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Iraq, perhaps Iran and other Middle Eastern states, might get nuclear weapons.
A violent form of fundamentalist Islam could, over time, erode existing Arab
and Muslim states, threatening Israel of course, but also the stability of our
neighbourhood and of the world. In those circumstances, even if an Israeli
government was strong enough, wise enough, forward-looking enough to
pursue avenues for negotiated peace with its immediate neighbours, getting the
popular support required would be all but impossible.

The window is still there. But it is only barely open.

I fear that I was right, as well, in predicting that our failure to secure a final
peace agreement with the Palestinians at Camp David might set back
peacemaking not just for a few months, but for many years. I have persisted in
trying, very hard, to make that particular prediction prove wrong. That was why,
despite intense pressure from my own political allies not to do so, I decided to
return to government in 2007 as Defence Minister. I remained in that role for
six years: mostly in the current, right-wing Likud government of my onetime
Sayeret Matkal charge, Bibi Netanyahu.

Much of what I say in this book about war and peace, security and Israel’s
future challenges, will make uncomfortable reading for Bibi. But very little of it
will surprise him, or his own Likud rivals further to the right, like Foreign
Minister Avigdor Lieberman and the Economy Minister, Naftali Bennett. I have
said almost all of it to them behind closed doors in the past few years, more than
once. When I finally decided to leave the political arena last year, it was largely
because I realized that they were guided by other imperatives. In the case of
Bibi, the most gifted politician with whom I’ve worked except for Clinton, the
priority was to stay in power. For Avigdor and Naftali, it was to supplant Bibi,
when the opportunity was ripe, as Likud leader and as Prime Minister. And
much too often – as with their hugely ill-advised recent proposal to amend
Israel’s basic law to define it explicitly as a Jewish state, and deny “national
rights” to non-Jews – the three of them have ended up competing for party
political points rather than weighing the serious future implications for the
country.

Peacemaking, as I discovered first-hand, requires taking risks. Statesmanship
requires risks. Politics, especially if defined simply as staying in power, is
almost always about the avoidance of risk.

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