Statement to the Knesset by Prime Minister Peres on Operation "Grapes of Wrath"

On the tenth day of the campaign, the prime minister described to the Knesset the reasons that led to the operation and the results achieved to date. He said that Hizballah, supported by Iran, Libya and Iraq were determined to wreck the peace process. Hizballah, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad were the arms of this terrorist campaign against Israel and against peace. He welcomed the diplomatic efforts underway to bring about an end to the fighting. Secretary of State Christopher was already engaged in shuttle diplomacy between Jerusalem and Damascus. Text:

Mr. Speaker, Honorable Knesset,

Ten days ago, "Operation Grapes of Wrath" began, with the objective of putting an end to the firing of Katyushas at Kiryat Shemona and the communities of the Galilee.

The firing of Katyushas, like the actions of Hamas, were intended to undermine the peace process in the Middle East. The IDF stood and will stand, against this provocation with its full military capability and in consideration of a very complex situation.

On behalf of the government, on behalf of this house and on behalf of the People, I would like to express my feelings of appreciation to the IDF Chief-of-Staff, to the General Staff, to Northern Command and to the commanders and soldiers of the air force, ground forces and the navy, for acting responsibly in this operation.

I would also like to express on your behalf, our appreciation to the residents of the communities of the Galilee Panhandle and the northern communities, from Kiryat Shemona to Nahariya. The continuing suffering of the civilian population, which is occasionally forced to spend days and nights in the shelters, is incredibly difficult to bear.

Our primary objective is to return to these dear and good citizens the same security as they would enjoy in any other part of the State of Israel free of the threat of shelling and from the tension and fear that have been their lot. To insure their natural right to leave for work in the morning without concern and to send their children to school without threat and danger. This is our duty and we will fulfill it.

I would like to inform the Knesset that I have instructed the government ministers to give top priority to taking the actions necessary, in the spheres under the authority of each of their ministries, on the confrontation line in the north.

The ministerial committee which was established in accordance with this, visited the confrontation line communities and met with the heads of the authorities, in order to learn about their needs first hand and to find appropriate solutions. Government ministries have allocated considerable budgets in order to aid the authorities to function during the operation. The government has decided to grant full compensation to individuals and businesses in the north which were harmed as a result of the situation. The city of Kiryat Shemona which sustained hits and suffered damage will receive special national priority, as well as focused localized attention in order to return life in the city to normal.

A multi-year plan has been approved for the development of the communities on the northern border, at an investment of hundreds of millions of shekels. The Prime Minister's Office stands ready to provide emergency services to the residents of the confrontation line.

However, above and beyond all of this, I must note the widespread spirit of popular volunteerism, support and mutual assistance which always shows at its best among the People of Israel, at times such as these. Local authorities, institutions, companies and private enterprises, artists and ordinary citizens all across this country have opened their hearts and homes to the residents of the north with warmth, affection and generosity and with a deep feeling of common cause and love. It is because of them that this difficult period has become, for the children of the north, a more pleasant experience and a source of encouragement and joy. I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to all of them.

Members of Knesset,

We did not embark upon "Operation Grapes of Wrath" because we sought to engage in battle.

This government does not need to prove its desire for peace and its readiness for a historic reconciliation with our neighbors. This was our active policy, which is faithful to the commandment, "seek peace and pursue it". This operation does not constitute any deviation from the path of peace. On the contrary, it is necessary precisely in order to save the peace. This is not an operation of choice, but rather one of no alternative, it is the fulfillment of a national duty of clear self-defense, on the one hand and overcoming the attempt to eliminate the peace process on the other.

A number of countries and organizations - Iran, Libya and Iraq, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hizballah are united and sometimes coordinate, in order to destroy the peace process.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad have operated inside Israel and since the Sharm-el-Sheikh Conference, Hizballah has stepped up its attacks against the IDF and SLA in southern Lebanon, including the laying of roadside charges, dispatching suicide bombers and firing rockets at our communities.

Despite the clear and intentional escalation represented by these acts of violence by Hizballah, inspired by Iran and despite the conceit of its leaders and their arrogance to determine the life in the communities along our northern border, we pursued a political path before embarking on a military operation.

One does not resort to using weapons except after careful consideration and examining other ways. Only after it became clear to us that all other means, including diplomatic, were not proving effective, did we see that there was no other choice but to embark on an operation, which began after the Passover holiday.

Clear and defined parameters were set for the operation. What we have here is not an arrogant military operation, nor arrogant goals which are not required by reality. I know that a military operation is not capable of resolving all of the problems outstanding between us and Lebanon or Syria. Full peace can be achieved only through political negotiations for peace between Israel and Lebanon and Israel and Syria. Negotiations which I hope will be resumed soon. I have been involved with security for many long years and I know enough about wars and operations, to know that a military operation is sometimes necessary but is not a miracle drug.

I am proud of the fact that a government which I headed, extracted the IDF from the mud of Lebanon in 1985 and I have no intention of sending it back.

The government has no intention of expanding the security zone in southern Lebanon and we have no desire to harm the Lebanese Army and the Syrian Army or to become entangled in fighting them.

"Grapes of Wrath" is an operation which has no time limit. Its explicit objectives, as I said previously, are to ensure a long period of quiet for the communities of the north, to stabilize the situation in southern Lebanon and to halt the firing of Katyushas, thereby enabling a resumption of the peace process. The operation relies on the use of sophisticated and precise weapons. It gives expression to the IDF's advantage in human and technological quality, in mobility and intelligence and in precise and accurate hits.

The government, in its instructions to the IDF on the operation, ordered it not to harm civilians or civilian targets and to concentrate solely on Hizballah installations and on the terrorists themselves. Overall, this instruction was carried out with great meticulousness. However, in a military operation, as hard as one tries to maintain purity of arms, discrepancies occur and innocent civilians are injured. This was not our intention.

As you know, from the beginning of the operation, all means were used in order to distance the civilian population from the areas of fire and to separate it from the Hizballah terrorists, so that it would not be harmed. Hizballah, in contrast, adopted the opposite approach. Out of cynical cruelty, it attached itself to concentrations of refugees who fled from the areas of fighting and from them fired towards Israel, in order to draw fire towards them and to endanger the civilians' lives.

The Kafr Kana tragedy and any other harm done to civilians, are first of all, a terrible human tragedy and we regret them very much.

It was not intentional. It did not serve our objectives and it is completely contrary to the nature of the operation. However, it occurred under combat conditions and it should be reviewed in a detailed manner, responsibly and properly. The IDF has already begun this review and the results will be presented to the government and to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

The terrible tragedy of Kafr Kana and the suffering of Lebanon in general, are entirely the fault of the terrorist organizations, first and foremost, Hizballah.

I am aware of the suffering of the civilian population in Lebanon.

The residents of the Galilee are also suffering and it is clear that if there is not quiet on this side of the border, there cannot be quiet on the other side either.

Hizballah uses the villages and the civilian populations as a base and as cover for its activities against Israel and against the IDF and the SLA in the security zone and tried to dictate impossible "rules of the game", which grant it immunity from an IDF response by virtue of its being located in the heart of civilian villages. Such a situation cannot continue. There is no immunity for terrorists, anywhere. Beirut is no longer any more special than Kiryat Shemona, nor Tyre any more special than Nahariya and Sidon is no more special than Ma'alot. If there will be Katyushas on Kiryat Shemona, then Hizballah strongholds will not be immune from attack

On the other hand, if there will be quiet in Kiryat Shemona, Nahariya and Ma'alot, for Margaliot and Dovev, for Horfeish, Fassuta and Meiliah, for Metulla and Misgav Am - then there will be also be quiet for Beirut, Tyre and Sidon. Our hand is extended in peace, but it must also be outstretched in order to overcome any hostile object. Nothing will be achieved by using force against us.

Openness in peace and power in confrontation, are two sides of the same coin.

The instruction to the IDF is to concentrate on achieving accurate and precise hits on Hizballah targets and to not extend the damage unnecessarily. Thus, we do not destroy villages in southern Lebanon, despite the fact that there was a need to distance the civilian population from them, in order to not harm them when we fired on terrorist targets within the villages. With the conclusion of the operation, the residents of Lebanon will be able to return to their villages and to normal life, at the same time that normal life returns to our communities in the Galilee. We are not the enemy of the Shi'ite or Christian communities in Lebanon and we wish them no harm.

On the contrary, we aspire to coexist in peace and good neighborly relations with all of the residents of Lebanon.

Mr. Speaker,

Israel did not conquer the security zone. Lebanon abandoned it. Israel is in southern Lebanon for defensive purposes. It is a limited and temporary presence, resulting from circumstances unwished for by us and by Lebanon. And as long as Lebanon is militarily divided, it will find it very difficult to be united territorially.

From the end of Israel's War of Independence and for more than 20 years, our border with Lebanon was the quietest and the calmest and friendly relations were established between the residents on both sides of the border, even without formal relations between the two countries.

Unfortunately, Lebanon has since abandoned its southern region to the control of terrorist organizations, who operated against Israel from there and thereby destroyed Lebanon's sovereignty.

This abandonment and the bitter experience of the residents of the northern border are what obligated Israel to establish the security zone. We would not have needed it if the Lebanese government had not lost control over the south and left an irresponsible armed presence there, which owed its obedience to a foreign country and was not subject to Lebanese control.

I repeat - we have no and have never had, any territorial demands of Lebanon, we do not seek its land.

The international border between us is acceptable to us and we have no interest in remaining in any part of its territory unnecessarily.

I again call on the Lebanese government to conduct negotiations on a peace treaty with Israel which will be based on its territorial integrity, on its full sovereignty over all parts of its country, on rooting out any armed terrorist presence from its land and on arrangements which will insure security and peace on both sides of the border.

In recent years the Lebanese government has made an impressive effort to rehabilitate the land of the cedars, after many years of terrible civil war.

Israel expresses great support for the Lebanese government's efforts, but they will have all been in vain, if Lebanon continues, while yielding to foreigners, to permit another armed authority to operate against Israel from its territory.

Peace between Israel and Lebanon is natural and essential and is possible without any difficulty, if and when Lebanon again becomes a truly free and sovereign state. There is no real conflict between our countries. On the contrary, the geography and history of the Land of Israel and Lebanon, point to mutual cooperation and a great potential for mutual trade, tourism and cooperation in many spheres which could restore to Lebanon its glory and its rightful place in the Middle East.

If there it no peace yet between Israel and Lebanon, it is not Israel's fault. Perhaps it is not even Lebanon's fault, since it is still hostage to organizations which receive orders from outside the country.

Despite its protestations, Hizballah exists in Lebanon. The villages that it controls, "Hizballahland" is nothing but, to a great extent Iranian-occupied territory within Lebanon.

As long as Lebanon does not free itself from the Iranian occupation, it will not be sovereign on its own territory and it will not be able to rehabilitate itself and to live in peace within itself and with those around it.

The Iranian Revolution is a sad one. It did not bring the Iranian people forward, but rather dragged it backwards. It failed completely and sowed in its wake, violence and dark extremism, despair and hopelessness, whose clearest and ultimate expression is suicide terrorism. Hizballah, like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, is an extension of the failed Khomeinist regime, which produces and exports terrorism and murder, which threaten world peace.

Tehran in our time is the enemy of peace, since the regime of the Ayatollahs, which has no message and no hope, needs a real or imagined enemy in order to justify its very existence. It vigorously fights progress, human liberty, freedom of expression and the aspirations for peace of people in the region, because it fears them, since they contradict its very existence. Therefore, this dark regime transmits hostility and hatred, celebrates blood and sanctifies death and sows an ill wind of violence, close-mindedness and oppression.

It spreads an ideology of terror and murder under the cover of failed and false religion.

The Middle East peace process is the bane of Khomeinism, is the terrible nightmare of the priests of death who have sold their souls to a God of death. It causes them sleepless nights and they are pursued by the fear of peace and they make desperate efforts to derail and block and push off the process and history.

They spare no means, they transgress all international conventions and norms for relations between peoples, in order to sow terrorism and to try and crush any sign of friendship and peace. They have no chance. They will not be able to turn back the wheel of history.

They will continue to look on helplessly as their lost and desperate war against peace is beaten again and again, until they withdraw from the stage of history forever.

The State of Israel is not the enemy of Iran. The Khomeinist regime has without any cause turned itself into the enemy of any state which seeks peace. Until the revolution, there were friendly relations between our countries and fruitful cooperation and there was an Israeli embassy in the Iranian capital. The Jewish people remember from the days of old, the compassion of Cyrus, the king of Persia and his call to the Jews to return to Jerusalem. We wish the Iranian people a more worthy and more humane regime which, instead of fighting the peace process, will become involved in it, for the good and welfare of the citizens of Iran and for the good of the entire region.

Members of Knesset,

I have not the slightest doubt that the extensions of fundamentalist terrorism from the Tehran School - Hizballah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad - will not cease their efforts to harm us and the peace process. I have no doubt that they will fail to achieve their objectives. It is difficult to promise that there will be no attacks, but Israel's security services and the intelligence community will, far from the public eye, continue to make every effort to foil terrorist plots.

I would also like to note that recently the Palestinian Authority has been making a commendable effort, with no small success, in the opinion of our security personnel, to attack the terrorist infrastructure within the areas under its control, to arrest Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists and to locate and confiscate stockpiles of weapons and ammunition and explosives.

These organizations constitute a threat to peace and to the Authority. As long as it continues to be successful, conditions and an atmosphere will be created for progress in the peace process between us and toward a permanent settlement between us. The war against terrorism and the pursuit of peace are two sides of the same coin. And there it is, as terrorism is uprooted, peace comes closer. Israel is not exempt from making a parallel and simultaneous effort to promote peace and to fight terrorism.

Mr. Speaker,

I said that "Operation Grapes of Wrath" will not cease because we lose patience, but it should not be understood from this that we have an interest in continuing it unnecessarily.

We welcome the efforts now underway to restore security and to resume the peace process. For understandable reasons, I cannot detail to this house the proposals and ideas being discussed between Jerusalem and the other relevant capitals. The most serious negotiations are those being conducted through the American Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, who is shuttling between Jerusalem and Damascus and who is due to return this afternoon with responses from Syria. I can assure the Knesset that the government will not in any way be satisfied with anything less than "Operation Grapes of Wrath's" stated objectives and will not agree to return to the situation which prevailed on the eve of the operation. The limited military operation which we have taken is the result of the obligation to protect the lives of our citizens in the north. But our aspiration was and remains, peace - and not war, friendship - and not animosity, good neighborly relations - and not occupation.

The Government of Israel will continue to carry out a determined policy of peace and security. We will not give up on peace and we will not abandon security. Because only a secure and strong Israel will reach the goal of peace.

The strength of the IDF, equipped with the best weapons possible, its qualitative edge on the battlefield and in the most advanced modern weapon systems in the world and above all the spirit of its fighters and the superior quality of its commanders and corps, are what will guarantee and support any peace arrangement. They give us a solution when it is necessary, as was proven in "Operation Grapes of Wrath," and they are also what will supply us with security in time of peace.

Source: Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs