'Palestinians will never accept that this is a Jewish state’

**Chris** · May-14th-2010, 06:30 PM

'Palestinians will never accept that this is a Jewish state’
By HERB KEINON AND DAVID HOROVITZ
14/05/2010 19:24
Despite this, Silvan Shalom is firmly optimistic in this exclusive interview.

On the surface things seem mighty dark: The threat of Iran is looming, the prospects of reaching a deal with the Palestinians are slim and Israel’s isolation in the world is growing. Some ministers, interviewed on these challenges, exude a heavy, dejected feeling, combined with a sense of urgency and the need for action. Intelligence Agencies Minister Dan Meridor is one such minister. Other ministers, while they may have no less a sense of the challenges the country faces, create a very different sense. Vice Premier and Regional Development Minister Silvan Shalom falls into that category.

If, after talking with Meridor, one might walk away feeling as if a 100-pound weight had been dropped on one’s head, an interview with Shalom could leave one, by comparison, with a feeling of almost walking on sunshine. Not because Shalom doesn’t see the dangers, or that he downplays them, but rather because of a conviction he radiates that this country and people, which have gone through so much, will be able to prevail in all this as well. There are certain things you just have to deal with, Shalom intimates, and one of those is the real possibility that no solution will come quickly to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. If a song could be selected as apt background music to this interview, it would be the 1990 Meir Ariel classic with the refrain, “But we overcame Pharaoh, We’ll overcome this as well.”

There was something almost Yitzhak Shamir-esque about Shalom during this interview. Remember Shamir? The short, plucky and tough prime minister who, when asked questions about one impending catastrophe or the other, would often start by saying, “Tov” (good) and then explain that Israel had dealt with more difficult things in the past.

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