After his meetings with President Carter in the White House, Prime Minister Begin held additional talks in New York. Following a meeting with U.N. Secretary General Waldheim, a statement was issued to the press. Mr. Begin also held a press conference in which he discussed the items raised in the talk with Dr. Waldheim, chief of them the situation in Lebanon. Text of the statement and the press conference follows:
During their hour long conversation the Secretary General and the Prime Minister had an extensive exchange of views on various aspects of the situation in the Middle East.
Prime Minister Begin outlined to the Secretary General his ideas regarding the resumption of the Geneva Conference as far as procedure and working methods are concerned. The Prime Minister also explained to the Secretary General his position with regard to a future settlement of the Middle East problem.
The Secretary General referred to the position of the U.N. with regard to the Middle East and stressed the need for an early resumption of the negotiating process.
During the course of the discussion Prime Minister Begin expressed to the Secretary General his appreciation for the constructive work of the U.N. peace-keeping forces in the Middle East.
Prime Minister Begin:
I had a very serious talk with the Secretary General of the United Nations. The first topic I brought to him is the situation in Southern Lebanon. I brought to his knowledge this is the Litani River and this is our northern border, and the red color is a Muslim village or township, the blue color a Christian village or township, the green color a Druse village or township. Now everybody can see that the Christian villages are an island surrounded by a sea, by an ocean of Muslim villages and townships. They are completely outnumbered. Now in these areas there are 5,000 members of the so-called P.L.O., all of them armed with Soviet arms and Soviet artillery. And from all those Muslim villages there comes every night a barrage of artillery and mortar fire on this single Christian village and we help them. Were it not for our help they would have been wiped out. Nobody else does help them. I drew the attention of the Secretary General to such a situation and I told him that we expect that the Christian world should do something to defend the outnumbered Christian minority threatened in its very existence. We will go on defending the Christian minority - we have been a minority for many ages - we are an overwhelming majority in our land but we are a small minority in the Middle East and therefore we will always extend a helping hand to them. What my appeal was to the Secretary General, and also through you to public opinion in this country and in all the other states, is that something should be done. That this outnumbered small group of people, some 50,000 Christians, men, women and children surrounded by a quarter of a million, 250,000 Muslims attacking them, trying to destroy them time and again - something should be done to help them and to ensure that they live. They have a perfect right to live as a Christian minority in the Middle East and so they should be helped in their resistance to the attempts to destroy them.
Secondly, we had a discussion with the Secretary General about Geneva and he raised the problem of participation. I had the duty and also the honor to tell the Secretary General in connection with the decision by the nine European countries that perhaps more than any other people the Europeans should be very careful about proposals that may mean shedding of Jewish blood. I told him that the Rhine and the Danube are full of Jewish blood and there was a time, perhaps symbolically one may say so, in those rivers there was more Jewish blood than water, and whenever anyone makes a so-called proposal to have a Palestinian state then he should know that it will mean shedding of Jewish blood, blood of men, women and children, and therefore I also explained to him the complete falsification of historic facts in connection with the term "Palestine". We stand here and we are a group of Palestinians. Palestine is a name of a country and when at San Remo the Mandate was given to the British Government by the League of Nations it was stated as I quote "Recognition having been given to the historical connection between the Jewish people and Palestine" - between the Jewish people and Palestine. This is the historic fact - there are Palestinian Jews and there are Palestinian Arabs, but to use the word Palestine against us - against the Jewish people, against our rights - is a complete distortion of the historic facts.
Thirdly, I brought before the Secretary General the question of the small group of Jews, the leftover of a great Jewish community in Syria. There are only 800 families in Syria Jewish families which live in a ghetto - they live in fear and we all in our generation promised each other that fear will disappear. Every man has a right to live fearlessly. Now they live in a ghetto and they are humiliated and they want to get out and it is astonishing that President Assad until now keeps them hostages in Syria. I asked the Secretary General to take up this problem with Syria and to use any opportunity possible to talk to President Assad and ask him to let the few Jews left in Syria go. There are many countries which are ready now to give them refuge. Of course, we are ready to receive them at any time. We gave haven to the Vietnamese refugees and we think it was a natural act because we have never forgotten, as I said also in the presence of the President of the United States, that boat - those boats of Jews in the thirties which fled Nazi Germany, Nazi barbarism and tried to find a haven and they were refused by all the countries in the world. So now the act of giving refuge to the Vietnamese refugees, as I did when I became Prime Minister of Israel, was natural. But if we give refuge to Vietnamese, how can we acquiesce in the persecution of our brethren. Therefore I took it -up with the Secretary General - let us hope he will intercede in Damascus on this humanitarian problem and that the Jews in Syria will be allowed to go into freedom. Thank you ladies and gentlemen for your attention.
Q. Did you speak to the Secretary General about a U.N. force in southern Lebanon? A. He asked me about that question and I answered him as I did in the discussion with the President of the U.S.
Q. What initiatives do you think Waldheirn should take that he hasn't taken so far?
A. I didn't ask about any initiatives - the U.N. now - let me say a special situation from the parliamentary point of view and there was even a majority of the General Assembly of the United Nations which adopted the most abominable resolution ever adopted by any organization to the effect that Zionism is to be equated with racism. I protested very seriously to the Secretary General in connection with that resolution. We are the victims of racism. We lost a third of our people because of racism and to turn us - or try to turn us - into racists when our people received with such great hospitality the Vietnamese refugees - thousands of our people flocked into the township in which we brought the Vietnamese refugees and all the attitudes which we have - to try to turn us into racists is an abomination. It is to be deeply regretted that a majority was found in the General Assembly to adopt such a travesty of justice, of the truth - that resolution.
I didn't ask the Secretary General to undertake any initiatives - I know his difficult position with the majority in the General Assembly - while we have to take initiatives we took initiatives to reconvene a session of the Geneva Conference to start talking about peace treaties between Israel and her Arab neighbors.
Q. We have had reports that Israel is supplying arms to Guatemala in the conflict between Guatemala and Belize...
A. Baseless information. I have asked about it - there is no basis for that information.
Q. Going back to Geneva Mr. Prime Minister - have you taken up or thought about the prospects of this conference meeting under the co-chairmanship of one of the members - one of the countries which has no diplomatic - I refer to the Soviet Union - and can this chairmanship operate on the basis of fairness without you having established those diplomatic relations?
A. It's a very good and fair question, but it should be put to Mr. Gromyko, not to me. It's the fact that there are two co-chairmen.
We want the Geneva Conference to be reconvened and therefore we ask for a letter of invitation by the two co-chairmen. It is very un-normal that we do not have diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union but as you know in my opening speech in Parliament when I presented the Government to our Knesset - I, inter alia, inserted the passage in which I stated that we are interested in the normalization of our relations with the Soviet Union. It was the Soviet Union which severed diplomatic relations with Israel on the eve of the Six Day War - therefore it is up to the Soviet Union - incumbent on the Soviet Union to take the initiative and renew diplomatic relations with us. If they do take the initiative, we shall ask them to release the Prisoners of Zion who languish in their concentration camps, and to stop any persecution of Judaism and Zionism and any incitement which they do make against Judaism and Zionism, and let every Jew in the Soviet Union who wants to come as our brother to the historic homeland of the Jewish people.
Q. Mr. Prime Minister, in our country (that is Spain), we do not have diplomatic relations. Could you tell us what is your view on that point?
A. We hope to have diplomatic relations with democratic Spain. We want such diplomatic relations and as it is understood - that can be done only on the basis of reciprocity. So if Spain agrees, as Portugal did, to have diplomatic relations with Israel, we shall exchange ambassadors in Madrid and in Jerusalem.
Q. In view of your position on the West Bank and Gaza, the Arabs are saying that you are intending a South African type of Arab Bantustan - my first point. Secondly - will you welcome back the Arabs to the West Bank and Gaza. And finally, so as to reduce the burden of the back of UNRWA - will you accord citizenship to those Palestinians who have come back home and those who are already there in Gaza and the West Bank?
A. Very three short questions. Thank you sir. First of all, when you say Gaza everyone knows what it is. When you say the West Bank I must make clear that you mean Judea and Samaria - don't you? No, because this is a complete falsification of truth. What is the West Bank? Jordan - Jordan is a land, not a part of the land. It was occupied by Trans-Jordan - through invasion and through aggression. And the annexation by Trans-Jordan of Judea and Samaria has never been recognized except by Britain and by Pakistan. Britain is a democratic country. I wouldn't think that Pakistan is a symbol of democracy in our time. Just a minute - I didn't finish answering the three short questions, let's have some patience for the questioner. There are some 450,000 Arab refugees in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip. I would like to inform you that neither Jordan nor Egypt did anything for 19 years to solve the humanitarian problem of those refugees. For the last ten years we gave the Arab refugees housing and permanent jobs. I invite you to come to the Gaza Strip and you will see the new houses which we built for the Arab refugees whereas the Egyptians let them live in horrible slums. And so the case was also of Judea and Samaria and therefore we are going to solve mainly the problem of the Arab refugees... because the Jewish people are a people of refugees and we do understand the bitter lot of the refugees. Now the Arab countries should solve the problems of the refugees living in their lands. Suppose I can say that the Arab countries have some money - usually it is called petro dollars and they have some land - they have 12 million square kilometers, 21 sovereign Arab states stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean. They have the water and they have the land. Long ago they could have humanely solved the problem of the Arab refugees - they didn't do so - they didn't want to do so. Whereas in Europe, with millions of refugees, the countries in which they live now resettled them, as those refugees from Germany or from the two Germanies or the refugees from the Sudeten - from Czechoslovakia, and nobody in the world shall ever ask Czechoslovakia to receive back one German refugee and the Soviet Union is of course enthusiastic about the fact that all those refugees live in Germany and not in Czechoslovakia and nobody has ever asked India to receive the Indian refugees who went to Pakistan or vice versa. It is resettlement. This is now the adopted pattern of solving the problem of refugees - the problem which we never wanted to create. In 1947, when we were attacked by the Arabs with the declared aim to destroy our independence, we called upon our Arab neighbors to stay in the country, not to flee - to build a country together but their leaders - the Arab leaders called them to leave - to flee - and then they promised them to come victoriously to Tel-Aviv. They did not come victoriously to Tel Aviv and they never will. And therefore in this way, the problem of the Arab refugees was created, not by us but by the Arab aggression and invasion of our land from all three directions and by the call upon the Arab population to flee the country. It is a humanitarian problem. It should be solved in a humane way. We solve it - the Arab countries should solve it.