Fifty years ago this week we proclaimed our independence, for the third time in history, in a part of what was known as mandated Palestine. Fifty years ago, we restored our national sovereignty in our ancient homeland, the land of Israel.

The renewal of our nationhood is one of the great ethical reaffirmations of our time. At last, an age-old wrong had been righted. Around the same period, 22 Arab states came into being in the Middle East and North Africa.

In the enormous area conquered by the allies from Ottoman-Turkish domination, we were offered a little corner, which constituted only 30 per cent of the original territory of Palestine. We set ourselves to develop it, in peace and co-operation with our neighbours. Failure to achieve that complete peace has been costly to Arabs and Jews alike.

The primary objective of Israel, set out in the Declaration of Independence of May 14th, 1948, was and still is to provide a home for every Jew who needs a haven. In its 50 years, Israel certainly has cause for satisfaction. It has grown from a community of 600,000 into a progressive State of 5.9 million, of which 4.7 million are Jews.

Since 1948, Israel has absorbed more than 2.6 million Jews, among them 750,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union and another 80,000 from Ethiopia. Immediately after the establishment of the State, Jews came from Arab lands who had suffered because they were Jews and Jews came from Europe, survivors of the Nazi Holocaust.

The other major objective set down in that Declaration has not yet been achieved: that is the desire to make peace with all of our neighbours. There was little we were not ready to do to achieve peace. We accepted the UN General Assembly resolution of November 29th, 1947, calling for the partition of Palestine.

We abided by the UN Resolution and withdrew from Sinai in 1957 and we have forfeited land gained in the defensive war of 1967 for the sake of establishing normal peaceful relations with our neighbours. Last year, we marked the 25th anniversary of the historic peace initiative of the late prime minister, Menachem Begin, and the late president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat. These courageous leaders pioneered the way towards the first peace treaty between Israel and an Arab neighbour, Egypt. I was privileged to witness this first crack in the wall of Arab hostility towards Israel, in Cairo.

Since 1991, after the principles for negotiating peace in the Middle East were laid down in Madrid, we have established peace between with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and we have signed the Oslo interim accords and the Hebron Accord with the Palestinians. Nevertheless, the road to full peace is still long, and negotiations with the Palestinians, as well as with Syria and Lebanon, are still to be concluded.

The people of Israel have taken great risks for peace, but they are unwilling to continue to pay the gruesome price that is being demanded in the name of peace anymore.

The tragic circle of violence must be broken. Peace means, first and foremost, the abandonment of violence. The path to peace includes dialogue, compromise, and the honouring of agreements. These universal principles must apply to the process with the Palestinians. The attempt of terrorist organisations and extreme Islamic states to sabotage this fragile endeavour by using violence will not diminish Israel's determination to create a framework of peaceful relations with all of its neighbours. It should be emphasised that, for Israel, peace with our neighbours must create a reality of normalisation, with open borders, freedom of movement, commerce and co-operation for the benefit of the entire region. Israel's experience and know-how in high-tech industries, together with its experience of co-operation with many countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America in the fields of agricultural technology, food production, construction, health and regional planning can enable her to contribute immensely to create a highly developed region in the Middle East.

As a small democracy, Israel is guided by the same school of thought that built Ireland. The founding fathers of Ireland and Israel - although they came from different backgrounds - learned the same lessons from the same eternal book, the Bible.

We are confident that when the people of the Middle East will join us in building and developing, instead of preparing for a new war, when the Arab intellectuals will stop feeding the young Arab generation with hatred and revenge against Israel and the Jews, then the peoples of the Middle East, the area which gave birth to the great ideals of mankind, can surely apply them to future generations.

Zvi Gabay is the Israeli ambassador to Ireland