Israeli Deputy Prime Minister, Haim Ramon: “If we don’t bring an end to the occupation, the occupation will bring the end to the state of Israel as a Jewish, democratic state.”
December 7, 2007 2:59 pm Israeli-Palestinian conflictRamon’s speech to the Israel Policy Forum, December 6, 2007
On December 3, Israel’s Vice Prime Minister, Haim Ramon addressed the Israel Policy Forum’s annual leadership event. The following is a summary of his remarks.
Exactly sixty years ago, a great leader named David Ben-Gurion decided to adopt the partition decision. The partition plan gave Israel 55 percent of the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Jerusalem was not part of this Jewish state.
Still, Ben-Gurion decided that this was the golden opportunity that the Jewish people had been dreaming of for a generation—the creation of a Jewish state. Ben-Gurion decided, therefore, that the most important thing was not the size of this state but its substance.
Ben-Gurion declared independence even though the majority of his own party was against him. Ben-Gurion knew that the day that he declared the Jewish state, a war would start with all the Arab states. Still, Ben-Gurion understood that if he did not establish a Jewish state, its time might never come.
Sixty years later, the most important thing is to maintain Israel as Jewish and democratic. What was Ben-Gurion’s legacy? In 1950, he said in the Knesset that the Jewish people had to choose between the dream of greater Eretz Israel or the Jewish state, and that he preferred the Jewish state over the dream of the greater land of Israel.
That choice remains with us today. Therefore, we have to understand that the occupation is a threat to the existence of the state of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. If we don’t bring an end to the occupation, the occupation will bring the end to the state of Israel as a Jewish, democratic state.
This is not about conceding something to Palestinians. It is rather about trying to secure the Jewish state.