22 Press conference with Prime Minister Begin upon his return from the US 25 July 1977

Ladies and gentlemen, the most important achievement of the visit to Washington was the creation of personal, and I will not hesitate to say - friendly and perhaps even profound contact between the U.S. President, Mr. Carter, and myself.

I had the privilege of being in close proximity for eight years with Ze'ev Jabotinsky, and so I am not easily impressed by people. I wish to say, upon my return home, that I was profoundly impressed by the extraordinary personality of President Carter.

First of all, and on the basis of what I have learned in Pirkei Avot (the ethics of the fathers) he has what is the most important attribute of a human being - a good heart. He possesses inestimable intelligence, a capacity for grasping the essential in the shortest possible time, and a great talent for making decisions.

I am certain that Mr. Carter will be a great president of the United States and will be a boon to humanity as a whole, because by the laws of the reality of our times the President of the United States is also both the leader and the defender of the free world. Therefore I am convinced that near at hand, during President Carter's term of office, is a great and important period of the history of the entire free world, a period that will be rich in accomplishment and consolidation and we shall maintain personal contact in all ways at our disposal, and the ways in our day are many. Last night we transmitted from the plane a message to the U.S. President containing an expression of thanks for the wonderful hospitality he accorded my wife, my colleagues and myself, and the message, as I was informed by the captain, was transmitted direct to the White House.

The second achievement of the visit was that for the first time since the Six Day War it was stated, with the concurrence of the U.S. government and the Israeli government, that the object of any negotiations between us and the Arab states is a peace treaty.

I recall, ten years ago - I was in Washington in the capacity of a member of the Government and I had to work hard to explain to representatives of the administration there what we were insisting on was a peace treaty, and that it was a just demand. This time there is complete agreement: The negotiations, whether in Geneva or conducted in other ways, shall have a peace treaty as their goal.

When you say peace treaty, you have in effect said everything and you do not have to deal with what is called here the "nature of peace". But even while I was still in America I read about certain strange demands by the present-day opposition. And therefore, in view of these demands, I wish to read to you the contents of the document that was handed to the U.S. Administration. (Here the Prime Minister quoted one paragraph from the document which he presented to President Carter. The paragraph says specifically that "only diplomatic relations with the Arab states" come into account.)

(The Prime Minister went on to explain how it happened that in the copy of the document that was leaked by members of the Knesset Defence and Foreign Affairs Committee the words "diplomatic relations" were accidentally left out).

I repeat when you say a "peace treaty" you do not have to go into detail. Because every peace treaty contains the following elements:

1. Conclusion of the state of war. This is the first provision of any peace treaty.

2. The second section is called "territories", and it is here that you Jay down the borders.

3. The third section provides for the exchange of ambassador's and diplomatic relations.

4. The fourth section provides for economic relations.

We have specified these four main principles merely so as to eliminate the possibility of any doubt, but actually, as I say, we need not have specified anything, because in saying "peace treaty" we have said it all.

There was an additional achievement on this visit, but as you know, we respect the Knesset, and therefore, we will put off presenting the details of the other achievements until the debate in the Knesset which will take place, as I have requested, this Wednesday.

Before that I will pay a visit to the President, who will be the first person in Israel to hear a full and detailed report of the visit and its outcome. At 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday the Cabinet will convene to receive a full report and at 11:00 I will open the political debate in the Knesset. I will speak about the visit and will hear the honorable constructive opposition and after the debate there will also be a reply. With this I conclude my partial report, out of respect for the President, the Knesset and the Government. Ladies and gentlemen, your questions.

Q. Mr. Prime Minister, when you speak of criticism, there was one other piece of criticism on substantial matters relating to your contacts with the U.S. President. The criticism says that you reject a political struggle with the United States and so this struggle will find expression at the Geneva conference. Whereupon we will find ourselves isolated, because the United States has not changed its position on the matter of the borders nor on the matter of the Palestinians.

A. The truth of the matter is just the opposite. The previous government got the State of Israel into an extremely serious conflict with the United States. I have read the contents of the conversation between the President and the former Prime Minister, Mr. Yitzhak Rabin.

This document is classified and so I will not divulge its contents. I can say only, and I am certain that Mr. Rabin will attest that it is so - that the two talks he had with the President were extremely acerbic, and our country came into conflict with the United States. The present government has done away with the conflict that the previous government created. That is the fact of the matter.

As for the triangle consisting of the U.S., the Arabs and ourselves, we adopted a new political strategy. The previous government committed a grave political error: it sought an agreement with the United States before going to Geneva. Let us assume that the declared policy of the previous government was the Allon Plan. Had the previous government been able to say that the United States agreed to the Allon Plan then at least there would have been a certain logic as far as it was concerned in seeking an agreement with the United States over the Allon Plan and then, with that agreement in hand, to go to Geneva. Now, the government knew that there was no consent to the Allon Plan on the part of the United States. And in fact there was total opposition to it in Washington. Yet, all the same, it went to the United States to seek a mutual U.S.-Israeli agreement before going to Geneva. In other words, it invited U.S. pressure, because in the United States they said to the government, if you want an agreement with us then you must accept our opinion, and our opinion is not the Allon Plan. But, as the U.S. leaders said at the time, an Israeli withdrawal to the lines of June 4, 1967 with slight alterations. Therefore, as I say, the previous government committed a twofold error:

1. It got the State into a severe conflict with the President of the United States and with the United States in general.

2. It sought an agreement with the United States and invited American pressure knowing full well that the gap between its position regarding the territorial problem and that of the United States was very wide.

We have corrected these two mistakes. First there is no conflict. There are also arms, and there is friendship and understanding and a very important promise on the part of the U.S. President, namely we have differences of opinion (and somebody here got smart and said "the day will yet come when the differences between us and the United States will come to light.") Why wait for the future? The President and I said openly in the ears of America and Israel, that we do have differences. But the two of us, the President and I, also stated the differences that exist, and which also may arise in the future - will never result in a breach between the United States and Israel.

We have an explicit announcement like this by the President of the United States. In other words, whether there are or aren't differences, we will discuss and argue about them, as free men and no breach will result.

We did not request any agreement with the United States prior to Geneva. Had we done so, we would have been inviting pressure. What we said to the President and his assistants was this: We are prepared to go to the Geneva Conference as of October 10th, that is, after Yom Kippur and the Sukkot Festival.

Everyone must go to Geneva without any preconditions. All the proposals will be brought to the peace conference bargaining table.

We will debate with the Arabs. They will bring their proposals and we will bring ours, without any preconditions. We will not demand of them and they will not receive from us any prior commitment. We will not demand it of them and they will not demand or require it of us; a completely free negotiation, free of preconditions and prior commitments and also of formulas for a solution from outside. As was stated explicitly in the platform of the U.S. Democratic Party. In other words, this is a principle that America accepts.

Under these conditions there is no pressure and there is agreement between Israel and the U.S. that the object is a peace treaty.

So it is that we have adopted a completely different political strategy and have thereby bettered the situation of the people of Israel and the State of Israel.

Q. What will be the government's position in the near future in the matter of settlement in Judea and Samaria and other parts of the country?

A. I was asked this question yesterday in New York, and I would like to repeat the answer I gave there. It was given in the form of a rhetorical question. Before we went to meet the President we conducted a geographical search and found that in the United States of America there are 11 places named Hebron, five places named Shiloh, four places named Bethel and six places named Bethlehem, and I gave the following strange example: Let's imagine that the governors of the states in which the Bethlehems and Hebrons and Shilos and Bethels are located issue a proclamation saying any citizen of the United States can come and settle there, but one category of citizens is forbidden to settle there and that is the Jewish citizens of the United States. To them it is forbidden to build a home in Shiloh, in Hebron, in Bethlehem of the United States of America. Would you all not scream and shout about racial discrimination - for why should a Jewish citizen of the United States be discriminated against in this respect?

I asked millions of American viewers if it is possible to expect a Jewish Prime Minister and a Jewish Government to forbid Jews to buy land or to build their homes in the original Shiloh, the original Bethel, the original Bethlehem and the original Hebron, and I ended with a question mark, to say that the question is a rhetorical one. In Tel Aviv too I will end with this question, and all other matters are under the authority of the government which will take its decisions.

Q. In your talks with President Carter did you raise the question of the sale of Kfir aircraft to various countries, including Ecuador?

A. No. The question was not raised, but as you know, the day before my departure for the United States, the President ordered that there be placed at our disposal a number of very important items. Worth a total of a quarter of a billion dollars. I myself think that the most important item of all is a unit of helicopters known as Cobras and designed for attacking tanks, for national defence against an assault by tanks.

I informed the President of the quantities of tanks in the hand of the states surrounding us - Jordan, Syria and Egypt -5.500 tanks, or 7.500 tanks if you add those of Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and 10,300 tanks - if you add all the Arab states, and that is something we must do, especially after the experience of the Yom Kippur War.

Here you are hearing numbers - five thousand or seven thousand. But there is no cause for alarm. We too have a very specific number of tanks, and above all, our tank crews, and we have not said anything at all about any panic, but it is clear that ten thousand tanks is a serious force.

It is incidentally four times the number of tanks that Nazi Germany in operation Barbarossa, put into action against the Soviet Union along a border thousands of kilometers long. The Arabs today have four times the number of tanks that attacked Soviet Russia.

So it is that we spoke of the need to provide the people of Israel with a means of national defence and deterent: among other things the President approved the matter of the Cobra and 12 helicopters for the time being and we have reason to believe that more will follow. This is a weapon of very serious significance because it is capable of piercing armour and it dominates the theater of battle, and it is good that the Arab states should know that we want to deter and not to go to war but to prevent it. There are other items. But the subject of Ecuador was not raised at all.