September 9, 2001
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres:
The closing resolution is a very important achievement, an
accomplishment of the first order for Israel and Israeli democracy.
It is a painful comedown for the Arab League, which tried to distort,
lie and incite. The Arab League's automatic majority collapsed in
Durban, in view of the entire world. The democratic world also said:
there is a limit to the absurdities that this league of hatred is
trying to impose. Israel essentially succeeded in its efforts to
enlist most of the enlightened world to its cause: the United States,
the European Union, eastern Europe, Australia, Canada, Russia, India,
Latin America. This is also an enormous success, first of all, for
American diplomacy, which took a clear and bold stand and issued a
warning that there is a limit to turning truth into a lie, to
treating the victim as if he is in assailant, as if he is racist. I
am very pleased with this resolution....
In most of those states which voted and acted against us, there
is no democracy, no human rights, no tolerance. There was also a very
interesting attempt here by most of the non-democratic states to
impose their ways on the democratic states.
Deputy Foreign Minister Rabbi Michael Melchior:
We worked very intensively over the past four or five months through
quiet, but active diplomacy vis-a-vis all the countries in the world.
Already at the last preparatory conference in Geneva, we succeeded in
our efforts to the extent that no state supported the extremist
Arab-Islamic position, which tried to win international approval for
Jew hatred and the delegitimization of the State of Israel...
What nonetheless saddens us, and there is no cause to rejoice,
is the true attitude of the Arab world. This boundless animosity,
that gives rise to the attempt to "upgrade" the hatred and the
language of hatred - which has resulted, unfortunately, in yet
another attack today - gives us no cause to rejoice. We are not
neighbors of the Canadians or the Belgians; the Arabs are our
neighbors, and it is with them that, ultimately, we must live and
find another language....
The Islamic states placed on the agenda no less than the
deligitimization of the Jewish people. The world is not ready to
accept that ... and said so unequivocally. The Europeans were under
enormous pressure to give in, to include somewhere a little
condemnation of Israel, and they did not agree. The Belgian Foreign
Minister ... who in the last two months has made many promises to
me, was faithful to his commitment.
Foreign Ministry Legal Adviser Alan Baker:
There is good news and there is bad news...
The good news - There is no equation of Zionism with racism, and that
is very important. We fought against it and we won. We witnessed
European support against the tendency towards politicization (of the
conference), we fought for that and we succeeded.... The Europeans
understood very quickly that the intention here was to politicize and
destroy a conference whose goals were good. They realized it and
decided to fight against it and this, from our point of view, is good
news.
So what is the bad news? First of all, the fact that the Palestinians
succeeded in inserting partisan and specific statements concerning
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a declaration of a conference
on racism is something that never should have happened. Furthermore,
the entrenchment of the hatred displayed at the conference is not
over. What happened was unavoidable. Elie Weisel, in an article
published in the weekend newspapers, said that something has happened
that cannot be stopped, and that we will see more of this hatred
in the future...
The declaration recognizes the right of refuges to return of their
own free will to their houses and their property with dignity and
security, and all states are encouraged to facilitate this return.
Although there is no specific reference here to our case, this is the
first time, in my opinion, that a serious international body has
related to refugees' right of return when, according to international
law, no such right exists...