Time to pack?

This scare campaign is a blatant anti-Zionist act. If Berlin 1938 is here and now, then the conclusion is clear to everyone: The Jews should be packing their bags.

I'm not saying there is no problem: There certainly is. Yet the hysterical reaction serves Ahmadinejad's interests in a far reaching manner even before he got close to the first bomb. Instead of seeking a solution that will significantly reduce the risk, the wise government members and their likes in the opposition hint to a decisive Israeli military action to be undertaken once and for all and finish off this matter.

They're hinting to an attack similar to the 1981 bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor, even though it's clear to them too that there's no similarity between the two cases. Any military move, even if successful, will spread over long months, during which Israel will be exposed to conventional Iranian missiles.

I assume that if the government of Israel indeed has an intention to act against the hundreds of Iranian centrifuges spread across this large country and located deep underground, it has no need to prepare for it with exaggerated speeches before world Jewry, but rather, in operational rooms with maps and computers.

The speeches are this government's new agenda, a dramatic substitute for the pledges regarding the setting of a new border in the West Bank and more just social policies. The Iranian hysteria is the refuge of peace refuseniks and those without an agenda. Olmert's speech at Sdeh Boker won't change this.

Let's assume for a moment that we accept Syrian President Bashar Assad's call and reach a peace agreement with him in exchange for the Golan Heights. Let's assume that we also accept Mahmoud Abbas' repeated calls and strike a peace deal with him in exchange for an end to occupation, while also reaching a peace agreement with Lebanon – what are the chances that under such circumstances even an Ahmadinejad-led Iran would continue to threaten Israel?

I think the chances of it will diminish greatly.

Rabin's vision

Yet even if I'm wrong, and even if the Iranian leader continues to incite and threaten after we have comprehensive peace here, we'll be finding ourselves in a completely different situation if all Arab countries develop diplomatic and economic ties with us, in accordance with the Arab League's 2002 decision, and create a coalition with us against the threat from Tehran, which is directed at them no less than it is directed at us.

Yitzhak Rabin often said that the Israeli strategy has to be the achievement of peace with all our neighbors before Iran acquires a nuclear bomb. He understood well the significance of neutralizing the excuse that the Israeli-Arab conflict seemingly justifies the Iranian threat to develop nuclear weapons.

In the mid-1990s Iran was very far away from it; today, it is close, and possibly very close. Today, achieving peace is also more practical. The Arab willingness exists, the price is known, and there's no need to start from scratch.

It's true that we have faced quite a few disappointments, yet none of them was caused by a peace agreement we finalized, but rather, by unilateral moves and partial agreements that both sides did not implement properly. The peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan proved to be durable even in the face of changing rulers, as is true for the truce agreement with Syria.

Yet what appears to be obvious for a prime minister with a strategic vision is incomprehensible for a prime minister who came from the Likud and apparently went back there within his soul in the wake of the shell shock he suffered in the miserable Lebanon war.

Knesset Member Dr. Yossi Beilin is the chairman of Meretz-Yachad