Thank you.  Thank you very much and good evening and Diane [Glazer] thank you very much for this kind introduction.  Actually, it was the best since I arrived here in Washington about a year and one-half ago.  I’ve been introduced many times and this one was the best one because it started 4,000 years ago.  So, you just didn’t tell my history of the last 48 years but the history of my ancestors for the last 4,000 years and I really appreciate it.  In fact, I don’t need to [give] any speech because you said it all.   

I just got a new speech writer in Washington and nowadays they call them speech advisors – I don’t know what they call them here – and the first advice the speech writer gave me just before I came here was that in the United States, especially on the West Coast, you have to start your speech with a joke.  I said, "Fine," and on my way here I go over my speech and I see no joke.  I called him back home in Washington.  "Where’s the joke?"  He said, "What do you mean?  I gave you the advice.  You have to fill in the details."  So, I will. 

You know the story of the Jewish slave and the Roman emperor?  The story is very simple.  There was this emperor in Rome who just for entertainment was throwing Jewish slaves into the lion’s den just before dinner.  He would starve the lions all day and then would throw the slaves to fight them and, of course, you know what the outcome would be.  The turn of a small Jewish guy came and he went to the emperor and told him, "Well, if I convince the lion not to eat me alive, would you set me free?"  The emperor said, "Sure.  Of course."  He then throws the slave into the lion’s den.  The lion charges in, the slave goes to the lion and whispers something into his ear and this hungry lion just turns around and walks away.  The emperor doesn’t believe this and so he calls another lion.  The same thing happens.  He calls the slave and says, "Okay I have to make good on my word.  I will set you free, but could you tell me, what did you whisper into the lion’s ear?"  The reply was, "I told him that there is a speech after dinner."

I would really like again to thank Diane for the very fine introduction.  I would like to thank Curtis Mack, President of the World Affairs Council, and Rabbi Harvey Fields for the invitation to be here tonight.  In fact, Harvey, I owe you an apology.  I was supposed to be here six months ago in April and I had made all the preparations to come and then I had to cancel at the last minute because of the war.  But this time I feel safe because I left Washington and I know that the president is not in Washington, so nothing much can happen.  I look forward to a very peaceful stay here in this great state of California and here in Los Angeles.

 I came here with basically one message and that is that Israel wants peace.  For us, peace is not just a strategic choice, it’s not just a deep interest, but it is a moral obligation and we have a track record to prove it.  When we made peace with Egypt’s late President Sadat or with the late King Hussein we took painful concessions, great risks, although the margin of risks if you look at our country, which is just 20 miles wide, 200 miles long, surrounded by a sea of Arab countries-22 to be precise-the margins of error are very, very slim, but we were willing to [go] the extra mile and to take and trade risks.  When we had negotiations with Egypt or even with Jordan it wasn’t easy.  It was very tough.  If you recall, negotiations were many times on the verge of collapse.  But there was one common denominator between these two negotiations-never ever was there any resort to violence once we started talking, negotiating-with bitter adversaries, bitter enemies, the Egyptians or the Jordanians-there was not a shot exchanged over the borders and we solved all the disputes around the negotiation table.   

With this set of mind, with this understanding we came to be also in agreement with the Palestinians and this was our expectation-to solve all our problems around the negotiation table.  When Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo Agreement, the letter of intent of the invitation, this was after he was shown the letter of Arafat of September 9, 1993, where he renounced terrorism once and for all, committed himself not only to stop the terror himself-and he’s the one who introduced terrorism as we know it, but international terrorism [too].  If you’ll recall in the 1970s, he perfected and really introduced the hijacking of planes, the Munich massacre, the killing of American diplomats in the Sudan in 1970, this is, by the way, the only time he was implicated directly of giving the order himself.  We have it on tape.   

He renounced terrorism and he also promised in writing that he would fight terror and would not allow it and solve all the disputes between us peacefully.  This is how we started the process.  But this was not the case.  Arafat set foot in the country, and we allowed him to come-and not just himself.  First it was 20-30,000 of his people.  He said, and it was quite logical, for him to keep the peace, for him to fight terrorism, he needed some troops loyal to him and well-equipped.  We allowed that.  We allowed, according to the Oslo agreement, 26,000 and he had more than 60,000.  He came in and we turned a blind eye on that and in retrospect-I don’t want to belabor what happened in the last ten years-but I can tell you that he came to set foot not to build a nation, a country for the Palestinians, something that Diane very articulately mentioned, something that has never happened before in history, there was not a Palestinian state.  Here he was given this historic opportunity to do this, but he came in not to build a country but to destroy one, which was ours.  We had the intelligence throughout the years and still give him chances time after time after time. 

We did connect the dots after our Operation Defensive Shield, which was almost two years ago, following the brutal massacre of Passover where 33 Israelis were brutally killed in a hotel park.  This is when we decided to change our strategy.  No longer will we have our security in Arafat’s hands.  We will take charge and be responsible for ourselves.  This is when we launched this preemptive operation.  This is when we changed from defense to preemption defense and we ran into Arafat’s offices and we retrieved all the documents.  We have it in writing where he sends checks for suicide bombers, when he gave orders in February 2001, just three months after the intifada started.  An "intifada," by the way, is a misnomer.  "Intifada" suggests popular uprising.  This is not the case of a popular uprising but of a top-down, very well-orchestrated campaign of terror. 

In 2001, three months after the violence began, Arafat called all his security chiefs [of] terror organizations and he had two questions for them: the first one was "Why aren’t there more Israelis dead?"  And the second was-actually it was not a question, it was a command-"Well, you know what to do."  This is the day, or a few days after, when the suicide bombings started and since then we have had more than 250 attempts.  Abba Eban, one of my predecessors, said about the Palestinian the leadership it never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.  In 2000 a genuine offer, far-reaching by Prime Minister Barak was offered on the table.  Not only [did Arafat not] take it, but he started the violence understanding that he squeezed everything out of the process in political means.  Now it was time in his mind to turn to violence and to get even more, and this is the problem we have.  We are in search of a partner who is trustworthy, who is effective in combating terror, who makes good on his promises.

Now there was another opportunity missed, not just at Camp David, and I can tell you here that when Prime Minister Sharon was elected-I was at his side he made two phone calls to Arafat, still giving him a chance after all the violence, and he told him, "You stop the terror, not just as a favor to us but also as a favor to the Palestinians who are in favor of the process because you are committed to it.  Stop that and we can do business."  Twice he talked, but to no avail, and the rest, as we say, is history. 

But let me make another important point here.  Diane mentioned this cycle of violence.  It is hard for me to accept that there is a cycle of violence because clearly there is an aggressor side which initiated the terror which targets mostly civilians, children, students, mothers, fathers, and there is a side which does not retaliate but defends itself, including preemption because the last thing you want to do is try to look for a suicide bomber when he has already infiltrated.  It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack and usually the results are devastating.  You have to stop them at bay and you have to stop their dispatchers and their trainers and most of all the money and the explosives.

But even with all this violence we still gave the chance to the Palestinians.  Now we were told by many in the international community, in the last few months or two years, "You are very justifiably doing what you have to do to protect your citizens.  This is the commitment, this is the obligation of any democratically-elected government to do."  But this is not enough.  You also have to use diplomacy; you also have to offer the Palestinians some perspective, a political horizon, some hope.  We said, "Okay" and then came the speech of President Bush of June 24 of last year when for the first time an American president committed to a sovereign independent Palestinian state, when he talked about a two-state solution, a democratic Palestinian state with a secure Israel.  Two months before the speech Prime Minister Sharon said the same thing-accepting the notion of a two-state solution offering a Palestinian state.  So there was a vision, there was the hope, there was perspective.  Terrorism did not subside for one minute. 

So we went back to our friends in the international community and we told them, "We have a problem."  We offered this perspective.  Now there is scope, there is a political horizon.  Terrorism didn’t stop and then the reply was, "Maybe the speech or the vision was too vague, too broad in the description, not detailed enough.  Maybe you need something else, a blueprint, a more detailed program, a road map, if you will."

Well, there was a road map and we have accepted the road map and since we accepted this road map more than 60 Israelis were killed, more than 90 suicide bomber attacks happened.  Luckily, we stopped most of them.  But terrorism did not stop and when you stop and ask why and you look what happens on the Palestinian side you see a real culture of hate in their state-owned media, television, Palestinian TV and not less importantly in their curriculum, in their text books. 

Nothing has changed and there is a clear strategy by Arafat and his people to continue the terror and this is the problem that we still face now and until and unless there is a true realization on the other side that terror is illegitimate.  Terror will not gain them anything.  We cannot move forward much, and this is the real tragedy that we are all in.  It takes two to make peace, but unfortunately only one to make war and this is the situation that we face now.  When we have all this avalanche of bad news coming, more terrorism in Israel and throughout the world, anti-Semitism or what have you, it is very hard to really understand how to proceed. 

Well, we do have a policy, the Israeli government has a clear policy which I will say is based on three points:  First of all, we keep our door open to peace, we keep our hand stretched for the other side to grab and this is very important to remember.  Now, with the new Palestinian Prime Minister I hope things may get better but we can leave this for the Q&A if you have questions about it.  But this is the first thing.  Secondly, we keep defending ourselves in the absence of any measures taken by the other side to stop and curb terrorists.  And thirdly, we build a fence and the fence is very important, not just to protect Israeli lives but also ultimately to insure a viable political dialogue.  Why?  Because the fence we truly believe will stop, if not all, most, of the suicide bombings.  We already have a pilot, or an example; we already have a proven test case in Gaza.  Gaza is separated from Israel by a fence, and despite the fact that Gaza is a hot center for extremism for headquarters of Islamic Jihad, Hamas and other organizations, not one suicide bomber came from Gaza.  They all stopped at the fence.  All 250 who tried came in through valley from the West Bank.  Now we have already the third part of the fence built in the northern section and since we built it no suicide bombing attempts are from that part, they all go south where it is still vulnerable, where it’s still open.

Now, there are those who say, "Well, you cannot build a fence.  This is prejudging any outcome.  This is a land grab.  This is going to make the Palestinians lives harder, and none of these allegations are true.  First of all, we say that it’s not a political fence.  It is simply a buffer zone, a security line, period.  And those who claim that the location is at fault, well it merely reflects the reality that there are 230,000 Israelis who live there who also deserve protection, also deserve to live, and we say that once there is no terror there is no need for the fence. 

Also, we say that in the absence of any political arrangement any location that we would take for the fence could be deemed as prejudging.  This land that we’re talking about, history shows it’s purely Israeli land, for 4,000 years.  But realistically, we say, "Well, there’s another people living there now."  At best we can say, "this land is under dispute."  We are negotiating and once we have a total outcome, then we know what are the final borders, but in the absence of that there are no borders to speak of.  Even the green line is a temporary line, an armistice line from 1948, so anywhere you put it it’s prejudging.  So we decided that because of this, to protect and keep within the fence maximum Israelis and minimum Palestinians and to those who said that it’s really putting some facts on the ground we say, "Well, look what we did in Lebanon."  We pulled out of Lebanon in May three years ago and there were much, much longer fences in Lebanon which we took down.  Look at the Sinai in 1978 when we pulled out of Sinai much greater projects - airforces, airports and whole communities that were dismantled and brought down.  So this is something that could easily be taken out, and those who claim that this is a wall, it’s just simply not true.  It is true that some parts of the fence are made of concrete but this is merely to protect from sniping.  On the trans-Israel highway within the green line where we had some people that were shot dead by snipers - a seven-year old, about 2-1/2 months ago was killed when she was traveling with her family going home.  So this fence is removable.  Let me tell you something else: the government, Prime Minister Sharon, did not want the fence.  This fence could have been built years ago but he resisted until we realized there’s no other way.  And we tell the Palestinians, "You stop the terror.  You dismantle the terror organizations, the terror infrastructure so you remove the threat, the potential threat of terrorism and there is no fence." 

Now, there’s another important element and that is this fence will allow us to redeploy, to bring back our troops so there is no constant friction with the densely populated areas, with the population.  Right now we have to have road blocks or check points to make sure there are no infiltrations of terrorists.  With this fence we can pull back and let the Palestinians run their own lives in a much better way, and again this will ultimately insure the viability of a peace process.  So on all accounts this fence is something which is necessary and the faster it is built the better it will be not just for us but also for the Palestinians and for the peace process.

I met some of you-it’s not a good practice for a guest speaker to mingle with the crowd because I realize how well-versed you are about the situation.  You know the history, you know the politics, which are very impressive, and I will just leave you here with one last story that is told in Washington about the American diplomat who goes on a diplomatic mission to Japan and he’s given this orientation from the State Department and he’s told that in Japan you have to start very humbly and you tell the audience that you know that they know about the subject you’re talking about much better than the speaker.  Excuse yourself for any mistakes you make and give them all these accolades and make yourself very humble.  So he goes, and he finishes the introduction with humbleness and they all start roaring in laughter.  He goes to his Japanese interpreter and says, "Why are they laughing?" and the reply was, "Well, here we are told that every American speech starts with a joke and so they laughed."  That’s not the end, listen to this.  I told the story to Dr. Kissinger.  We had Dr. Kissinger in my office about two weeks ago, we had this memorial for Yizhak Rabin, and I told him the story and he said, "Well I have another story for you about Japan.  I went to Japan to give a speech and during the speech I used a joke.  I told them a joke.  This joke took about two or three minutes to tell.  I turned to the interpreter he says one sentence and they all roared in laughter.  So I asked him ‘What did you tell them?’  and he said "Well, I told them Dr. Kissinger told a funny story.  Laugh.’"  I really mean it.  Here we don’t have this cultural gap and I do understand and know how much you know about the situation.  I think it’s a good time to stop here and take any questions that you might have.