Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [317]
I breakfasted the following morning with Teddy Kollek, the Mayor of Jerusalem. I knew him well: he combined a warm humanity with formidable administrative zeal and — a still more valuable combination — loyalty to his own people with a sympathetic understanding of the problems of the Arabs. The whole day — Sunday 25 May — was full of evocative demonstrations of Israel’s history and identity. Naturally, I attended the Yad Vashem Memorial to the Holocaust: as on every occasion, I came out numb with shock that human beings could sink to such depravity.
I went on to a meeting with Mr Shamir. It was impossible to imagine anyone more different from Shimon Peres. This was a hard man, though undoubtedly a man of principle, whose past had left scars on his personality. There was no hostility between us: but nor could there ultimately be any meeting of minds about the way forward. It was clear that there was no possibility of Mr Shamir himself giving up ‘land for peace’ and the Jewish settlements on the West Bank would continue to go ahead.
I believed that the real challenge was to strengthen moderate Palestinians, probably in association with Jordan, who would eventually push aside the PLO extremists. But this would never happen if Israel did not encourage it; and the miserable conditions under which Arabs on the West Bank and in Gaza were having to live only made things worse. I also believed that there should be local elections on the West Bank. But at that time one of the strongest opponents of concessions on this — or anything else it seemed — was the then Defence minister, Mr Rabin, with whom I had breakfast on Monday. He proceeded to read out his views to me for forty minutes with barely time for a bite of toast.
But I was not to be put off. I repeated my proposals for local elections in a speech that afternoon to a group of Israeli MPs at the Knesset — the Israeli Parliament — chaired by the eloquent and respected Abba Eban.
Later I went to a dinner with carefully selected moderate Palestinians — mostly businessmen and academics — of precisely the sort I felt the Israelis should be prepared to deal with. They poured out their complaints, particularly about their treatment on the West Bank and especially in Gaza, where conditions were worst, partly because of insensitive security policing and partly, it seemed, because of economic discrimination in favour of Jewish business. I promised to take these matters up with Mr Peres — and did so in detail the following day — but I also made clear to them the need to reject terrorism and those who practised it. Although the general view was that only the PLO were able to represent the Palestinians, I also detected in conversations with smaller groups that this did not mean that there was any great love for that organization.
During my visit I had two long discussions with Mr Peres. He was conscious of the need to keep King Hussein’s now faltering peace initiative in play, not least so as to avoid destabilizing Jordan itself. But he was obviously highly sceptical about the proposal for an international peace conference. For all his understanding of the need for some kind of compromise, I did not come away with any real optimism. In fact, the succession of Mr Shamir as Prime Minister would soon seal off even these few shafts of light.
However intractable the diplomatic issues were, there was no doubt about the warmth of my reception in Israel, which indeed continued to grow as the visit went on. On Tuesday on my way to the airport for my return flight I stopped at Ramat Gan, a suburb of Tel Aviv that was twinned with Finchley. I had expected