Honorable President of the State of Israel, my friend Shimon Peres,
Honorable Chairman of the Board of Directors of Clalit Health Services, Mr. Eli Admoni,
Director General of Clalit Health Services, Mr. Eli Dappas,
Honorable Director General of the Soroka Medical Center, Dr. Michael Sherf,
Mr. Raanan Dinur, Director General of the Prime Minister’s Office,
My friend Eli Alaluf, Director General of the Rashi Foundation, and as you heard, one of the driving forces behind the establishment of this Center,
And last but not least, a man who has remained humble and is still one of us in the most basic and genuine and honest meaning of the word, my friend and the husband of Cheryl Saban, Haim Saban,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am not going to speak about politics. I apologize. I heard there are primaries today; this is important. I hope that the democratic process is taking place in an appropriate and responsible manner, and I certainly will continue to assist in completing it in the proper way by cooperating with whoever is elected and with all the relevant parties as needed.
I want to take advantage of this opportunity. I do not want to speak about politics. We talk about politics all the time; let us put that aside for a moment and talk about the real problems the people of Israel face. I want to take advantage of the opportunity of my being here in Beer Sheva, first to share with you an exceptionally moving experience I had this afternoon. Five years ago, a group of young people came to my office; at the time I was Minister of Industry, Trade and Labor. They were Jerusalemites, graduates of Jerusalem high schools, and they spoke to me about their desire to settle in the Negev. There was something in the look in their eyes, in the purity of their knowledge, in their seriousness, in their enthusiasm and in the profundity with which they spoke which made a tremendous impression on me. I told my assistants, and Raanan Dinur was with me, who was at that time Director General of the Ministry, and I told him, “Meet with them. Something great will come of it.” This afternoon I sat with the alumni of “Ayalim”, the people from the core of “Ayalim”. They have already established 11 villages and communities around the country, including and first and foremost in the Negev. They are 40 minutes from here – a group of 100 young people, full of enthusiasm, visionaries. One looks in their eyes and sees that their eyes do not hold a speck of cynicism, complaint, meanness, malice or bad spirit, but rather only love of the land and understanding that the future of this country is from this point and southwards. There is no other future for the State of Israel.
Let me say this, and again – I do not want to talk about politics, and apologize ahead of time to anyone who interprets my words differently – for 40 years, the State of Israel invested all its energies, all its resources, all its strength, all its passion, all its enthusiasm (and we have all this) in order to build in a location which cannot be the future of the State of Israel. This truth should be stated. I tell you this as someone who took part in this enthusiastic campaign; not as someone who protested at that time; someone who supported it at the time. I did not come here tonight to apologize nor to ask for forgiveness. However, I came to tell you that the future of the State of Israel is in another place – in Beer Sheva and southwards! With all our strength, with all our power, with all our enthusiasm, with all our passion. There is nothing we cannot accomplish. We are a people of tremendous power. You will see, and I said so to the young people today: a few more years, ten more years, I told them, “If you agree to invite me, and I don’t need you to carry me, I will sit and the view will be the same view, but where there will 100, there will be 100,000. They will live in cities built south of Beer Sheva, and they will be cities with quality of living, environmentally friendly, and which create and develop, produce, build, strengthen and expand the State of Israel on a scale and with a force unlike any before.
I know people say it is hot here and there is no water, and we have no natural resources. Gentlemen, we have one thing that not many other countries have. We have quality people who know how to produce alternatives to these things. We are the leading country in the world in the field of water technology. What is being developed here in Beer Sheva at the technological center which we helped establish near Beer Sheva University; what we are doing here in medical research; what we did here in the field of primary medical care for the Beer Sheva region – how did Haim Saban put it? – is not done in more developed countries. When we exercise our imaginations, our creative force and our enthusiasm, when we let go of our cynicism, our malice and our meanness and take things with the seriousness we are capable of, there is no limit to what we are capable of doing in order to transform this place into the best, more pleasant, safest, and quietest place in the world.
That is why we need to complete the process. It is not easy nor is it simple. I do not know how much longer I will serve as Prime Minister, but I promise you one thing – as long as I am Prime Minister, I will not cease in making every effort to bring the State of Israel closer step-by-step, so that we can eventually achieve peace, which will allow the State of Israel to focus on the things that will make it the best, highest quality, healthier, strongest and most complete place in the entire world.
I wish to thank you, Haim, not because you have a lot of money. There are a great number of people with a great deal of money. You have something that never left you, even during your long years in France and the United States. You possess a natural human warmth and spontaneity, and you are caring and sensitive and profoundly involved in what is occurring here. It is as if you never left us, even for a moment, during all those years. It is true that you were successful there, but the fact that you were successful there is not what served as a determining factor. The fact that you remained Haim Saban is the determining factor. On behalf of the Government of Israel, which never provided you with anything from the pleasures of governing, but certainly took from you a considerable portion of the resources you created– on behalf of the State of Israel and on behalf of the Government of Israel, I wish to thank you for what you and Cheryl have done, on what you and Cheryl are building, and for the fact that you continue to be an inseparable part of us.
I wish to say to Clalit Health Services, as a partner in the investment in this hospital – and Haim, don’t take offense, they will verify that the Government invested quite a bit of money here – I want to tell you that this is a wonderful medical center. It is impossible to think of the development of Beer Sheva and the Negev without this medical center, nor without the academic center which is an inseparable part of it. You are doing amazing work. It is exciting to visit this hospital, to remember how it looked ten years ago, and how it looks today, and to know that it is one of the central components in the advancement and development of a healthy and strong State of Israel.
I thank you all very much, and I wish you and the people of Israel a happy New Year.