The Arabs are not going anywhere, President Reuven Rivlin said Thursday, so Israeli Jews ought to learn to live with and deal with them more effectively.
“Neither 'separation,' as the Left seeks, nor the extension of the sovereignty over the whole Land of Israel, as some on the Right wish, will make them disappear or persuade them to love us,” Rivlin said in opening remarks at conference on the peace process sponsored by Haaretz.
To more effectively deal with the Arabs that live among us, Rivlin said, Right and Left needed to get together and come to some basic agreements and decisions.
According to Rivlin, more than just a feel-good “agreement to disagree,” but a true consensus is needed to bring about a situation where all could feel that they had a stake in maintaining the delicate balance between the “tribes” - Arab and Jew, right and left, and others – that has evolved in Israel.
“We have among us a wise and rational nation that even given the cruel reality we face has not submitted to the siren call of messianism, violence, and racism. Many of us agree on the fundamentals of the problems we face, but we must go beyond that – determining solutions that will allow us to bring about a situation where we can continue living here as we are, both Jew and Arab.”
A good example of where to start, he said, was in the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem, from where much of the tension in the recent spate of terror has emerged.
“For 40 years Jerusalem has been entirely under Israeli sovereignty, but that has turned out to be a prime example of the stalemate between Right and Left. We have sovereignty, but have not gone beyond that, deflecting responsibility for the welfare and security of residents, with the result that 70% of them live below the poverty line."
“We must isolate the debate on the status of the final borders of the state and agree on more broad issues,” such as how to improve the lot of Jerusalem Arabs as long as Israel is responsible for them, said Rivlin.
“We cannot allow our feelings, whether anger or otherwise, to interfere with logic and our responsibilities. The task of this generation is to build trust between Arabs and Jews."
"We apparently will not be leaving an inheritance of peace for our children, but we do need to do something to build up trust between our nations, so that our children do not have to start at the beginning. This is the beginning of any discussion, whether it is about Tel Aviv or about Samaria.”