In honor of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's participation in the Annapolis summit, the Hevron Jewish Community has released a video of a speech Olmert gave at a gathering for Hevron 13 years ago.

Olmert spoke then, just a year after the signing of the Oslo Agreement, of the need to stand together against those who offer to give away parts of the Land of Israel, "because those who say now that we should give away some parts and keep others, will in the end give away the others as well."

Olmert apparently plans to promise to give away parts of Jerusalem and most of Judea and Samaria in the negotiations being launched at the summit.

A video clip of the speech (in Hebrew), delivered at the Binyanei HaUmah Convention Center in Jerusalem, can be viewed here.  Excerpts:

"There are those who say that there are some parts of the Land of Israel that cannot be given up, and others that can. [They say] with the same light-headedness that they are willing to give up some.  They will also propose, at some time in the future, giving up the others. 

"I have come here this evening with my deputies from the Jerusalem municipality to say in the name of the large majority of the residents of Jerusalem that Hevron and Jerusalem are together in the struggle for the Land of Israel.   Whoever fights for the integrity of Jerusalem and our sole sovereignty there, must also fight for Jewish Hevron under Israeli sovereignty. 

"On the day that we decide - [pause] - not us; someone else decides - that Hevron is not ours, he is at the same time decreeing the beginning of concessions in Jerusalem.  We must not allow anyone this option.  We must not allow any government this chance. 

"Together, Hevron and Jerusalem, the Land of Israel.  We are not fighting here for geography, though that is something very important. We are not fighting here for territory, though that is something very important.  We are fighting for history, faith, tradition, and the rights of our forefathers.  We are fighting for the unbreakable bonds between the Nation of Israel and the Land of Israel, and between the past and the future for ourselves and for our children who will come after us in this land..." 

Olmert then predicted that the days of the government then in power, headed by the late Yitzchak Rabin, were numbered.  He said that those in power "should know that the result of all their great hopes and fancy ceremonies and great fantasies, will be nothing but piles of ruins of a lost way, of blurred conceptions, and lack of thought."

****************************