A blurry vision of peace

"I never imagined that in the last days of my term in office, as I've been doing, I'd be consoling bereaved families. They have tears in their eyes and faith in their hearts. I never imagined that his time, too, after we've been hit by missiles intended to hurt innocent lives, and after we uncovered hidden tunnels of murder used to infiltrate the heart of civilian communities and rain fire down upon mothers and children, we would need to remind the world about the dangers of terrorist madness."

Shimon Peres, the ninth president of Israel, was not the only one who could not have imagined his last official speech before the Knesset concluding with sirens blaring across southern Israel, and the IDF waging a bitter military campaign in Gaza. This is not how Peres hoped to end his term. This was not his vision.

The vision Peres drew for us entailed a different reality: Peres' vision spoke of a "new Middle East." His vision even predicted, after the Oslo Accords in 1993, that "the 100 years of terror are over; 100 years of co-existence and good neighborliness have begun." This vision even asked us, following the disengagement from Gaza in 2005, to stop "talking nonsense" whenever someone would stand in the Knesset and caution that it would lead to rockets falling on Ashkelon. Who could have thought back then that the rockets would also rain on Tel Aviv and even further north.

"People who don't have a fantasy don't do fantastic things," Peres once said. And Peres truly did do great things. Perhaps, incidentally, he did them when he was all about security and defense. The Dimona Negev Nuclear Research Center will always be credited to him, along with David Ben-Gurion. And maybe because of Operation Protective Edge, and because of this fateful hour, and because of the threats of rockets and tunnels, Peres' final speech as president was more congruent with the Peres who recognized "the importance of security interests during final-status talks." It is a Peres who understands the threat of terror. A Peres who points to the hypocrisy of the United Nations Human Rights Council, along with the rest of the world's hypocrisy, the same world he loves so dearly and which dearly loves him.

Peres is perhaps departing from public life, but not from his vision.

"We are prepared at any moment to make peace," he tells Israel Hayom in a special farewell interview. "After all, we agreed to a cease-fire, and we left Gaza of our own volition. It was difficult for people to evacuate and leave their homes, justifiably so. The Palestinians received Gaza without any Israelis. Gaza was open, they could move, and not only that, we helped them."

Peres will never abandon his vision, even if he is the last person in the Middle East who believes in it.

"I leave my office without departing from my beliefs," he says. It is just that Peres has forgotten it takes two to tango, even here.

Former president Peres listened to the placatory speech from his revisionist successor. And perhaps Reuven Rivlin's speech on Thursday was Peres' greatest achievement. While the 10th president of Israel did offer a clear "message to our enemies -- you cannot defeat us," he also sought to emphasize that neither the Palestinian people, nor Islam, are enemies. There is no peace, but there is a vision, even if a slightly different one.

"I came to thank you for granting me the privilege to serve the country. There is no greater privilege than this, Israel the tiny land has become a great state," Peres said in departure.

You had a large role in this, Mr. Peres. Even if we did not always agree with who you were as prime minster, we loved you very much as president.

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