No
Illusions
Burg
asserted that Sharon should level with the Israeli people and clarify
all options on the table, making clear that "the time for illusions
is over. The time for decisions has arrived."
Sharon
said say that Jews could not live on Palestinian territories alone,
simply because "Arabs, too, have dreams and needs."
"We
cannot keep a Palestinian majority under an Israeli boot and at the same
time think ourselves the only democracy in the Middle East. There cannot
be democracy without equal rights for all who live here, Arab as well as
Jew."
The
former Knesset speaker told Israelis that if they want "greater
Israel" then they must "abandon democracy (and)…institute an
efficient system of racial separation here, with prison camps and
detention villages."
"Do
you want a Jewish majority? No problem. Either put the Arabs on railway
cars, buses, camels and donkeys and expel them en masse - or separate
ourselves from them absolutely, without tricks and gimmicks."
Making
clear where the peace key is, Burg underlined Israel "must remove
all the settlements - all of them - and draw an internationally
recognized border between the Jewish national home and the Palestinian
national home."
Sharon
"should present the choices forthrightly: Jewish racism or
democracy. Settlements, or hope for both peoples. False visions of
barbed wire and suicide bombers, or a recognized international border
between two states and a shared capital in Jerusalem," he said.
Dying
Society
"The
Israeli nation today rests on a scaffolding of corruption, and on
foundations of oppression and injustice. As such, the end of the Zionist
enterprise is already on our doorstep," Burg contended.
He
warned that "there is a real chance that ours will be the last
Zionist generation. There may yet be a Jewish state here, but it will be
a different sort, strange and ugly."
The
former lawmaker asserted that: "The Jewish people did not survive
for two millennia in order to pioneer new weaponry, computer security
programs or anti-missile missiles. We were supposed to be a light unto
the nations. In this we have failed."
Burg
asserted that the "2,000-year struggle for Jewish survival comes
down to a state of settlements, run by an amoral clique of corrupt
lawbreakers who are deaf both to their citizens and to their enemies.
"A
state lacking justice cannot survive. More and more Israelis are coming
to understand this as they ask their children where they expect to live
in 25 years. Children who are honest admit, to their parents' shock,
that they do not know. The countdown to the end of Israeli society has
begun."
Citing
humiliating conditions imposed by Israel on the Palestinians, Burg
believed, expected that "a structure built on human callousness
will inevitably collapse in on itself.