This Week

—

Not

Borders

Former Prime Minister
Shimon Peres speaks of the
future in the Middle East.

HARRY KI RS BAU M
StaffWriter

T

he future of the Middle
East lies not in land and
borders, but in economics,
communications and
human beings, said former Israeli
Prime Minister Shimon Peres to a
crowd of 500 gathered at Wayne State
University in Detroit.
"The Middle East was united by
prophets, divided by kings, and it
stands a chance to be reunited by sci-
entists, to enable all people to enjoy a
different life and a different future, "
he said in a wide-ranging speech on

Clockwise from left:
Shimon Peres
Chadia Bitar of Dearborn
protests the deaths of
her two sons in Lebanon
Irwin Reid, Wayne State
University president

5/5
2000

18

Tuesday. "We are in the middle of the
peace process, where there is a clash of
generations within an outgoing gener-
ation that still is committed to land,
natural resources and in search of ter-
„
y
ritory.
Citing world events including the
fall of communism, changes in South
Africa, North and South Korea and .
Russia, Peres noted a common change.
"Political history is a history written
in red, full of bloodshed and wars,” he
said. "Throughout history, the making
of wealth came from land and natural
resources, and nations fought for land,
and defended their land — marking
them, making borders."

He said the new potential
is based on an entirely new
assumption that is "not the
slowness of the land but
the speed of science and
communication. The
human being exceeds by
far the treasures hidden in
the wealth of land," he
said. It's "a change from
an economy of the land
to an economy of the
brain."
Peres, Israel's minister
for regional cooperation,
said, "Nothing goes right
in the Middle East. The
rivers don't follow the
borders, the aquifers and
water tables are not taking
political orders, and pol-
lution doesn't stop at the
border."
High technology pro-
duces speed, he said.
Building the infrastruc-
ture for war may produce
slowness that will put to
waste the speedy econo-
my.
"It is with this in mind
that we decided to go for
peace," he said.
Peres was the architect
of the 1994 Oslo
Accords, for which he was
awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize with Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin
and Palestinian leader
Yasser Arafat.
"The late Prime Minister Rabin
and I decided to go to Oslo because
we felt it was a mistake for Jewish peo-
ple to dominate another people. Never
in our history did we dominate anoth-
er people," he said. "We didn't go to
fight a war to become occupiers, we
became occupiers because we won the
war."
Peres said the cost of the accord
came with a price.
"When you go to war there is a
clear-cut situation," he said. "There is
no opposition to victory, but when
you want to make peace you have AO
make concessions and compromises,
and there is no national consensus
about that. People can say, 'you gave
away too much, you did it in a hurry,
you didn't plan.'
"People could never agree that we
did the right things — not that they
were against peace, but that they were
against the cost of peace," he said.
"We have to learn from our experience

,

and enter a new age without all those
mistakes and to allow there is no nee(
for more wars."
Peres stood his ground when con-
fronted by two opposing sides during
the question-and-answer period.
When Jerome S. Kaufman of West
Bloomfield, national secretary of the
Zionist Organization of America, saic
that Yasser Arafat has laid claim to
most of Jerusalem, Haifa and most o f
the northern communities — and ha
a map of the Middle East in his offic
that does not include Israel — Peres
said that while some claims are true,
person should be judged by his recor
Arafat "is the first Palestinian who
has recognized Israel. His experience
as a leader of a revolution, not a lead
of a country — a different vocation, '
said Peres: "When you are a revolu-
tionary, you are very flamboyant.
[Cuba's Fidel] Castro uses similar lar
guage on many occasions. The most
important thing is [Arafat] brought
end to Palestinian terror, from 2,50C

