Israeli Official to Jews: Forget the Dream of Greater Israel

Reuven Rivlin, the President of Israel, in a speech to Jews stated that they should forget the dream of 'Greater Israel' and recognize that Palestinians have always been and will remain residents of this land, and peace must be achieved with them. According to Israeli media, Mr. Rivlin made these remarks on Thursday, November 21, at the 'Peace for Israel' conference in Tel Aviv, organized by the Haaretz newspaper. The President of Israel stated that expansionist Jews must accept that the ideology of 'all this land belongs to the Jews' will not be realized and will only increase Palestinian hostility against Jews. While calling on extremist Jews to forget Greater Israel, he himself had been a politician from the right-wing spectrum, including the Likud party, for decades before his presidency. He emphasized that 'trust' is the key to ensuring the success of any potential peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians in the future, but to achieve this success, trust-building must begin immediately, and relations between Jews and Arabs within the country and with Palestinian neighbors must improve. Mr. Rivlin also mentioned that all governments in Israel have erred regarding Palestinians and the status of Jerusalem, failing to address the social welfare of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in the eastern part of the city. According to him, the neglect of Palestinian needs by previous Israeli governments has contributed to the ongoing security crisis affecting Israel, putting the lives of Jewish residents at risk due to terrorist attacks from rebellious Palestinians. Mr. Rivlin invited Palestinian youth to distance themselves from the 'death-promoting pornography industry produced by the evil factory of ISIS' and 'to think about life.' He stated that both the right and left in Israeli politics have been unrealistic and ignored the complex realities of intertwined Jewish and Palestinian lives in this land. He noted that the Israeli left has recommended the idea of 'separation' of Jews from Palestinians, while the Israeli right clings to the notion of 'this land is solely ours,' forgetting that Jews must forever live alongside Arabs within Israel and millions of Palestinians in their own territories, and 'they are not going anywhere and will always be here.' Recently, Mr. Rivlin referred to a realistic peace option as the best solution for both Israelis and Palestinians during the 20th anniversary ceremony of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the former Israeli Prime Minister, who was killed by a Jewish terrorist on the path to peace. Israeli extremists have threatened Mr. Rivlin on social media; one of them, Haggai Amir, is the brother of Yigal Amir, the terrorist who shot Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. With the increase in threats from Israeli right-wingers against Rivlin, Israel's internal security agency has, for the first time, assigned a bodyguard to his wife as well. Reuven Rivlin, who has been the President of Israel for two years, stated that he is not worried for himself but is 'concerned about the democracy of Israel.' The White House announced this week that the U.S. President has invited Mr. Rivlin for an official visit on December 9.