ABC "NIGHTLINE" INTERVIEW WITH:
ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER SHIMON PERES
MONDAY, APRIL 29, 1996
TED KOPPEL: There is something a little bit bizarre about the fact that
Yasser Arafat is coming here tomorrow to be with you and President
Clinton. President Hussein of Jordan, who decided sometime ago, a couple
of weeks ago, not to come, is not going to be here. In a sense, that
symbolizes how drastically things have changed in the Middle East over the
last few months even.
PRIME MINISTER PERES: Yes. But still, I may say that our relations with
King Hussein are excellent. We don't have any problems. And I believe
that Arafat made some important decisions in his life. He changed the
destinies of the Palestinian people and he became a partner to the peace
process. Once he made peace with Israel, we became the same camp and we
faced the same dangers.
MR. KOPPEL: Among those dangers, I would assume that at the moment you
would still have to count Hafez el Assad. How do you interpret what Assad
is about?
PRIME MINISTER PERES: I think basically he made a decision to have peace,
to make peace. You know, for many good years he claimed that he wants to
achieve a strategic equilibrium with the Israelis. He gave it up. He
knows that he cannot match us militarily. Now he wants to have an
economic equilibrium with Israel. The problem with Assad is that while he
made a strategic choice, he didn't select any tactic that leads to the
fulfillment of that aim.
MR. KOPPEL: If one looks at the tactics that he has been pursuing I
mean, I find it a little hard to understand that you are as benevolent in
your public utterances about Assad as you are, because you understand
better than anyone the Lebanese government has very little power to act on
its own unless Assad gives his permission. The rockets, the Katyusha
rockets that were fired against northern Israel, came through Syria, could
not have gotten into the hands of Hezbollah if Assad had not given his
permission. Why are you so nice to him publicly?
PRIME MINISTER PERES: I've learned the hard way something which is very
important, and that is in order to achieve peace, more than you need a
plan, you need a partner. A plan without a partner is just a piece of
paper.
MR. KOPPEL: Your predecessor, the late Prime Minister Rabin, said you
can't end war, you can't make peace or you don't need to make peace
with your friends; it has to be with your enemies. I'm not quoting him
precisely. But using that as the logic behind a strategic policy, would
have you following the same kind of strategy toward the Iranians, the
Iraqis, the Libyans? Why not?
PRIME MINISTER PERES: No. There is a difference. Maybe in the tactics,
there is a similarity between Syria and Iran. But while the Iranians are
declaring publicly that they want to destroy Israel, they don't say they
are ready to have peace. They don't say they are ready to compromise.
They finance, they arm, they push all the terrorist organizations to cause
death, to create troubles, to destroy the peace process. You know, where
religion begins, logic ends. And they're above reason. They're above
dialogue. They're above any process.
MR. KOPPEL: All right, why not try to deal, then, with Saddam Hussein and
Iraq? Saddam Hussein is a very practical man, whatever else you may think
of him; in many respects like Assad.
PRIME MINISTER PERES: When you say so, you have to explain to me what is
the difference between being a crazy man and a practical man.
MR. KOPPEL: You think he's crazy.
PRIME MINISTER PERES: He is crazy. He's cruel. He's a killer.
MR. KOPPEL: So is Assad. He may not be crazy, but he's cruel and he's a
killer.
PRIME MINISTER PERES: He used to be today I'm not so sure. I mean, he
tried to achieve many things in one way. Today he knows that it is
unachievable. You know, Assad was sure probably that without him, nothing
will move in the Middle East; that there won't be any peace process. He
was even probably sure that Arafat will not go our way, that Hussein will
not make peace with us. He was a little bit surprised. And since he's
very far from being a fool, he'll draw his lessons.
MR. KOPPEL: Mr. Prime Minister, talk to me for a moment about what your
personal feelings were and I don't mean now as prime minister of
Israel, but your personal feelings as a father and a grandfather when you
heard about the consequences of the attacks on that U.N. center in Lebanon
where almost 100 Lebanese men, women and children were killed.
PRIME MINISTER PERES: I regret it deeply. It was a shock to me. But
that's one side of the story. I must be also responsible. If I, as the
minister of defense, sent the Israeli soldiers deep into Lebanese
territory to intercept the launching of Katyushas, and they're being
attacked, I cannot tell them, "Don't defend yourselves." And then they
defend themselves, and unfortunately six shells overfly the target, and
they didn't have the slightest idea that there are civilians, what can I
tell them?
MR. KOPPEL: The U.N. says differently. There were U.N. personnel there
who say they called the Israeli military, that the Israeli military did,
in fact, know that there were many civilians in that camp.
PRIME MINISTER PERES: That's the first time that I hear something like
it. The UNIFIL spokesman actually said that they witnessed the attack
upon our force.
MR. KOPPEL: That is true.
PRIME MINISTER PERES: Yes. And the Israelis, if they would know, I
assure you that no Israeli officer would shoot at women and children.
Many of our officers lost their lives because they didn't want to shoot at
children and women.
MR. KOPPEL: Are you telling me now that Israel cannot do that in the
future if the Hezbollah breaks the agreement? Let us say that rockets do
come from a civilian center, as they most certainly will if Hezbollah
breaks the agreement.
PRIME MINISTER PERES: The answer is yes.
MR. KOPPEL: Yes what?
PRIME MINISTER PERES: We shall try to separate between attacking the
terrorists and touching the civilians. We are telling the Lebanese, "Make
up your mind. Either you want to serve as a shelter to the Hezbollah, and
then you will have to separate, because we don't want to have civilian
casualties, or prevent them from coming in in the midst of your own
existence."
MR. KOPPEL: All of that presumes, Prime Minister Peres, that the Lebanese
government actually has the capability of doing what you demand of them,
which brings us back once again to the puppeteer, Hafez el Assad. He is
the one who controls the actions of the Hezbollah in Lebanon, not the
Lebanese government.
PRIME MINISTER PERES: I would say that concerning the Hezbollah, Iran is
the engine and Syria are the brakes of it. I do not believe that the
Syrians have ordered the Hezbollah to attack us. They can prevent it.
MR. KOPPEL: But they allowed the Katyusha rockets to pass through Syria.
PRIME MINISTER PERES: Yes, they did. And they will have to also learn in
the future that it carries a price, because what happened, really? Why
did they agree finally to have a truce, a cease-fire? Because we told the
villages, "Leave the village. We want to stop the shooting of the
Katyushas." There are hundreds of thousands left.
MR. KOPPEL: But you destroyed a lot of civilian infrastructure.
PRIME MINISTER PERES: Now, we didn't destroy houses, but positions that
they house in a village from which they use to shoot Katyushas. We were
careful not to cause any destruction in infrastructure. We did not
destroy roads. We control the roads so Katyushas will not be able to go
from the north to the south. It was a very thought-out operation; don't
make a mistake about it.
MR. KOPPEL: Prime Minister Peres, a lot of what has happened, obviously,
has been going on within the political context of your elections, our
upcoming elections.
Mr. Prime Minister, you had an image problem only a few months ago in your
own country in the sense that Benjamin Netanyahu is perceived as the tough
guy; Likud is perceived as being much tougher in terms of representing the
interests of Israel. The Labor Party, you in particular, do not have that
tough an image. Indeed, I mean, worse things can be said about a man than
that he is perceived as a peacemaker, but that was losing or apparently
losing votes for you as far as the polls were concerned. One could argue
that this operation in Lebanon served your purposes very well politically.
Respond to that for a moment.
PRIME MINISTER PERES: I think it's totally wrong, because before the
operation, I had had an edge of 16 percent, with all the shooting and with
all the fighting. Because of the shooting and the fighting, I lost. I
didn't win anything.
I mean, if you ask for my really sincere view, that I am engaged in two
campaigns; a domestic campaign, which is okay I have an opposition, we
have an opposition; they oppose. I'm trying not to let them become
unemployed and have their own portion. But then, all of a sudden, we have
a second campaign by the intervention of the anti-peace forces in the Arab
world. I cannot do things in order to be liked or disliked. Finally, at
my age and my position, you cannot buy me off by power or prestige. But
if I have to make a choice between being re-elected and performing
correctly as a prime minister and as a defense minister, my first call is
to my duties and not to my elections.
But, Ted, let me say something more serious, if you want to have my real
view. There is a race between two convoys in the Middle East the
fundamentalistic one, which wants to mobilize the Muslim world against
Israel, to destroy it, that uses terror, that tries to acquire
non-conventional arms, that feels that they have the right to lie and
cheat and kill because such an important goal justifies all means and
our convoy, which is a convoy of creating a new strategy, creating a new
coalition. I think we have only four years to win this race or to lose
it.
MR. KOPPEL: Why four years?
PRIME MINISTER PERES: Because I believe that in four years we may reach
nuclear weapons. You know, it's not for the first time that you have an
evil movement in history. It is the first time in history that an evil
and malicious movement, covered by a religious lining, may acquire these
terrible weapons. Imagine what would happen if Hitler would have a
nuclear bomb. The whole history would be different. And I feel convinced
and committed to win this race, not to let it to anybody else, not to say
somebody will do it. If I compare it with Hitler, at the time of Hitler
we didn't have a state. If we would have a state, maybe things would also
be different. Here we don't have much time. We have a real competition,
a real danger, a short time, and much is at stake.
MR. KOPPEL: Prime Minister, we have come almost to the end of my allotted
time. And I'm sorry, it's my fault, because we have come to the most
important part at the end. But let me just try and ask you a couple of
quick questions then. When you talk about a four-year timetable and the
acquisition of nuclear weapons, you're talking about Iran?
PRIME MINISTER PERES: Yes.
MR. KOPPEL: A number of years ago, one of your predecessors, Prime
Minister Begin, launched or ordered the launching of an attack against
nuclear facilities in Iraq for precisely the same reason. Are you telling
me that the same thing might happen now with Iran?
PRIME MINISTER PERES: Not necessarily. I would rather see an earlier
attempt to intercept this danger, because even since then, things have
changed. Today you can produce nuclear bombs without having reactors.
You can do it in caves. You can do it by centrifuges. It's not a simple
proposition.
MR. KOPPEL: And there's also nuclear technology leaking out of the former
Soviet Union.
PRIME MINISTER PERES: Exactly so.
MR. KOPPEL: Is it your understanding that some of that technology has
made its way to Iran?
PRIME MINISTER PERES: In the way of knowledge, I'm afraid yes. It surely
made its way to Iraq. I think Iraq today, if it wouldn't be for the
campaign against Iraq, Iraq would have already a nuclear bomb, you know,
in spite of our bombing the reactor.
MR. KOPPEL: When you say "in terms of knowledge," are you suggesting that
former Soviet scientists or military people with nuclear knowledge are now
working with the Iranians?
PRIME MINISTER PERES: I can't say it with certainty, but you know there
are 150 Russian experts trying to build what the Russians are saying is a
civilian nuclear capacity. But the difference is so thin and so worrying,
and it is because of it that I think that a united policy by the western
world and Russia to prevent the Iranians from having a combination of a
fundamentalistic movement and a nuclear capacity is essential. It is
better to prevent it by, say, an economic pressure than by a military
confrontation.
MR. KOPPEL: Would it be fair, then, to say would you make the argument
that one of the reasons that President Clinton has been as supportive of
you and he's been extraordinarily publicly supportive of you is not
so much the personal relationship even, but that the United States sees
its national interest equally threatened?
PRIME MINISTER PERES: It goes together. You know, President Clinton, if
you ask me, is a moving friend. We are moved by him. He visited Israel,
contrary to all protocols, twice; once to participate at the funeral of
the late Yitzhak Rabin. Then again he came when we had the bombs in
Jerusalem. He met our youth. He conquered their heart. This is not in
the contradiction of really trying to create a coalition against the
greatest danger in our time after communism and Naziism, which is
fundamentalism.
MR. KOPPEL: Fundamentalism armed with nuclear weapons, you say.
PRIME MINISTER PERES: Exactly so.
MR. KOPPEL: Prime Minister Peres, as I say, we got to the most
interesting part at the end; my fault, but I thank you for raising it.
And I thank you once again for being a guest on Nightline. I appreciate
it very much.
PRIME MINISTER PERES: Thank you very much.