Bush won’t allow Iran to go nuclear

12 August 2006

The former Israeli prime minister tells Allister Heath why he believes the US President will keep his promise to curb Tehran — even if many Europeans remain blind to the threat

But why then were previously friendly Arab regimes now condemning Israel? ‘What Arab leaders say privately to Washington and secretly to Jerusalem is something that would make extraordinary copy for you, and it’s very different to what they say publicly.’ He added that he has had similar conversations over the past two years with leaders of some of the main European countries, and they were far more supportive of Israel in private than in public. For that he blames the media. ‘I don’t think Churchill could have won the war if he had cameras in Dresden... .’

He also said he felt ‘very disappointed’ by William Hague’s recent criticism of Israel. ‘I’m sure he knows better. I always thought of him, and still like to think of him, as a friend and colleague, not in the professional sense but in common views and beliefs. All leadership is taking a personal hit; unless you are prepared to pay a cost for your beliefs, you are not a leader. Blair is a leader. I respect him for it.’

The root cause of the current conflict, Netanyahu argued, is that Hezbollah and Hamas consider all of Israel to be illegitimately occupied land, and that the extremists have been trying to prevent any Jewish settlement in the Middle East since at least the 1920s. ‘They say very openly that their goal is not merely to stop at the 1967 lines; but we could vacate all the West Bank and it wouldn’t make a damned difference to them. [The Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan] Nasrallah was perfectly honest on this. He said he’s firing the rockets into occupied Israel. The occupied settlements of occupied Palestine. It is not a conflict about this or that territory; it is a conflict about Israel’s very existence. And to them, any Israeli sovereignty over any piece of land is anathema.’

This should concern everybody, not only in the West but also in the East, Netanyahu argued, because the extremists are trying to recreate the old Islamic empire of yore. To them, ‘Israel is simply the first forward position of the hedonistic, corrupt infidel civilisation that has to be overcome to afford their view of the resurgence of Islam.’ On that note, Netanyahu bade me farewell and jumped out of the car, leaving me to collect my mobile phone and to ruminate on just how depressing our world has become.

Allister Heath is associate editor of The Spectator and deputy editor of the Business.