By Uri Avnery*
30 May 2015

Uri Avnery
A FORMER cabinet minister, an intelligent person (nonetheless) asked me the other day: “Let’s assume that your plan is realized. A Palestinian state will come into being side by side with Israel. Even some kind of federation. Then, in a few years, a violently anti-Israel party will come to power there and annul all the treaties. What then?”
My simple answer was: “Israel will always be powerful enough to forestall any threat.”
That is true, but that is not the real answer. The real answer lies in the lessons of history.
HISTORY SHOWS us that there are (at least) two kinds of peace agreements. One kind, the stupid one, is based on power. The other, the intelligent, is based on common interest.
The most notorious of the first kind is the Treaty of Versailles that followed World War I.
It was signed four years before I was born, but as a child I was an eye-witness to its results.
It was a “dictated” peace. After four years of fighting, with millions of victims, the victors wanted to inflict the maximum of damage on the vanquished.
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