Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 11, 1994 TAG: 9412150019
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: OSLO, NORWAY LENGTH: Medium
One was an aging soldier and statesman, looking back on the grave silence that would descend each time he ordered the start of a military campaign. Another was a diplomat recalling his youth in an agricultural village in Israel, a time of working the fields with scythes by day and defending one's home with rifles by night.
The third was a grizzled guerrilla leader, turned administrator, who said Saturday that he could finally gaze into the eyes of the fallen and say their sacrifices were worthwhile.
The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres of Israel and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat was perhaps the most disputed decision since the prize first was awarded 93 years ago.
It was given to the three men, said Francis Sejersted, chairman of the Nobel Committee, because ``in a situation marked by war and hatred, they had to take the risk of showing their opposite numbers at least a minimum of trust'' and of ``confidence that if they offered an outstretched hand, there would be someone there to take it.''
In their acceptance speeches Saturday evening, all three made clear that they still were committed to the Israeli-Palestinian peace accord, which now is under assault by Islamic militants, Israeli hard-liners and a deepening dispute over implementation between the two sides that negotiated it.
The Nobel Committee's decision prompted demonstrations in Israel and elsewhere, particularly because of the choice of Arafat, whose organization long relied on international terrorism to achieve a Palestinian homeland.
As the audience of 1,000 or so left the ceremony at Oslo City Hall on Saturday night, they passed a knot of 70 demonstrators chanting ``Shame!'' as they held up torches and pictures of victims of the PLO.
One member of the five-person Nobel Committee resigned in protest when the award was announced in October, arguing that Arafat's violent past disqualified him.
But much of that seemed forgotten in the ceremony Saturday.
Arafat, wearing his trademark black and white checkered kaffiyeh and army uniform, said he was able to glimpse ``the first glance of the crescent moon of peace.'' He said he recognized that the prize was not so much for what had been accomplished but for what lay ahead - ``to encourage us to continue a road which we have started.''
He called for the peace negotiations to be accelerated, for donor countries to make good on their pledges of financial aid to the newly autonomous Gaza Strip and Jericho, and for the future of Israeli settlements on the West Bank and the status of Jerusalem to be resolved.
Peres recalled his childhood in a small Jewish town in White Russia, the fulfillment of his dream of emigrating to Israel and his years working in an agricultural village and working in the Ministry of Defense.
The world, Peres declared, has changed. ``There was a time when war was fought for lack of choice; today it is peace that is the `no choice' option for all of us,'' he declared.
Rabin recalled how he took up a military career and eventually rose to a position where, ``under my responsibility, young men and women who wanted to live, wanted to love, went to their deaths instead.''
Rabin, who will be 73 in three weeks, said ``There is only one radical means of sanctifying human lives,'' he said. ``The one radical solution is a real peace.''
by CNB