Thank you for organizing this, and thank you,
Emad, for bringing us into the zone.
When working on disarmament, basically we
all have the same problem.
We're dealing with nine nuclear armed states,
nine nuclear armed states that have no inclination
of giving up their nuclear weapons, and as
a civil society we're pushing for one thing,
for these states to hear us, and looking for
ways to disarm.
Now one of the beautiful things about the
new ban treaty is that it didn't come from
the states, it came from civil society.
Civil society from around the world joined
together to make a difference, to call on
governments to show the research that Ira
presented to us, and that worked, and that
showed something amazing about the power of
civil society.
Now when we're looking at one of our major
next steps is once we have the treaty signed
and ratified by 50 states, and the treaty
is becoming a reality, we'd still need to
go after these nine nuclear armed states.
Now when you look at the map of the nuclear
armed states you see that there's a balance.
If you see Russia and you know that Russia
won’t move ahead if the United States won't
move ahead.
India wouldn't move if Pakistan won't move.
But when you're looking at Israel, for now
we don't see a nuclear adversary, but we do
see a regional, I'll be less than diplomatic
and say a regional mess.
And one thing that we heard a lot was that
it is impossible to even write a treaty that
combines not just all these states that don't
speak to each other, but a treaty that ask
for weapons of mass destruction, meaning not
just nuclear, but also chemical and biological,
and one of the things that we have decided
to do early on in the campaign (we actually
started the campaign in Israel in 2007, this
current campaign), but in 2012 we decided
with some colleagues like Paul Ingram who
is here from BASIC then, and now from Stepping
Stones, we decided to map the obstacles.
Why is it that all the diplomats, everybody
we’re talking to from the zone, from outside
the zone, those who were speaking about the
zone, those who like Mr Countryman here, who
dealt with the zone, everybody said that it's
impossible?
And we decided to map the obstacles and when
we mapped the obstacles with a series of round
tables and personal meetings and secret meetings,
we realized that most of the obstacles were,
if we did try to divide them, we could put
most of them under the columns of “lack
of belief” and “lack of goodwill”, meaning
that as long as people believe that it's impossible,
they'll continue to talk about it as impossibility,
and one also sad thing is that most players
at some point, or in some way, thought that
it's much more comfortable to keep things
as they are, and there's can be an hour and
a half just on those obstacles, and how we
mapped them, and why we have come to believe
that it's just lack of goodwill and lack of
belief, and as an exercise we decided to write
a draft treaty for a WMD free-zone in the
Middle East.
I don't know if you can see me but this is
the third draft.
And we started to send it around to Ministries
of Foreign Affairs in the zone, to other diplomats,
without saying who wrote it, without saying
anything, just that it's a group of people
from the Middle East and we received amazing
answers, and then we started to lobby for
it and pushing for it, and the answers we
got at the end were quite beautiful.
It IS a possibility, the draft treaty is shortening
our discussions, and one of the – well we
can't say that it's one of the results of
this draft treaty – but one of the reasons
that we were invited to join the November
conference on the zone was because we came
as civil society with practical steps forward
and an open invitation, in the last three
years, for a series of round tables, a track
two, track one and a half round tables, with
sometimes the same people that are sitting
at the UN rooms or Glion where there were
other meetings, same people to work on this
draft treaty and make it better.
That's why we started with the first draft,
now we're on the third draft and now we're
working on both parallel, the fourth and the
fifth.
What it gave us, this draft treaty, was a
tool to campaign for, and once we had this
tool, once we showed the possibility, we could
see a change of language.
Now that we can see this change of language
we're looking at the states sitting in the
room in the November Conference – yes, Israel
is not there, the United States is not there
– however they are invited.
And one of the ways to invite a state like
Israel is to promise decision-making by consensus,
meaning no decision can go by a majority of
states that are opposing Israel, leaving Israel
standing alone.
An invitation like this means that Israel
can do either stick the whole conversation
by vetoing or voting against decisions, or
getting into the conversation.
What we saw in this room last November was
states that usually do not agree with each
other, it's not just after all the Israel-Arab
conflict, there are so many conflicts in within
the Middle East, and yet we saw 23 states,
the states of the Arab League, plus Iran,
plus four of the P5 - P5 minus the US – sitting
in the room and making progress, reaching
an agreement, and reaching a final document.
And in this final document, the first paragraph
invites initiatives like our initiative to
continue the progress and to continue contributing
ideas for the promotion of the zone, and that
is very encouraging, especially inside the
Middle East.
Now we have some requests, one of the requests
that we have is that the international community
will acknowledge the November talks, will
stop pushing for decisions that can't happen,
for example Israel to join the NPT as a first
step, not because it shouldn't happen, but
because it won't.
But Israel can join with the states in the
region to this conversation.
The states of the region can continue the
discourse as if Israel is in the room and
come with a final document that Israel then
can take or leave.
The states in the region and the international
community can decide what is more important:
shaming Israel, which sometimes is very called
for, but sometimes it doesn't work, or doesn't
promote us, or come to a text that that includes
Israel, that makes it safer for Israel to
join.
One of the things that we offered in the draft
treaty, and we started to work on even before
the states had decided to agree, is on Middle
East Treaty Organization, a second layer of
verification, mechanism of compliance but
most important the place for the states in
the zone to speak, because talking about weapons
of mass destruction is what the states in
the region already agreed to talk about, but
we know that once they're in the room then
we can talk about human security, and that
for us is a very important second step.
I'll stop here because I think I've run out
of time, but I hope that there will be more
questions later.
