Room for Peace
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3-minute taste

I don’t believe it’s possible

We are not asking you to be convinced. Just six facts worth knowing before you decide it is impossible.

For the sceptical, the disappointed and the angry. Nobody asks you to be convinced, only to check.

First, a minute of archive

Signing of the Egypt–Israel peace treaty – AP clip

· AP Archive

Signing of the Egypt–Israel peace treaty, Washington, 26 March 1979 – short archive clip

  1. Stop 1 of 6 on the full path

    Start with the hard questions

    "Do they really want peace?" each side asks, and many on both sides fear the same answer.1 The answers here make no promises; they say what is known and what is not.

    Go to this stop: Hard questions, honest answers

  2. Stop 2 of 6 on the full path

    Violence tried to stop the peace

    In 1981 Sadat was assassinated; the documented motives of his killers included the visit to Israel and Camp David.2 In 1995 Rabin was assassinated by an opponent of the Oslo process.3 The peace treaty with Egypt survived the assassination.

    Go to this stop: Violence, terror and the damage to peace

  3. Stop 3 of 6 on the full path

    A treaty that has held since 1979

    The peace with Egypt was signed in 1979,4 and the two countries have not fought since. As of August 2026, even amid deep tension, security coordination still works.5

    Go to this stop: Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty

  4. Stop 5 of 6 on the full path

    Even failed attempts paved the way

    Peace with Egypt came after eight years of attempts, from the Jarring proposal in 1971 to the treaty in 1979.64 Ideas from failed talks came back in the next round.

    Go to this stop: Tried, and tried again: the attempts that paved the road

  5. Stop 4 of 6 on the full path

    It has happened elsewhere

    France and Germany,7 Northern Ireland,8 South Africa: each was once said to have no solution. No peace there is perfect.

    Go to this stop: It has happened before: conflicts that became peace

  6. Stop 6 of 6 on the full path

    And don't take our word for it

    Next to every substantive claim on the site is a small number that leads to its source. At the last stop: how to check a claim in five steps.

    Go to this stop: How to check us: a source in five steps

What was said

Menachem Begin

Yes, there are difficulties in peace, there are. There are pains in peace, there are. There are sacrifices for the sake of peace, there are. All of them are preferable to the victims of war!

Knesset plenum, Jerusalem, 2 March 1982: the Prime Minister's reply to a no-confidence motion by the Tehiya faction, which demanded a halt to the withdrawal from Sinai, in the weeks before the withdrawal under the peace treaty with Egypt was completed.

Source and status of the wording

Wording in the source: כן, יש קשיים בשלום, יש. יש מכאובים בשלום, יש. יש קורבנות למען השלום, יש. כולם עדיפים מקורבנות המלחמה!

The wording as quoted in Yedioth Ahronoth (ynet, 2017). The speech is catalogued in the Begin Heritage Center's database of Begin's writings (65th sitting of the Tenth Knesset). In public memory the sentence is sometimes shortened to "the difficulties of peace are better than the agonies of war". The Hebrew uses one word for both "sacrifices" and "victims".

Quote source: Yedioth Ahronoth / ynet (Yehuda Nuriel), quoting the Knesset speech of 2 March 1982

The full path

About 31 minutes · 6 stops

Start at the first stop
  1. Hard questions, honest answers
  2. Violence, terror and the damage to peace
  3. Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty
  4. It has happened before: conflicts that became peace
  5. Tried, and tried again: the attempts that paved the road
  6. How to check us: a source in five steps

Sources

You do not have to agree with us. That is what the sources are for: open them, compare and check for yourself.

Show all sources (8)Hide the sources

Cited on this page

  1. The Palestinian-Israeli Pulse: A Joint Poll — Summary Report (fieldwork July 2024; published 12 September 2024)Research Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) and Tel Aviv University, International Program in Conflict Resolution and Mediation12 September 2024
  2. Al-Jihad al-Islami (organisation profile)Research James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS)
  3. Rabin's Assassination (1995)Research Economic Cooperation Foundation (ECF)
  4. Peace Treaty between Israel and Egypt, March 26, 1979Primary Avalon Project, Yale Law School26 March 1979
  5. Gas and Peace: Can Energy Trade Contain Egypt-Israel Conflict?Research Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Sada)31 August 2026
  6. Report of the Secretary-General on the activities of the Special Representative to the Middle East (S/10403), with Jarring's aide-mémoire of 8 February 1971 and the replies of the United Arab Republic and IsraelPrimary United Nations (UNISPAL)30 November 1971
  7. Signature du traité de l'Élysée, 22 janvier 1963Official archive Présidence de la République française (elysee.fr)22 January 1963
  8. The Agreement reached in the multi-party negotiations, 10 April 1998 (full text)Primary CAIN Archive, Ulster University10 April 1998