Moshe Sharett
Moshe Sharett
Moshe Sharett 16 October 1894 – 7 July 1965) was the second Prime Minister of Israel, serving for a little under two years between David Ben-Gurion's two terms. He continued as Foreign Ministerin the Mapai government. Sharett steered the government through a turbulent period, was an experienced diplomat, with a liberal policy, a conciliatory approach, and a modernising attitude to the West. The renewed war with the Arabs split the socialist Left commencing another period of instability...
NationalityIsraeli
ProfessionStatesman
Date of Birth15 October 1894
CountryIsrael
As for the future, we are equally determined to explore all possibilities of getting rid, once and for all, of the huge Arab minority which originally threatened us.
Israel would not do that, both because we cannot afford to be accused by the world of aggression and because we cannot, for security and social reasons, absorb in our midst a substantial Arab population.
I am against preventive war because it means measures by the UN against us.
As for the long-term future: I am prepared to see in this a vision, not a mystical way but in a realistic way, of a population exchange on a much more important scale and including larger territories.
As for now, we must not forget who would have to exchange the land? those villages which live more than others on irrigation, on orange and fruit plantations, in houses built near water wells and pumping stations, on livestock and property and easy access to markets.
I explained that we would like to adjust our position on the Syrian question to theirs, as, in our view, they are the decisive factor in our relations with our neighbors, and Syria is unimportant.
Even of if a certain backlash is unavoidable, we must make the most of the momentous chance with which history has presented us so swiftly and so unexpectedly.
I am against intervention by a foreign power against us.
We have forgotten that we have not come to an empty land to inherit it, but we have come to conquer a country from people inhabiting it, that governs it by the virtue of its language and savage culture.
What is our vision on this earth - war to the end of all generations and life by the sword?
I imagine that the intention is to get rid of them. The interests of security demand that we get rid of them.