It isn’t everyday that a former criminal is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and I am grateful to have lived long enough for my day to come. I wish I could be with you today, to thank you from the bottom of my heart for this unexpected honor, but my doctors don’t think that I am fit enough to travel these days. So I am sending you my great niece to read my speech instead and I am sure she’s easier on your eyes and ears.
Many of you were just teenagers when the Arab-Israeli conflict came to a sudden end. But my generation, or what remains of it, remembers the days of bloodshed, every gruesome detail and every misshaped attempt to stop the non-ending violence. Historians now call it the Third World War. For us, it was just a living nightmare, a cycle of violence that no one was able to break.
Thirty years ago, in the middle of a stifling summer, the land shifted and our luck turned forever. In 2010, we achieved something that neither politicians nor prophets dreamed of doing. We used modern technology to resolve a conflict that had turned into a Gordian knot of immeasurable complexity. Three thousand years ago or so, the Bible says that the Jews were delivered of Egypt when the water shifted. Thirty years ago, few imagined that the sea would shift again, this time to deliver everyone from the harsh predicament of modern politics.
People were skeptical when I first started my campaign. I was called anti-Semitic by some and a traitor to the Arab cause by others. But deep in my heart I knew that blood wasn’t thicker than water and hate wasn’t stronger than hope. Operation Noah’s Arch was both science fiction and real politick. The negotiations were hard and the technicalities were of biblical proportions. No one had tried it before in history. Humanity had built great temples, diverted rivers and created structures tall as mountains, but no one had ever contemplated removing an entire country before.
You all know the story from books and documentaries, but what you don’t know is that even I had my doubts. The premise was simple enough. I was going to throw Israel into the sea, and for once both the Israelis and the Arabs agreed. At that time, the Israelis were building a wall to separate them from the Palestinians and all types of negotiations were underway to give the Palestinians a state that would have been both claustrophobic and impoverished. That was when the idea hit me. Why not create a major archipelago in the West Bank and Gaza?
Massive amounts of soil would be moved from Israel’s east to its western shores, creating prime real estate opportunities in the Mediterranean and turning the separation wall into an underwater artifact. It wasn’t a new idea, not totally. At least two companies were doing the same in the United Arab Emirates at the time, albeit on a much smaller scale. As earth was moved from the West Bank to the Mediterranean, water would come in from the Mediterranean to submerge almost 50 percent of the West Bank, turning Israel into a Mediterranean island. The rest of the West Bank would remain above sea level, and with the help of modern architecture, would be connected with bridges to look like a modern Venice, but infinitely larger. In my calculations, the islands of the West Bank would be big enough to house 15 to 20 million people, including tourists and visitors. The U.S. would buy and rent all the new land in the Mediterranean, and the proceedings would be used to finance the entire project.
I said earlier, even I had my misgivings. Engineers can make miracles, and modern technology can make the earth move, but it was up to the men and women living in this region to extract hope from a new topography. Now I hear that the Archipelago of Palestine and the Island of Israel are negotiating the removal of barriers on trade, property and labor movement between them. For me, this is the real reward of my work. This is the gift I’ve been fortunate enough to see coming.
I haven’t been traveling much of late, but I hear that the Palestinian economy is now as big as that of Florida. A friend of mine was trying to buy a houseboat in the Palestinian archipelago and had to sell his flat in Miami just to put a down payment on it. My great niece (ad lib: that’s me!) tells me of a scuba diving trip that took her all the way from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea.
Many of the people who have made this possible are no longer with us, but I would like you to please stand up for a moment and pay homage to the men and women who made this dream come true: Moustafa Barghouti, Tzipi Livni, Warren Buffett, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, Yuri Guggenheim, Mario Tozzi. To them, and to many others, we’re eternally indebted.
When this project started, someone told me that I was going to take a holy land and submerge it in water. It took me only a second to reply. I said: Water, too, can be holy.
