continuous incitement. Again, it was promised to us in Oslo I, Oslo II, and Hebron, that this will not be sustained, that this will be stopped. We've just had al-Nakba, the so-called "disaster". This was organized for a week in public and private messages, public messages, official messages by the Palestinian leadership, in the official Palestinian media. This was not a protest over percentages of withdrawal, this or that percentage or this or that specific grievance in the agreement. This was an organization of a mass - and, as it turned out - a violent protest organized by the Palestinian Authority to protest the founding of the State of Israel.
The 1947 Partition Plan was contested. This is not a way to educate the Palestinian public towards peace. It is a gross violation of Oslo. These are consistent violations, after we have carried out not only this policy, our very liberal economic policy, but also our responsibilities under the Hebron accords. We are on the verge - there is no reason not to complete it, at least two of the committees could be completed completely - of sealing of the deal vis-à-vis the Palestinian airport and the industrial park in Gaza. there is practically nothing left to negotiate; I've told you, and I'm telling you again, it is being withheld artificially.
We have decided on the first redeployment as Oslo obliged us, within two weeks of the Hebron accords as precisely as it was promised; that was approved and applauded by the United States; we gave over 80 percent of Hebron itself, as you know, precisely as we promised. We released the women prisoners precisely as we promised. The only things that are left are the two outstanding further redeployments. And the way to deal with them was also decided at the time of the Hebron accords in the letter sent to myself, and to Mr. Arafat with precisely the same wording, as part of the agreement by the then Secretary of State Warren Christopher on behalf of the United States - which was the signatory and the underwriter of this agreement - stating that Israel and Israel alone would determine this process without negotiations, based on Israel's determinations of its security concerns.
We went into that process as well. We've deliberated as no government has deliberated, looking into this question of security concerns. It is not a number that we pulled out of a hat, a round number, a nice number, this or that number. It's a number driven by military stipulations from maps that were drawn well before this government came into power. What takes up most of the slack and leaves very little room is the military determination that we need two buffer zones which you're familiar with: one relatively broader one in the east, the Jordan Valley, and the other a relatively narrower one in the west, along what is called the seam line, against terrorism.
These two buffer zones take up the bulk of the territory and leave us with very little room for additional redeployment before a final settlement, and they will make difficult, in any case, any negotiations. But this is not a number that is politically driven; it is based on our need to face the consequences of premature withdrawals or excessive withdrawals in an interim settlement without the necessary defenses that must be built in.
The consequences could be a bus with 40 children blown up: we face the consequences. One airplane shot down over Lod Airport from the hills in the Palestinian areas overlooking it, and hundreds of people blown up in mid-air: we face the consequences. Or a housewife in Tel Aviv opening the tap and not finding any water: we face the consequences.
These are very real, very tangible security concerns in the immediate future, not in some more-distant potential strategic military development in our region. We know our region is not stable. We know the world isn't stable. We know that agreements that are signed today could be eroded tomorrow. We know that the one buttress of peace in this unstable area of the Middle East - the one element that must be there in addition to economic cooperation, in addition to trade and commerce, which we follow rigorously, enthusiastically - we know that without solid security ramparts, no peace will hold. We are following, rigorously and responsibly, the Hebron agreement.
Now, I'll have more to say about that, but I wanted to stress that these facts of the agreements, these facts of our economic policy, these facts about our security policy, are not as well known as some of the things that are said about us, and might have led to some official somewhere in the European Union to adopt, to suggest, the policies that they were talking about.
I am very, very pleased to have heard from the European ambassadors here. I think this was wise; it was prudent. It also had another benefit: it was fair. We always talk about a just and lasting peace, and I think peace must be based on justice, and justice must be given to all parties: to Israel and the Palestinians, the Palestinians and Israel. It is not just one-way justice.
The first justice we must do is justice with truth. Now you've heard me always say this, and I have driven that point home as best as I could today for the benefit of our guests here, but I know that you'd like to hear a few other things, and I'd like to tell you a few other things. So I'm going to ask, as we always do, our press friends to give us the opportunity to have a confidential discussion which you shall know nothing about.