Yair Lapid address to the UN General Assembly (77th session), 22 Sep 2022

Israel's economic and military strength allows us to protect ourselves but it also allows us something else: To strive for peace with the entire Arab world. And with our closest neighbors – the Palestinians.

An agreement with the Palestinians, based on two states for two peoples, is the right thing for Israel's security, for Israel's economy and for the future of our children.

Peace is not a compromise. It is the most courageous decision we can make. Peace is not weakness. It embodies within it the entire might of human spirit. War is surrender to all that is bad within us. Peace is the victory of all that is good.

Despite all the obstacles, still today a large majority of Israelis support the vision of this two state solution. I am one of them.

We have only one condition: That a future Palestinian state will be a peaceful one. That it will not become another terror base from which to threaten the well-being, and the very existence of Israel. That we will have the ability to protect the security of all the citizens of Israel, at all times.

If someone believes that demand is too much, then look at the neighborhood in which we live: Look at Lebanon, a collapsing state controlled by Hezbollah. At Syria, where a murderous regime massacred half a million of its own people. Look at Afghanistan. At Libya. At Iran.

You can ask us to live according to the values in the UN Charter, but you cannot ask us to die for them.

My father was a child in the Ghetto, my grandfather was murdered in a concentration camp. We want to live in peace but only if it gives us security, not if it threatens us even more.

Look at Gaza. Israel did everything the world asked of us, including from this very stage. We left. 17 years ago we dismantled the settlements, took apart our military bases. There is not a single Israeli soldier in Gaza. We even left them 3,000 green houses so they could start to build an economy for themselves.

What did they do in response? In less than a year, Hamas, a murderous terror organization, came to power. They destroyed the greenhouses and replaced them with terrorist training camps and rocket launch sites.

Since we left Gaza, over 20,000 rockets and missiles have been fired at Israel. All of them at civilians. All of them at our children.