Shamir: "This Is a New Form of Warfare"

By Henry Muller, Ronald Kriss, John Stacks, Johanna McGeary, Robert Slater Yitzhak Shamir.

< On the day Israel deported eight Palestinians to Lebanon, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir met with TIME Managing Editor Henry Muller, Executive Editor Ronald Kriss, Chief of Correspondents John Stacks, Jerusalem Bureau Chief Johanna McGeary and Reporter Robert Slater. Excerpts:

Q. The situation here seems to have changed since December.

A. What has changed? Nothing has changed. You mean the disturbances? I think they will come to an end. We are used to Arab acts against Israel. We have a long history of that, and they have always failed and they will fail in this too.

Q. You don't see anything different about this uprising compared to previous ones?

A. No, no, no. It's the same. They've tried terrorist acts against us. They've tried military wars. They've tried an economic boycott. Everything has failed. This is a new form of warfare. And it will fail again because, if they want peace, they have first of all to quell these disturbances, because under this pressure, this violence, you cannot negotiate with anybody.

Q. Mr. Shultz does not appear to have resolved much in his recent visits. Is this whole exercise a waste of time?

A. Not at all. I'm very happy about his efforts. But all of us are aware that it's a very complicated task. I know this American approach that every problem has to be solved. And immediately. But we have to accept that there are many problems in the world that are very difficult to solve and this is one of them.

Q. But if the Shultz plan isn't working now, what's the alternative?

A. I think that the Camp David agreements are the best plan for solving this problem . . . Camp David is not very favorable to Israel, but we have to take risks for peace.

Q. What's so unfavorable?

A. For instance, all the structures of autonomy. You cannot be sure that one day ((the territories)) would not be switched to a Palestinian state. I also don't think King Hussein is interested in ruling over this population.

Q. Can you see anything that would change Hussein's mind?

A. Is he a small child? Do I have to take care of him? Please, you have to take care of me too. Why all this taking care of King Hussein? There is not any danger that threatens him. We are ready to make peace with him.

Q. Do you subscribe to the land-for-peace formula?

A. Formulas are a good subject in schools. We don't live according to formulas. We invite the Arabs all the time to come to the table for negotiations, and we want to negotiate without any preconditions.

Q. Do you ever lie awake at night wondering whether there is a gesture you could make that would have the same impact as Sadat's visit to Jerusalem?

A. The initiative has to come from the Arabs. We can make a gesture if we are sure that it will be accepted by the other side. On the other hand, the Arabs know that any gesture on their side will be welcomed by Israel.

Q. The Arabs say you're not willing to speak about giving up any part of the occupied territories.

A. Why speak about giving up land? Why these formulas? I say let us negotiate without any preconditions. Where is it written that Israel has to give up everything? It's a very small country.

Q. Very few negotiations are successful without each side giving up something.

A. Sure, well, let us talk about it. But in negotiations.

Q. You recently wrote that you don't share the view that, at present population growth rates, Israel will one day have an Arab majority and thus that it will have to choose between being a Jewish state and a democracy.

A. It will never happen. In the past 20 years the proportion between Arab and Jews has changed only half a percent.

Q. But you have within your self-declared borders today at least 1.5 million hostile Arabs.

A. I don't think they will always be hostile.

Q. Why not?

A. Why not? Why yes? Because if we propose these Camp David accords, there is no reason to be hostile. I think foreigners coming from the West are more hostile than the Arabs have been. I have many Arab friends, and they are very eager to talk with me.

Q. But the Palestinians are saying something quite simple: they have national aspirations, they want to control their own lives.

A. I think this is a temporary phenomenon. We will start the process of negotiations and there will be some solutions for this problem of how we will be able to live together.

Q. What are those solutions?

A. Peacefully, but first of all we have to start the negotiations on this period of the Camp David accords. Why, why is it so difficult to sit together like we are sitting here now? What's the difficulty? I will kill them or what?

Q. They say you don't recognize their leaders, the P.L.O.

A. We will not talk to them because you cannot talk about peace with people who are against peace. I know what Arafat wants to get, I know it. He never said that he wants to get peace with us. He says certainly that he wants to see our disappearance from here.

Q. Don't all belligerents ultimately have to talk to their enemies no matter how much they dislike them?

A. Yes, yes, but there are some exceptions. The Western countries decided not to negotiate with Hitler. For us Arafat is like Hitler. He wants to see every one of us dead.

Q. Some people compare Israel and South Africa, noting that these are both countries in which some groups enjoy democratic rights, while others do not.

A. We reject apartheid and we reject this comparison. Arabs live among us, and more than 600,000 have the full rights of citizens. They are in the Knesset, they are everywhere and there is no such problem.

Q. What about the 1.5 million Palestinians who don't have those rights?

A. It's not the same situation because they are Jordanian citizens now. They're not Israeli citizens and they don't want to be.

Q. What did you mean with your use of the word "grasshopper" two weeks ago to describe some Palestinians?

A. These terrorists, these people who try to fight against us. We will overcome them. They cannot change the history of thousands of years and come to destroy us. Nobody will ever succeed in such a task, nobody.