112 Statement by Prime Minister Begin to a Keren Hayesod study group from France- 19 January 1978

Mr. Chairman, our dear friend Baron Rothschild, Ladies and Gentlemen of the dais, our dear honoured guests from France: Israel elaborated, produced and presented the peace plan in two parts. The first concerns the bilateral relations between our country and Egypt, with two main principles: One, demilitarization of the Sinai desert, which must never again become a place d'armes to attack our land, as it happened five times in 29 years.

When President Sadat visited Jerusalem, he promised me in a private conversation that the Egyptian army will not pass the Giddi and the Mitla passes to the East, and so the main part of the Sinai peninsula will be demilitarized. To us, it is a most vital issue of our national security. We must have a belt of security, as a result of the experience of a generation, in order to prevent another war from breaking out and in order to be able to defend ourselves from attack.

But the military experts of Egypt presented a different map, not in conformity but in contradiction to the personal pledge given to me by President Sadat. In accordance with their plan, the bulk of the Sinai peninsula would be demilitarized.

We, of course, cannot agree to such a concept which may prove most dangerous to our future. I repeat, for the sake of peace, for both nations, the desert of Sinai must be demilitarized.

The second principle concerns our settlements in the very narrow strip in the North of Sinai between Rafa and El Arish. This is also one of the most vital issues of our national security. And, of course, there is no Government in Israel which would be capable to order dismantling of Jewish settlements in which so much sweat and toil were invested, making the desert blossoming. No land was taken away from anybody. When out settlers came there, it was a complete desert, sand and sand and nothing else. We brought water from the north and our men tilled the land and now it is almost a garden. Green, producing. We are not going to destroy the fruit of the labour of our men at the whim of the Egyptian Government.

When I met President Sadat at Ismailiya, I told him that those settlements are going to stay. Lately, again yesterday, the controlled or directed Egyptian press claimed that at Ismailiya I misled President Sadat, and therefore, they put on me a new label and they call me "Shylock". Well, I and lending money, of course, we pay attention to the fact that the Egyptian directed press uses an old anti-semitic expression which wanders throughout Europe since Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice". But, did I mislead President Sadat? I have no right to quote from the minutes whatever he told me, but I am perfectly entitled to disclose to you what I told him, and now I quote from the minutes of our conversation at Ismailiya. I told the President of Egypt, "I have to point out that we cannot leave our settlements and our civilians without self-defence, this is the resolve of our generation, with all the experience behind us. Mr. President, we respect your principle and we ask you to respect our principle."

As you can see, at Ismailiya, I told President Sadat not only that the settlements will stay but they will be defined by an Israeli contingent.

This is in the main the first part of our peace plan.

The second part related to the Autonomy, Administrative Autonomy, which we suggest to give our neighbours, the Palestinian Arabs, residing in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza District. Ladies and Gentlemen, this will be for the first time in history that the Palestinian Arabs residing in those parts of the Land of Israel will enjoy self-rule. For centuries they lived under the oppressive Turkish rule. For three decades under the British rule, for 20 years under Jordanian rule, which was very oppressive, indeed. The Jordanians ruled the Palestinian Arabs in Judea and Samaria with a whip. It never occurred to them to suggest self-determination. It never occurred to them to propose autonomy.

The same applies to Egyptian rule in the district of Gaza. They ruled the Arabs there directly for 19 years. They never gave them Egyptian citizenship and they let them live in the most horrible, abominable slums for two decades. We take out the people from those slums and give them proper, civilized housing and permanent jobs and so we shall go on doing in order to solve humanely the problem also of the Arab refugees who are under our jurisdiction.

For the first time in history comes Israel and suggests to the Palestinian Arabs to enjoy Self-Rule Autonomy based on the following principles: They themselves in a secret ballot, through a democratic election, will elect an 11-member Council with 11 departments, which will deal with all the problems of daily life. We shall not interfere to any extent whatsoever in the day fife of our neighbours. Security and public order must be the responsibility of the Israeli authorities, because if we should not have control of security, the socalled P.L.O., that murderous, Nazi organization, the baser of which there has never been in history, since and except and beside the armoured Nazi organization, would take over Judea and Samaria in 24 hours. Then we would face mortal danger. Almost all our civilians, men, women and children, would be at their mercy. With their Strellas and Kalachnikovs and Katyushas and heavy guns with a range of 43.8 kms to be supplied by the Soviet Union in no time from Odessa to Bethlehem. The flight time between those two cities being only two hours. It would turn into a Soviet base, like it happened in Angola and in Mozambique and in Ethiopia. Indeed, when I told President Sadat that some of the P.L.O. members are Soviet agents, he corrected me and said: "All of them."

Ladies and Gentlemen: It would turn into a Soviet base. A mortal danger to us, to the Jewish State. We would then place all our civilians in Gush Dan-Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Rehovot, Rishon L'Zion, Nes Ziona, Bnei Brak, Ramat Gan, Petach Tikva, Givatayim - almost 2 and half million Jews. The remnant of our people, those who were saved from the Holocaust, under the range of their conventional artillery, under the control of our most implacable enemy, since the dark days of the Nazis.

May I tell you, Ladies and Gentlemen, never shall we place our women and children in the range of the implacable enemy of the Jewish people. Never.

But we produced a plan of human decency. Autonomy, for the Palestinian Arabs. Security for the Palestinian Jews. We can live together and build together the country.

Ladies and Gentlemen, with this plan in its two parts, I went to Washington a month ago. I presented it to the President of the United States, to the Secretary of State, to the ranking Senators: Senator Jackson, Senator Case. Both parties: the Democratic and the Republican, represented by them. Senator Javits and Senator Stone. To the former President of the United States, Mr. Gerald Ford. To the former Secretary of State, Mr. Kissinger. To the Majority Leader of the House of Representatives, to the representative of the mighty Jewish Community in the United States - God bless them all. We are proud of the Jewish Community in the United States and then may I tell you, Ladies and Gentlemen, that we are proud of the Jewish Community in France.

Then I went to London and presented the plan to the Prime Minister of Great Britain and to the Foreign Secretary of Great Britain. Also Mr. Francois Poncet saw our peace plan but until now I didn't get from him any opinion, whereas all those who saw this peace plan said - now I quote - the Secretary of State of the United States read out a communique in which he stated: "It is a notable contribution. It is a constructive approach." President Carter, our friend, said, having listened to my presentation and seen the maps with all the details, including the question of the Jewish settlements: "There is a great deal of flexibility in this plan. It is a long step forward."

Some people say that the Egyptian Government decided yesterday to recall their delegation so that there should be pressure, American pressure extended on Israel. Ladies and Gentlemen, what pressure? Can a "notable contribution" become otherwise in four weeks? Can a "constructive approach" become negative in one month? Can a "great deal of flexibility" turn into "inflexibility"? And can a "long step forward" be turned into a "short step backwards?" All in several weeks? It is absolutely inconceivable. And they will never frighten us with this inconceivable concept of pressure to be exerted upon us.

We presented a positive plan. A human plan. A decent plan. A real peace plan. Far-reaching, sweeping. No pressure can be exerted on us to turn fairness into unfairness. Decency into indecency.

However, during the week, three days ago, came to us the Foreign Minister of Egypt, a likable man, I like him, I told him so. And upon landing on our land, made a statement at Ben Gurion airport to the effect that we must give up Jerusalem. So he said: He just landed and told us: You will have to give up Jerusalem. Jerusalem. May I tell you, Ladies and Gentlemen, it was the most preposterous statement ever made by a guest. Imagine I come to France and say that Paris should be divided into two. The very same day I will be asked to leave France. But I wouldn't make such a statement. I said it is a preposterous statement for a guest to make. But I have another word: In the language of Corneille and Baudelaire and Descartes and Proust. In classical French, it means "Hutzpah".

We didn't ask the Foreign Minister of Egypt to leave our country after that hutzpah-ike statement. On the contrary. We received him with hospitality and we started negotiations which were quite successful. Out of seven paragraphs of a declaration of principles, we agreed to five. Two were left out, for further negotiations, and suddenly he was recalled.

Of course, it was not only our right but our duty to answer that statement as I did. I would do it at any opportunity, as Prime Minister of Israel. It was my duty to explain to the Foreign Minister of Egypt that Jerusalem, the heart of the Jewish people, was occupied by the Jordanians for 19 years as a result of invasion and aggression, and for 19 years we couldn't go to pray, to the Holiest of the Holiest of the Jewish People and when we were attacked 11 years ago, with God's help, our men liberated Jerusalem. Everybody can go now to pray at the Holy Shrines of his religion, Christians, Moslems and Jews. And so Jerusalem was reunited and it will be united, the Capital city of Israel and the Jewish People forever and ever.

When I met yesterday a group of Egyptian journalists, I started to understand what happened. Amongst the many questions they asked me, not all of them polite, but we play it cool, there was the following question: You should recognize the fact, Mr. Prime Minister, that President Sadat recognized your right to survive. Shalom Aleichem. You recognized our right to survive.

Ladies and Gentlemen. We never have asked anybody to recognize our right to exist. Descartes made his famous scientific great saying, "Cogito Ergo Sum". I think, therefore, I exist. He left to us, to say, because this is our history - I suffered, therefore I exist, I struggle, therefore I exist, and I believe, therefore I exist. "Credo Ergo Sum" but we exist. Our dear Egyptian friends, without your recognition, for 3,700 years, even without your recognition we left Egypt in order to exist in the land of our forefathers, promised to us by God and man. We never asked your President or your Government or any other President or a General or a nation to recognize our right to exist. We asked ever to recognize the right to France to exist? The right of Belgium to exist? Of Luxembourg to exist? We exist. Therefore, we have a right to exist. We pay the price for that. What a price. Up to this generation. That does not diminish our right to exist. To the contrary, what we expect from you is to recognize our right to our land, as we recognize your right to 21 sovereignty states, stretching from the Persian Gulf up to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, 12 million square kms. You should recognize our right to this land we have, the little country, as the expression of the right of national self-determination for the Jewish People, victimized, persecuted, humiliated, ultimately physically destroyed, and at last, having come back back - we expect you to recognize our right to our independence and to our human dignity and to our sovereignty. We never asked you to recognize our right to exist. We have it. The right to exist was given to us by Elohey Avraham, Yitzhak and Ya'acov.

Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, the talks within the framework of the political committee in Jerusalem were disrupted. We are sorry. We can only say we shall pursue our goal for peace. We yearn and pray for peace. We produced a good peace plan. We want peace with all our neighbours, to the South in Egypt, we respect the people of Egypt. We tell them, if we had peace, we can help each other, we do not say so condescendingly. We don't have any superiority complex over the Arabs. We respect the great Arab people and their contribution to human civilization. But neither do we have an inferiority complex, we too contributed to human civilization, we can help each other.

And we want peace with our Northern neighbours and in the East we want real peace. We shall pursue this noble goal. We hope that the talks will be resumed, it is up to Egypt. If the Egyptian Government should at any day decide to renew, resume, the talks, the Government of Israel will be prepared to do so as well.

And let nobody despair of the chances of peace. Ultimately, ups and downs and crises, and walking out and coming back, Ladies and Gentlemen, we learned from history: War is evitable, peace is inevitable.

Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, I have a special appeal to make to you. Make an effort, a unique effort, and it will be earmarked for a great human, noble purpose. We have still in this country 45,000 families living in the most abject housing conditions, 3-5-7 people in one room. How can the children study? And there are other phenomena of family life under such conditions which all adults here understand. I do not have to explain. This is that poverty which is a shame for any society. We are a Jewish society. We are a people who got the command in the days immemorial: Justice. Justice shall ye pursue, we cannot acquiesce in this horrible, abominable, intolerable poverty. We want to build for them proper, civilized houses and let the children be happy and smile and study and advance in life, 300,000 people. I made an appeal to the Bonds organization, to the Keren Hayesod, to the United Jewish Campaign: Let us all make an effort. The Jewish People in the Diaspora and our people in this country, and together we shall solve the problem, in a few years. It cannot be done in a week or a month. We need a few years. Three, four years, if we make this effort, the apartments will be built. When you come again, as you will, we shall bring you to those apartments and you will listen to the laughter of a Jewish child. It will not be for a nobler purpose.

Therefore, I appeal to you, make an effort. Any amount above your contribution last year, or last years, will be earmarked Kodesh, for this purpose. And if you make the effort and we shall match it here, in a few years, we shall solve completely this economic-social - no, moral problem, and you will be happy in sharing in this human solution.

So, today, I appeal to you, make an effort, a special effort, a great one, and you will have the great "naches" when the day comes and those families are happy in their apartments.

Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, let us stand together. We may face difficult times. I tell you in French "Kalt und Fest", strong and calm we shall stand. Ours is a good cause, a just cause. We hate war. We hate bloodshed. We want peace. We made a step forward, it is a long step forward, it will come. Let us stand together. Jews all over the world with the Jews in Eretz Yisrael. Let us stand together and make this land of ours strong, unconquerable, its people and its army invincible, and make sure that Israel and her children and children's children will live in security, in peace, in liberty, in justice from generation to generation, forever.