Interview with Eve Harow
Interview with Eve Harow discussing the infatada against the Jews in Gaza and justifying living there among the Arabs and hopes for peace,INTERVIEWER:,Could you please tell us your full name, spell it for us, and what you do here?, HAROW:,My name is Eve Harow, E-v-e-, H-a-r-o-w. [OFF CAMERA COMMENTS] My name is Eve Harow, E-v-e, H-a-r-o-w. And I live in (Inaudible). , , INTERVIEWER:,And what do you do here? ,10:01:19>>>, EVE HAROW:,What do I do here? Well, in addition to my husband and I trying to raise seven children, I'm very politically active; I served on the local council, for close to eight years, until just a few months ago, and I speak, whenever I can, about the situation in perspective of somebody living here. , INTERVIEWER:,What is the perspective - what is the situation, in perspective of somebody living here? [OFF CAMERA COMMENTS] , EVE HAROW:,Okay, we, along with everybody in Israel, have been living through an experiment, a ten year experiment, to do things the way the left wanted to do them, which was Oslo, and to try and create a Palestinian state, and to coexist. The experiment has failed. It's failed on a grand scale. And, over seven hundred people have been killed just in the last few years. And close to two thousand have been killed in the last decade, and thousands have been wounded. And it's not just a perspective, I think anymore, of the people living out here. Although we tend to bear the brunt of what's going on, because we live among the Arabs, more than say someone in Tel Aviv. But, something has to be done, because we can't keep going on this way. ,10:02:46>>>,And so, I think what's happened is that our perspective as people who- would have had to pay the biggest price, had this experiment worked. And in the main would have been willing to pay the price, because we also want to live in peace, just as everybody else does. I think that our perspective is now being seen by the rest of Israel. And we're seeing that they don't want coexistence, and that a two-state solution isn't a viable idea. [OFF CAMERA COMMENTS], , INTERVIEWER:,Tell me about the situation and the perspective - , EVE HAROW:,Look, for a long time, the people who live in Judea, and Samaria, and Gaza, the Jews who live here, have been - were seen as the obstacles to peace. If you go along with the idea that this belongs to the Arabs, anybody who knows even a little bit of history realizes that this was never an Arab country, and that if there's anywhere in the world that Jews have a right to live, it's in Judea and Samaria and Gaza. Judea, Tribe of Juda. The only reason that we weren't here before 1967, was because we were ethnically cleansed from here in 1948. And those of us who were living here, don't believe in ethnic cleansing. And we believe that if Jews can't live here, then what that does is it rewarded the people who killed us and drove us away. And that's why our houses are new, because everything that was Jewish was destroyed then. And it's time to rectify that particular travesty.,10:04:17>>>,On the other hand, we also very, very much want to live in peace. I'm a mother of seven, and we want our children to live. My niece's baby was killed a year and a half ago, in a terror incident. A boy that my son played with on his baseball team, Koby Mandell, was found brutally ripped to bits in a cave not far from here. Four of my neighbors were killed, and other people from the area. And we want it to stop. The question is, if this particular process is going to make things stop and get better, or just make things worse. If you establish a Palestinian state, here, where I live, if it's going to threaten the existence of the State of Israel, or if it's going to lead to coexistence. ,And what's interesting, now, when we see it on the Israeli political map, is that nobody, not even the furthest left, is talking about coexistence anymore. At best they're talking about a separation. And we know that the Palestinian Authority, and many of the people, unfortunately who live under the Palestinian Authority, have painted this, now, as an us or them situation. It's not something that Israelis wanted. But it's something that's coming from the other side. Their maps all show Palestine replacing Israel, not a Palestine, give or take where the borders would be, next to Israel. And, unfortunately, even though we as Israelis would like to think otherwise, because doesn't everybody want to live in peace, doesn't everybody want to compromise, we're still fighting for our right to exist at all in this part of the world. , INTERVIEWER:,Could you accept - would you accept your Palestinian neighbors, or would you - if things were peaceful,l would you be okay with you sharing the backyard with - or the next village with your Palestinian neighbors? ,10:05:56>>>, EVE HAROW:,I have no problem with Arabs. I'm not a racist. And I think that ultimately we are going to have to coexist in the Middle East. What I have a problem with, is people who don't accept my right to be here at all. And that is something that I think has to be dealt with. When we see that all the Holy places, for example, that were put under their control as part of Oslo, Joseph's Tomb the old synagogue in Jericho, were immediately destroyed. When we see what's going on in Temple Mount, for example, which almost everyone in the world acknowledges that when the temple is there and there's a Jewish connection to the place, it's not acknowledged at all, and there's a denial of any kind of Jewish tie to the land. And so we're not saying that there shouldn't be coexistence, and we all shouldn't be able to somehow work it out. But when you see a complete denial of our rights on the other side, and it makes us realize that we're speaking two different languages. And that's something that I think, that perhaps western audiences don't understand. We don't have to like or understand the mentality, shall we say, of the suicide bomber, but we have to know that it exists in their society and what we need to do about it. ,10:07:02>>>,So, there's sometimes I feel almost an arrogance in the part of the people from the west, like, we know democracy, we know freedom of speech, and we know how wonderful that life is. And doesn't everybody get it? Isn't that what everybody would want? And what we need to understand is that in this part of the world, that societies are not necessarily on the same page as we are there. And so, when we talk about compromise and largesse and willingness to share, the other side has interpreted it as a loss of will, and a lack of faith, and us starting to believe that maybe we really don't deserve to be here. And that's how they've seen it, and that is how they've run with it. ,And that's why, when we started a process that we thought was going to lead to peace, instead we're facing a war - really a war. And the guns that were given to them, that were suppose to stop the terrorists, are - have been, instead, been turned against us. So what happened? We didn't understand how the other side was interpreting what was going on. And we can't afford to do that. We just can't afford to do that. , INTERVIEWER:,Earlier on we were talking - you had mentioned that there were seven hundred people killed, over the past couple of years, and over the past decade a couple of thousand. But when you said people, you were only referring to the Israeli side. , EVE HAROW:,Right. , INTERVIEWER:, On the other side, as well, several thousand on the other side as well - several thousand on the other side as well, did they count? ,10:08:40>>>, EVE HAROW:,Of course they count. And every time an Arab - of course everybody killed, counts. And every time an Arab child is killed, I hurt, because he's got a mother, too. The question is who set up the situation? When Barak went to Camp David, he was ready to give away just about all of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and throw in some of the Negev too, to make up the difference in percentages of the areas that he couldn't give away. And then we got a war. So, for one side to start a war, to send their children out as human bombs, and then to say, ‘Well, we're dying', is, is an absurdity. At any point in time, if the Arabs put down their guns, we'll be back at the negotiating table. If the Israelis and Jews put down their guns, we'll be in the sea. , INTERVIEWER:,The Palestinians feel that - they feel that people like you, the settlers, they called you an obstacle for peace and that those of you who are, you know, quote, unquote, on the far right - that you accept, that, that's where you are, are - are not interested in peace. , EVE HAROW:,Mm-hm. , INTERVIEWER:,-are not interested in coexistence, are not interested in two states. ,10:10:04>>>, EVE HAROW:,Well, those are all different things. Okay? To say that we're not interested in peace and coexistence, is not the same thing as saying that we're not interested in two states. I don't believe that there should be an Arab State west of the Jordan River. It's not viable, not economically, and not for many other reasons. But also there is a state, already, that exists on three-quarters of British Mandate Palestine, for the Arabs, and that's the country of Jordan. The majority of the population are Palestinians. So there already exists an Arab state, for the people who call themselves Palestinians. ,To say that we're not interested in peace and coexistence, is the most ridiculous thing. Okay? We want this war to stop, and we want people to stop dying on both sides. One of the arguments that I have, with actually the Israeli left, is when they also buy into that. Because it's very hard to understand why we're being hated. So, if we're being hated because we supposedly took something that belongs to the other side, how do you rectify that? You give them what they say is theirs; Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Then they don't hate us anymore. Which, again, doesn't make sense when they were offered that and they turned it down. ,Because it turns out that what they call the Nachba [PH], the catastrophe, is not the War of 1967, a war that Israel defended itself against three armies; Syria, Jordan and, and Egypt, and ended up winning Judea, Samaria and Gaza in the course of that war. That's not the nachba, that's not the catastrophe for the Arabs. For the Arabs, the catastrophe was 1948. That's what they call the nachba. What's 1948, the creation and the beginning of the existence of the State of Israel. And one - I have a map that shows - it's a map that I got from the Palestinian Businessman's Association. It's a map of destroyed Arab villages. Villages that they want to go home to, as they say. Kibbutz Negba which is in the Negev, sits on lands of five Arab villages that were destroyed in the course of the 1948 War. Efrat sits on land that was empty since, we don't know how long. So who exactly do they resent? ,10:12:00>>>,And this is a beast that I have with the Israeli left, who cast us as the villains, and as obstacles to peace, very often. When we have to understand that for the Arab world, I would say even as a whole, and not just the Palestinians, it isn't just Israel, it's every Jewish community, it's Tel Aviv, and it's Haifa that are just as much an obstacle, because they don't want peace. They want to eradicate the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, and turn it into another Arab country. And so we're all the problem in the Arab mind. And, again, this is where we have to understand, we have to start talking to each other and listen to what the other side is saying. We are all settlers. We all don't belong here. We are all occupiers. , INTERVIEWER:,Why did you come to Israel? ,10:12:41>>>, EVE HAROW:,Actually my father is a Palestinian. My father was born in Berlin to a Jewish family, in 1932. My grandfather saw what was gonna happen, and in 1933 brought them here to Palestine. Because, before 1948, the people who were Palestinians were the Jews. The Arabs calling themselves Palestinians is a relatively new invention. Even the Palestinian brigade went to help the Allies fight in World War II, it was made up of Jews. The Arabs called themselves, the Arab of southern Syria, not Palestinians. So my father grew up here as a Palestinian, and then in 1948 as an Israeli. My mother came, an American, and they met and I ended up being raised in the states. ,10:13:21>>>,But I always felt - we came to visit here when I was nine, because we have family here, and I always felt that this was home. And that I couldn't see, after two thousand years of the Jews not having a home, I was privileged to live in a time when we'd come home - I couldn't see living in Los Angeles, and not here. And I still feel that, even with everything that's going on and how difficult it is, it is a tremendous privilege to be able to be here, and to be able to - in writing the history of the Jewish people, I'm one of the people holding the pencil, not just reading the book. And that's something that, at times, just overwhelms me. Just by waking up here in the morning, I've done something for the Jewish people - past and future. For all the people who came before me, who hung on to inquisitions, and Crusades, and everything else. And they hung on so that I could be a Jew in the 21st Century. I owe them that, an heir to the future also. Because, if there is no State of Israel, I fear for the existence of the Jewish people. And if my being here serves as an obstacle to the Palestinian State, which I and so many Israelis see now as an existential threat to the State of Israel, there is no finer thing I can do than live here. [OFF CAMERA COMMENTS] , INTERVIEWER:,You have children and you've chosen this life of what used to be called pioneers, and you know, even now they're called seconds. ,10:15:15>>>, EVE HAROW:,Right. Why live here and not in Tel Aviv? Why do boys serve in a combat unit and not get a job at a desk, where they know that chances are they'll make it through their army service? Because, to be a Jew, to be an Israeli, means that you have to think as a collective. You have to think of what's the best thing for the Jewish people. Even if it isn't always necessarily the best thing for you and yours. And so, we could not exist if it wasn't for the guys in the front, literally, the ones who do the dangerous mission. ,And I think Israel also needs people like myself right now, who are here. Because, if we're not here Arafat will be right here, and he'll be looking down at the people in Tel Aviv. So, if I want to go live in Tel Aviv, and tell someone else to be here, then maybe someone else doesn't want to be here. The, in that vacuum, that's evil. And if I can prevent that from happening, then I'm willing to take the risks. I'm not happy about it. I'm not happy about the danger. But I have to look at it from, from what's best for Israel and the part that I can play. I can't be a soldier, but I can do this, so that's what I'm doing. , INTERVIEWER:,The Palestinians talk about the cycle of violence here on the - in Israel, the attacks that are - the military responses are, are not allegedly in response to terrorism. , EVE HAROW:,Right. , INTERVIEWER:,And that the Palestinians say that the ____ the terrorist attacks, ____ Israel's target assassinations, and, you know, what I mean, excursions and aggression and so on , and so forth. ,10:17:05>>>, EVE HAROW:,I think, in the world, post 9/11, there needs to be a better understanding of what's going on here. This is not just a little turf war between the Israelis and the Palestinians. This is probably nothing less than a clash of civilizations. And the reason that Israel is bearing the brunt of the terrorism, is because we are the point man for Western civilization in the Middle East. You talk about the cycle of violence, and how to break the cycle of violence. What caused nineteen suicide bombers to smash into the World Trade Center? Nothing more, nothing less than the fact that they hate the west more than anything that the west had done, except being themselves; being free society, being people who believed in openness and a liberal way of life, and not forcing anybody to do things. And that's the problem that we have in Israel. That is the threat that we hold to all the dictatorships, and the absolute monarchies, and just the bunch of thugs that control this part of the world, and control the lives of the billion people. ,10:18:08>>>,And until - and I agree wholeheartedly with what President Bush said last June, until there is a sea change in this part of the world, until the other people who live here, until the Arabs of Iran and Iraq, they have their freedoms and they have an opportunity to move on -I don't believe we'll be able to solve the Israel Palestinian problem. Because until people are happy with their lot and their leaders, they are certainly not gonna want to find a way of coexistence with me, and stop hating me. And so this - I see what's going on here as part of a much, much bigger picture, that, it's upsetting for me as an Israeli, because it means I have less control over it. ,If you break this down to just an Israeli-Palestinian issue, then we can at least pretend that we have some kind of control. But if you look at this as a map of the Middle East, and as Israel really as, just a sample of the free world here, then it's more frightening because what I say and do isn't so important. On the other hand, I can only hope that the rest of the free world will see what's happening here. ,And, there's an example given that the Jews are very often the canary in the coal mine. That whatever evil it is that's abound in the world, that starts with the Jews, will eventually, if it's not checked, make its way to the rest of the world; Nazism, Fascism, Communism, and now Islamic Fundamentalism. So when the world thought that this was just Israel's problem, so we suffered for 50, 60, 70 years from this terror, this is not something new on our own, and now we hoped that the world had seen that because it was allowed to breed, and because now we had the terrorism, and these despots have no less than nuclear and biological chemical weapons, now it's a threat for everybody, and that we need to fight this together. , INTERVIEWER:,Some people, Americans, I had a conversation with somebody that saw that the concentration camps of (Inaudible), and so forth, and that he said Israel is an apartide state. How do you respond to that? ,10:20:12>>>, EVE HAROW:,People are entitled to their own opinion. And I think what is so fascinating sometimes, I think the Jews are in some way the victims of their own success. Because who brought that whole idea of morality and fairness and equality to the world? It was the Jews. And it was the Bible, and it was what we brought that changed the world from being, you know, with paganism, and where they used to sacrifice their children to malach and to ba'al and all these kinds of idols. We changed the world. And now we're being told that we're not fair enough, and that, you know, literally we're being told to be more Catholic than the Pope, as it were. And, unfortunately whoever you spoke to who said that, that thinks Israel - [OFF CAMERA COMMENTS] ,Unfortunately, people who feel that Israel is an apartheid state, don't understand what we're going through, and it's not an apartheid state. When I vote, when I cast my ballot in ten weeks, all the Arab-Israelis will do the same. Their vote will count just as much as mine. Even though many of them are not loyal to the state of Israel, would not swear an oath of loyalty to the State of Israel. Many of them have been implicated in terror bombings, themselves, have given aid to Palestinians who were involved in terror bombing. So you could say that they're not the greatest citizens in the State of Israel, and yet they will vote for the Knesset just as I will. And so Israel is far from an apartheid state. ,And I think, especially in view of the neighborhood that we live in, and what we're up against, I think it's nothing short of phenomenal, how democratic and, and, open Israeli society is. It's possibly our greatest achievement. We're not given credit for it. , , INTERVIEWER:,What are the parameters that you could envision a peaceful solution or a peaceful coexistence to what's going on? ,10:22:03>>>, EVE HAROW:,The majority of people who call themselves Palestinians, say that they are refugees, that their grandparents came from Yaffo and Haifa in 1948. It was a war that they started, when they didn't accept the UN Partition Plan. And it was a war that they paid the price for. What's so interesting though, is that only about one hundred thousand people are actually those who left, at the time. The vast majority of the people that call themselves refugees, are children and grandchildren of the refugees. So, even an interesting legal point is, does that make them refugees? Because if children and grandchildren of refugees are also refugees, probably every Jew in the world is a refugee. Israel is certainly a country of refugees, then. Because we've been forced out and throw out of just about everywhere. ,Now they started a war that they didn't think they would lose. And the price that they paid was losing their homes. And to add insult to injury, instead of the Arab world taking them in, the Arab world that instigated them to fight against Israel, before it even began, The Arab world didn't take them in. The Arab world, their Arab brothers, put them in refugee camps, and have left them in that situation, with the collusion of the UN, now, of course, for over half a century. But, what's interesting is that the man in a Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza, and I, share a point of view. We both feel that he's not at home. He feels that his home is in Ocko [PH], which is in Israel. The Israeli left will never let him go back to Ocko. So that's a non-starter for him. ,But what has to be done is the fulfillment of the promise of the Arab leaders, in the early 50's, made. See, in the early 50's, the Arab world threw out their Jews. That's where Sephardic Jewry comes from. Sixty percent of Israelis came in the 1950's, with the clothes on their back, because they were throw out of the Arab world. The Jews from Baghdad, some of whom their families were there for twenty-seven hundred years, since the first exile after the destruction of the first temple. It was ancient Babylon. And the Jews of Morocco, and Iraq, and Iran, and everywhere. And they came in and they were absorbed into Israeli society, and at the time, the Arab leaders said, well don't get upset at us for throwing out the Jews, we're just gonna have a population transfer. And this way we'll have room for the Arabs who fled Israel, except that they never fulfilled their side of the bargain. And they put the Arabs in refugee camps, and have left them to rot. ,And so, what needs to be done, is the Arabs in refugee camps have to finally be resettled in Arab countries. It's fifty years overdue, they've been suffering terribly, because of the intransigence of their own leaders, of people who don't care about them. And once that is done, then I think the problems are much less, and once to go back, also, to what people have spoken about before; once you have democracies and open societies in the Middle East, then people have somewhere to go. ,10:24:50>>>,Right now it's difficult for me to say to somebody, to an Arab who's living here, go live in Syria, knowing that he's going to have a miserable life, because everybody in Syria has a miserable life. But if there can be, again, an openness of the Middle East, for their own people, for their own sakes, then there's somewhere to go, there is somewhere to develop, and peace in the region really starts to be a reality for everybody. But it's not just up to Israel, here. It's up to the entire world. ,There was a study that was published a few months ago, that was done by Arabs. One of the markers of how progressive a society is, is how many books are translated into their language during the course of the year. And they found that in the last thousand years, in the last millennia, as many books have been translated into Arabic, as were translated by Spain into Spanish, in one year. It's an area of the globe - it's an area of the world that's falling off the globe, in terms of illiteracy, women not having the vote, women in Saudi Arabia can't drive. Something has to be done for these people, for their own sakes. And when they are happier and more fulfilled because they can actually not be afraid to say what they think. And I think we will find, amongst them, people who also want to live with us in peace. And things can change dramatically. One of the more -,10:26:06>>>,I think it's Bernard Lewis who is one of the foremost Islamic scholars, today. And he has said, and it's so true, that aside from Israel, the regimes in the Middle East that are most pro-west, pro-American, the people are most anti-American. Places like the Palestinian Authority, and Jordan, and Egypt, are places where, regularly, the American flag is burned, because the people hate their leaders. And in places where the regimes are seen as anti-west, the people are actually pro-west. The only place outside of Israel that had any kind of vigil, or memorial for the victims of 9/11 was Teheran. Because the Iranian people want to be free. And if we don't help them, then we, as Israelis and the West, are going to be mired in conflict for a long time. There is a lot that has to be done. , INTERVIEWER:,[OFF CAMERA COMMENTS] What's the bottom line? What is the bear minimum that you could accept, that would give you a feeling of possibility of peace? ,10:27:08>>>, EVE HAROW:,With particular -the bottom line of the bear minimum that people - that all Israelis, not just myself, of course, are willing to accept, is there has to be a complete cessation of the violence. Complete. And no looking the other way, and no saying that this bus-bombing was a sacrifice for peace. None of that. A complete cessation of violence. Because, as long as there is terror, and there are only gains for the other side, via the terror, then the lesson goes home very quickly, which is that the terror pays. So, that has to be - we have to go door to door and collect the guns. And we have to - there has to be a regime change in the Palestinian Authority. What I'm afraid of though, is that the last ten years as raised a generation of children whose textbooks talk about the, the need, the religious need or a Pan Arab need to eradicate the Jews, and to eradicate the State of Israel. , INTERVIEWER:,And the Palestinian children. ,10:27:58>>>, EVE HAROW:,Unfortunately, in the last ten years, the freedom that the Palestinian Authority got, in the last ten years, to educate their own children, has been to educate them towards hatred and away from peace. And so, if someone was still a child of six or seven, when Oslo started, he's now sixteen or seventeen. And that's his childhood, and that's his mindset. Which is that he, as a religious imperative, as an Arab imperative, as whatever, must dedicate his life to destroying the Jews, destroying the infidel, and to having Islam take over. Not just here, but in the west. And I don't know how quickly we can change that. We may have to wait until that generation no longer, or somehow, we have to un-brainwash them, because it's exactly what's happened. ,I think what's important to understand is there are no easy solutions here. You can't say, a unilateral withdrawal, and you're there and we're here and everything will be fine. We can't do it because of security reasons. Because there are missiles that can fly. And when there is a will to destroy, then we'll find a way to get in. And so what we have to do is get rid of that will to destroy, and bring back, somehow, a desire for coexistence. And there's a dearth of it now. And the first thing that has to be done is that - this band of terrorists, called the Palestinian Authority, has to be replaced one way or the other. , INTERVIEWER:,The Palestinian Authority says that, how can they expect Yasser Arafat to get control over his people when he's virtually under house arrest? , EVE HAROW:,Mm-hm. , INTERVIEWER:,And so forth. , EVE HAROW:,Right. So that's the big question. Can Arafat control his people? If he can't control his people then why are we talking to him in any form at all? Why is he still the head of the Palestinian Authority, if he's just a puppet? And if he can talk to them, and control them, then why isn't he telling them, listen, we messed up here. Violence isn't getting us what we want. We need to go back to the path of peace. So, either way, something doesn't fit. I don't know. , INTERVIEWER:,The world, and the (Inaudible) increasing animosity towards Israel and Europe, and in Canada - , EVE HAROW:,Right. , INTERVIEWER:,-and ____,and so forth. And Palestinians are the underdogs, the freedom fighters in Israel appear to be oppressors, and the occupiers, and the imperialists, and so on, and so forth. What is your response? ,10:30:23>>>, EVE HAROW:,I think the world has, unfortunately fallen into a mindset of appeasement. Which is that the Arab problem is just against the Jews. And therefore if, you know, the Jews are the problem. And so if we can somehow get rid of them, or somehow make them have all the difficult sacrifices, then everything will be fine. And again, blinding themselves to the reality, which is that it's really Western civilization and free societies, and Israel is an example of that. That's the bottom line problem. ,I also think that - one of the arguments that the Palestinians use, and quite successfully, is that they're the ultimate victims of the holocaust. Because we came over here from Europe, and did to them, in their version, exactly what's being done to us in Europe. And of course it's not true, and most people don't know that the Mufti here, at the time, was a big Nazi sympathizer, and that there were plans for a concentration camp, no less, drawn up to rid the world of the Jews of the Land of Israel. And that there were massacres of Jews going on all the time; pre-state, pre-occupation, pre-anything - pre, even second world war. So, that amity of Arabs towards the Jews, has been here for a long time. ,But, what's interesting is the Europeans like this version very much, because then they can feel a little less guilty over what happened on their soil, in World War II. Because they can say, you see when Israel is in power, they do to everybody else what we do to them. And so, it makes them feel a little less bad about their complicity in what happened during World War II. But, of course, it's not true, and I have yet to see on a list of terrorists, anyone named Stanley Cohen, for example. So, on the one hand there's a world that understands, what the danger is here of Islamic Fundamentalism. And strangely enough, though, they say, well in the Arab-Israeli conflict, it's the Jews who are causing all the problems. And there needs to be a slight awakening here, about what's really going on, and the battle that we're all facing together, because if we don't all join together on this, we could all go down together. , INTERVIEWER:,There are some who say that the Arab leaders in 1948 that planned to create refugee camps, as well, _____, and they had a long range goal with the refugee camps. That with the wounds that would fester in Israel's side, and eventually it would infect and it would erupt - , EVE HAROW:,[OVERLAP] Mm-hm, as it happened. , INTERVIEWER:,Can you continue that metaphor? ,10:32:45>>>, EVE HAROW:,It's possible that the Arab world, when they put their own people in refugee camps, knew that they were gonna use them for the next half a century, and that they were gonna breed hatred. And you could use these people as their frontline, in their war against Israel. And it's possible not. It's possible that they just simply didn't care, didn't want to be bothered, and dumped them in refugee camps. It doesn't matter. Because the situation exists, today, and has to be dealt with. And what the world needs to understand is that it's not Israel's responsibility. Israel will do a lot to help repatriate the refugees, join a fund, or whatever it is, to give these people a normal life on a humanitarian level. We will do more than their own people will do. Where's all the oil money? Where's the Saudi Arabian money and the Iraqi money? They have so much. How come they can't help their own people? It's just - when I compare it to how Israel welcomed the Jewish refugees in the early 1950's, from the Arab countries, it's just astonishing to me, the lack of caring on the Arab side, for their own people. , INTERVIEWER:,What do you see in a hundred years? , EVE HAROW:, What do I see in a hundred years? Being, believe it or not, an optimistic person, I hope that there will really be peace here in a hundred years. It's time, it's time for all of us to turn those swords into ploughshares. , INTERVIEWER:,Some historians take the larger view-(Inaudible) to say - historians say that the Arabs take a larger view - , EVE HAROW:,Mm-hm. , INTERVIEWER:, And their - you know, this - today the battle is just part of a larger battle. , EVE HAROW:,Yes. , INTERVIEWER:,And it took up two hundred years to get the Christians out through The Crusades, and (Inaudible). ,10:34:32>>>, EVE HAROW:,[OVERLAP] Mm-hm. There's no question that the Arabs have a lot more patience than we do. And that they see us as just an anachronism in what they call their Middle East. If they were the way they once were, it would be easier, maybe, to see their point of view. Like if, I mean who, in the Middle Ages, when Christianity in Europe was wallowing for like four hundred years and went nowhere, there were a lot of good things that came out of the Islamic world; Algebra, music, and art, and medicine. What happened? Why the stagnation? I think they have to get their own house in order. And I think what scares them is how our house is so in order. Fifty years of constantly living on the edge, and on wars. ,And Israel is - and high tech, we're at the top of the world. We've got an astronaut, an Israeli astronaut flying in space as part of the team. He's not just sitting as a passenger. He's an intregal part of the team. Nobel prizes from every which way. I think it scares them, how little - how much we've been able to accomplish with so many forces arrayed against us, and how they just keep going backwards. And that fear is what also drives the hatred. And so I think we've got to help them, for the little people's sake. Not for the leader's sake. The leaders can go home. The leaders aren't good for anybody except themselves. But, for their own people's sake, we've got to help them, because this area has tremendous potential, but only if we work together. , INTERVIEWER:,In the end do you think that _____'s solution could work? Do you think you could abide by that - live by that? , EVE HAROW:,A two-state solution, today, means creating a terror state, with an Israel, nine miles wide. Which means that Israel will be, if not destroyed, will have a terrible, terrible war with a terrible cost in lives. So today, there is no talking about a two-state solution, west of the Jordan River. It's like creating another Afghanistan, or another Iraq. Who needs that? Nobody needs that. Israel for sure not. But not the west either. ,And so, I think, first we wait and see the change. Perhaps I sound a little bit skeptical. But after ten years of broken promises, I think I have the right to be skeptical. Because, if I'm right about what's going on here, then Israel's really - it's existence is, you know, threatened. And that's not a risk that I'm willing to take. We're willing to take a lot of risks for peace and we did. And we gave them guns because they said they were gonna use their guns to protect everybody from the terrorists, and instead they turned the guns on us. And instead the police force and the Palestinian Authority has become one of the prime movers and shakers of terrorism, fatah. So, I think we have a right to be a little wary, here. The stakes are just too high to turn a blind eye. , INTERVIEWER:,If there were an election in Palestinian, today, or tomorrow, and -you know, Israel would have safe and secure boundaries, however that is defined. That in a two-state solution the majority would probably vote for it - ,10:37:44>>>, EVE HAROW:,If you have a two-state solution, but again, you have a despot or a dictator on the other side, then you assume they probably have them in the rest of the Arab world. When you have that in the PA, today, which is - he doesn't represent his people. That's what democracy means. Democracy means, the majority rules. But you don't have that in the Arab world, and not in the PA, for sure. And so, to create a state, that's the same mistakes that were made in Oslo. ,To say that Arafat is the - you know, he's a representative of his people, and either he was too weak or he, himself, was playing a game, one of his so-called moderate ministers, Faisal Hussein, who died a couple years ago in Kuwait, and he was the moderate in the Palestinian Authority, who was a minister for Jerusalem affairs. And the last interview that he gave, before he died, was to an Egyptian newspaper, and he called Oslo a Trojan Horse. Meaning, it was just a way of knowing Israel's defenses, in order to be able to eradicate Israel. And he was the moderate. ,So, we need to work on building back a little bit of trust. And they have to prove it, because we have no reason to trust them anymore. Everything that we're hearing, from the Palestinian Authority in the Arab world, shows us that they are still an implacable enemy. And we want peace desperately, but we don't the peace of the grave, and we don't want to commit suicide. And we have the right to be here, too. And we're willing to compromise. But not on our existence. , INTERVIEWER:,But my question was about the Israeli majority. , EVE HAROW:,Mm-hm. , INTERVIEWER:,Who would probably just fight the fears and the - and you articulate would still, today, given the choice, would probably go for a two-state solution as it's being presented in very different presentations. ,10:39:33>>>, EVE HAROW:,The Israeli public needs a little bit of educating here, too. Because when we started Oslo. Israelis didn't think that we were gonna give them a Palestinian state, because they deserved it, because it had been their land, and we took it away. Israelis knew better. But we were so desperate for peace that we said, fine, you know, what? Let's split the land, even though we have a right to it. But we wanted there to be peace. And if this is what they're saying is the obstacle to them giving us peace, because they want this piece of land, have their own state, fine we'll do it. In the course of the last ten years, somehow that idea got lost. And because of very poor public relations and explaining our position, now it's become conventional wisdom that they deserve a state. And that's why, despite all the terrorism, we have a Prime Minister who is talking about a Palestinian State, like it's a fait accompli and there's nothing you can do. ,And I think there is something we can do. We can educate. We can explain to people why we're not just not being nice when we say that we don't want there to be a Palestinian State. But that one already exists in Jordan, that was the intention. And to set up another one would just destabilize the region and create another terror state. And so a lot of explaining has to be done, but the facts and the history and the truth is with us. It's just that, unfortunately, people don't know. [OFF CAMERA COMMENTS] , INTERVIEWER:,Anything that we haven't covered? ,10:41:10>>>, EVE HAROW:,I love this country. I'm not going anywhere. Because I really feel that we have the right to be here. What disturbs me is the double standard that is very often given when people talk about, we can't think about moving Arabs, because that's transfer, yet they talk about dismantling settlements, which means transferring me. And so, these are hypocrises that bother me very much. And I think that maybe people don't understand what they're saying. That if you don't want people to be moved, then I shouldn't be moved either. ,And if you don't want there to be illegal building, or so called of Jewish communities here, then you have to stop illegal building of Arab houses which is going on right outside my window. Because, to say, if that the Jews can't build, but the Arabs can, why have negotiations? They're saying that it's theirs, the whole thing is a farce. And I don't think the people understand enough, about Israeli rights. They see us with tanks [TAPE COMES TO END] -.