Hanoch Daum
Photo: Rafi Deloya
President Shimon Peres
Photo: Gil Yohanan
The problem with Peres
Op-ed: We have excellent president, but holiday interviews remind us that he’s a failed statesman
I have a major issue with Shimon Peres.
Before I tell you about the problem, I feel a pleasant duty to admit that Peres is an excellent president; a truly excellent one. He restored the Presidential Residence’s honor, particularly against the backdrop of the grotesque Katsav affair.
He also managed to take up the role of the responsible adult, the man who views things from different perspective.
On top of it, Peres is respected all over the world, and generally speaking he avoids mistakes.
Peace Process
President Shimon Peres meets with forces behind new Israeli peace initiative, who warn that unless government reignites peace process, Israel may find itself in a position of weakness
Yet precisely because of that, after reading the holiday interviews he submitted to I was sorry to be reminded that our successful president was a failed statesman and a shallow, subversive politician. Among the things he said in the interviews, Peres stated that the moment shall arrive where the settlers will have to “come back home.”
Let’s cast aside for a moment the question of whether the president should express such a decisive view on such controversial issue and focus on the terminology: What do you mean, Mr. President, when you say that the settlers have to come back home?
You have the right to endorse evacuation (I too understand that we will have to converge into the settlement blocs,) but why do you try, using the language you chose, to underestimate the pain you will be causing them?
An evacuation will not bring the settlers back home. Rather, an evacuation will uproot them from their homes, their ancestral estates, and their very existence. An evacuation will turn them into refugees in their own country.
These people already returned home, after thousands of years. What you suggest is that they be expelled from there. It may be a legitimate proposal, but it would be proper to refer to it by name.
Yet the statement that particularly stunned me was found in Peres’ interview with Ynet, regarding the possibility that Israel will talk to Hamas. “When we started to talk with Arafat, people also didn’t believe that something could come out of it,” Peres said.
Perhaps the time has come for someone to bring you up to date once and for all, Mr. President: Indeed, nothing came out of it. It really didn’t work out. And that may be the understatement of the year.
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