"The sea is the same sea, and the Arabs are the same Arabs,"
Shamir famously said. "The sea is the same sea, and the Arabs
are the same Arabs," Shamir famously said. Photo by Nimrod
Glickman Text size  Yitzhak Shamir, the seventh prime minister
of Israel, passed away this week, at 96. The current premier,
Benjamin Netanyahu, eulogized him at the weekly cabinet meeting
on Sunday, saying, among other things, that although it is
possible that Shamir's "statements about [Israel's] neighbors,
about the distinction between the sea and the land ... unleashed
a torrent of criticism at the time, even contempt, today there
are of course many more people who understand that this man saw
and understood basic and genuine things."  The statements
Netanyahu was referring to - "the sea is the same sea, and the
Arabs are the same Arabs" - are etched in the collective memory.
Shamir used this phrase in 1996, following the Oslo accords,
quoting himself (according to a book, in Hebrew, called "It's
Inconceivable," which contains