Peace will be achieved only through mutual respect and negotiation in good faith

-H.E Mr. Avraham Nir, Ambassador of Israel

He was born in Rishon Lezion, Israel in the year 1962. During his student days he was pretty very active in the areas related to student activities. He was, for example, the Chairman of the Students Council at the Arie High School; Founder and Co-Chairman of the National Aid Organization "Students for Cambodians"; Member of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Youth delegation to the United States and the Manager of a Chess Team in the Israeli league.

This young gentleman, comparatively speaking, is at the moment Israel's Ambassador to this Himalayan Kingdom since November 20, 2000.

Ambassador Avraham Nir during 1981-1984 period served in Combating Engineers' Forces in the Israel Defence forces. He was the Security Officer at Israel's Airports Authority during mid eighties and joined the foreign ministry and served as a trainee at various divisions including the Asia Division, Official Guest division and finally the Information department.

The Ministry and Rotchild Foundation later sent Ambassador Nir for MA studies in Chinese studies at the Hebrew University (from February 1993) and Beijing University.

His diplomatic career abroad appears to have begun in 1994 when Ambassador Nir was sent to Shanghai, China to serve as the first Israeli diplomat in his capacity as the Deputy Consul General there.

Later he was sent to Bangkok, Thailand, to take up the charge of the Deputy Chief of Israeli mission during the year 1997-1999, where he concurrently served at the ESCAP as deputy permanent observer.

After the Bangkok posting, Ambassador Nir got an opportunity to serve at the ministry's South Asia division where he continued till the year 2000.

Looking at Ambassador Nir's various postings abroad one could conclude that he possesses fair knowledge of Asian Affairs including that of People's Republic of China.

He commands fluency in languages such as Hebrew, English and understandably Chinese.

Ambassador Nir is married and is the father of two children.

This scribe approached Ambassador Nir last week. The distinguished Israeli diplomat granted an interview prior to his departure to Biratnagar where an Israeli painting exhibition is all set to be held on 29 this week.

Below the results: Chief editor.

TGQ1: Your Excellency! We would wish to know about the present state of Nepal-Israel bilateral ties. A section of the Nepali intellectuals opine that our relations have remained limited to the existence of the "friendly ties" only. Where lies the hitch? What efforts from your side were in the offing to give the bilateral relations a real boost in order to expand trade, tourism and other cultural activities? Your exclusive opinions please.

H.E. Nir: Since I arrived to Nepal, one year ago, I am the first one in any forum to draw the attention to this problem in our two countries' relations. There is a deep friendship and good memories of cooperation, mainly during the sixties, but not enough is happening today in the cooperation field. Having friendship is good and important but it is not enough for maintaining healthy relations. The risk is even bigger if we would bear in mind that the young people of Nepal have no memories of past cooperation and have no commitment to our two countries' friendly relations.

As I see it the main obstacle is lack of knowledge. Knowledge is the base for cooperation and without knowing what are the needs of our two countries and what we can offer to each other, we would not be able to find common areas where we can cooperate. In order to overcome this problem I am encouraging exchange of visits between our two countries. This month we had two visits from Nepal to Israel: a delegation of the Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Committee of the Parliament, including Secretary of the Ministry of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs, and the visit of the Secretary of the Ministry of Education and Sports. In early December we are going to have, after a gap of 28 years, a delegation from the Knesset (Israeli parliament), headed by our Deputy Speaker, that will visit Nepal. Each and every visit must end with commitment on future cooperation, and I am happy to say that during the visit of the Nepali parliamentary delegation to Israel it was agreed to have cooperation in training in the field of law and there were first steps towards cooperation in the fields of irrigation and educational technology.

Exchange should take place in all fields, Government to Government, Parliament to Parliament and People to People mainly between business people. There are a lot of similarities between our two countries and two peoples and Israel is more than willing to share its know-how with Nepal. But lets not forget that even though there is still much to do, things are still happening today too. 10,000 Israeli tourists are coming from Israel to Nepal each year. It is a nice number from a country that has population of only 6.4 million people and still in order to enlarge this number we are working together with HMG on air service agreement that might facilitate seasonal flights in the future.

In the training field Israel is offering Nepal each year 40 scholarship in agriculture, health, education, cooperatives and others. Twice a year we have groups of experts that are coming from Israel to train in Nepal in the same fields. Last August we sponsored the arrival of an expert on cooperatives that did a study in Bairahawa in order to establish agriculture cooperative that would be export oriented. For the year 2002 the government of Israel already agreed to send a team of doctors that will carry out eye camp and will donate afterwards all the surgery equipment, worth US$ 10,000, to Nepal.

The cultural field is not neglected too. Lately, we had a drawing exhibition in Kathmandu, and as you know we are about to have an exhibition of photographs of Jerusalem this week in Biratnagar and later in Lumbini. At the same time we will screen in both places Israeli fiction movie. We are also planning to have during 2002 an Israeli film festival in Kathmandu, and even to bring a musical group. So there is still much to do but you can already see quite a good beginning.

TGQ2: We understand that the State of Israel from day one of its declaration have had to undergo through a very difficult period till today for the preservation of its existence even given the never ending conflict in and around your neighborhood. Who is the real villain for "peace" in the region?

H.E. Nir: The two most important component of peace process are trust and goodwill, this is why I don't want to deal with the issue of who is the real villain. Even if I will be able to convince your readers that we are saints and the Palestinians are the villains what good is it going to do for the future peace? We should be busy trying to solve our problems and not to waste time on incitement against each other. Both sides made mistakes in the road for peace but the biggest mistake was when the Palestinians decided to restore back to violence after the Camp David summit was over without an agreement. In that summit our former Prime Minister Ehud Barak came out with very generous offers to the Palestinians. He accommodated 99% of their territorial demands, agreed to divide Jerusalem and even to share sovereignty on our holiest place - the Temple Mount. Peace cannot be imposed and since the Palestinians decided that those generous offers are not enough for them we agreed to meet again for another round of negotiations and to try to put an end to our conflict. Unfortunately the Palestinians decided to initiate the next round in the streets since they thought that by force they will achieve more than they would achieve through negotiations in good faith. Well, they were wrong. Israel wants peace because it wants peace. We are not willing to give up for terrorism. Peace will be achieved only through mutual respect and negotiation in good faith. We call upon our Palestinians partner to give up the path of violence and to return to the negotiation table; this is the only way to reach a real peace for the benefit of our two people.

TGQ3: A section of Nepalese people consider the presence of "religious element" which in effect is causing the Israel-Palestinian conflict to continue despite the Oslo and the Camp David processes held in the past to bring about a total peace in the region. What in your opinion should be done in order that guarantees Israel's genuine rights and concurrently allows the Palestinians their due rights to live in peace as a separate nation-state? Your opinions please.

H.E. Nir: Until the Camp David summit the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was a clear political conflict. Only the radicals gave it a religious aspects.

Since the new wave of Palestinian violence broke out the Palestinian authority decided, as part of their tactics, to turn it into a religious conflict, hoping through this to increase the number of its supporters and their devotion to its causes. I think it was a terrible mistake because any political conflict can be solved through negotiations and compromise but a religious conflict cannot be solved because there is no compromise with God. As I said earlier, the only way to solve the problems is by returning to the negotiation table and giving up terrorism as a political tool.

TGQ4: There has been the world opinion, including the European nations, that the United States Administration more often than not "supports" Israel vis-à-vis the neighboring Arab world as and when there is any dispute in between your country and the Arabs. Do you agree to this "assumption" which could be considered a sort of "allegation" indeed?

H.E. Nir: The US administration took upon itself, since world war one, a most difficult task, to act as the protectors of the free world and stick to moral values that should serve as an example for all of us. Nothing could be easier than to cooperate and trade with countries that are suppressing their own citizens and being aggressive toward its neighbors. The only one that suffer from this kind of a policy are the American business people because most other government(s) do not force their citizens to follow sanction decisions.

US policy towards the Middle East is not different. As soon as one of our neighboring countries decided to neglect the way of war and to try to reach an agreement through negotiation the US served as a honest broker and many times put more pressure on the Israeli side in order to convince us to compromise and reach a deal. That was the reality during the 1st Camp David Summit when Israel returned to Egypt all the lands that it took over in the 1967 war, that was the reality during the Madrid and Oslo process, and that was the reality during the 2000 Camp David summit when president Clinton did so much in order to reach a deal that all side will be able to live with.

No one can blame President Clinton for not being honest broker and no one can blame the current administration for not trying to bring an end to the violence and resume the peace process. Still we cannot ask the Americans to want peace more than us – Israelis and Palestinians.

The problem of the Palestinians is not that Americans are not honest broker, their problem is that the Americans are too moral and not willing to sacrifice Israel's independence and existence in order to create themselves (for the Americans) much more comfortable international arena.

TGQ5: And finally, what you expect from the Nepali media in your bid to expand Nepal-Israel bilateral ties in practically all possible sectors.

H.E. Nir: First say how much I enjoy working with the Nepali Media that is trying to do its best efforts to cover the Middle East story in a balanced way.

And as for your question, as I said at the beginning, the biggest problem of our relations is the lack of knowledge and information on each other. It is o.k. that the Nepali media is covering the Middle East situation but I would like it to give place also for articles about Israel's agro-technology, wide spectrum of Hi-tech innovations, solar energy usage and other advance-fields that can be introduced to Nepal and become part of its development efforts

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