The purpose of the meeting in Alexandria between the Prime Minister of Israel and the Egyptian President was to deepen the understanding on fundamental issues, to discuss how the peace treaty could be best implemented and how further links could be forged between the people of the two nations. Various ideas were discussed, some of them mentioned by the Prime Minister upon his return. The talks also included an evaluation of regional and global developments by the two leaders. Following are excerpts from the English part of the press conference:
STATEMENT OF PRIME MINISTER BEGIN
Ladies and gentlemen:
The two days I spent in Alexandria together with my friends are good days in my life. All those mutual visits by President Sadat and his advisers to our country and by my friends and myself to Egypt are a process of building the reality of peace. I have never agreed to the statement made by the German Chancellor on the eve of the first World War that a treaty is a scrap of paper. A treaty of peace is a serious document but it is of course a framework with many articles and passages and sentences. This framework should be filled up with reality. Now what we have done through those mutual visits is to build the reality of peace.
My impression about the people in Alexandria: I passed the streets of Alexandria nearly half a dozen times - 5 or 6 times, and every time thousands of men, women and children lined up the streets and received us cheering, waving etc. It was really heartwarming. President Sadat remembers, as he told me, he will always remember, the reception accorded to him in Beersheba. And the reception given to me in Alexandria was very like that accorded to the President of the Arab Republic of Egypt in our town. So the reception was wonderful and I am very grateful to President Sadat, the Vice-President, and the Prime Minister for the wonderful hospitality they bestowed upon me. Now we had two talks between President Sadat and myself. The first day it lasted more than an hour, the second nearly two hours. During our first talk we tackled practical problems; one of them is the rebuilding of the railroad line directly between Cairo and Lydda, which existed, as you know, until the war of 1948. Now it is partly still in existence and partly destroyed. We have had that idea from the famous industrialist, Mr. Shidlovsky, and I brought up this initiative and I met with the Canadian Pacific group which will build a railway to Eilat for the export of potash. Now we shall meet all of us together and a delegation from Israel will go to Cairo and meet the Minister for Transport in the capital of Egypt and we shall start a survey. Of course, it will take some time but President Sadat and I agreed that this is a practical idea and we should find a way to rebuilt that railway. It is a part of reality of peace because this is a chief means of communication and people from Egypt will come to Israel, people from Israel will go to Egypt, during one night; and then we shall also be able to send goods to each country in reciprocity. So it is a practical issue of importance, and other issues we tackled - such as open borders. There will be more visitors now of either country to the other. I was in the synagogue of Alexandria; several people came to see me with tears in their eyes and said: "We have relatives in Israel, we would like to visit them." I brought it up in my conversation with President Sadat. Some people may think - well, a few families, is it so important to bring it up with the President? Yes it is; it's a matter of human beings and they are deep feelings and the human being is a world apart. And therefore I brought it up, immediately with the President and he was gracious enough to agree to enable every Egyptian citizen, a Jew, to come to our country and visit his family. This will happen very soon; even today, a family will come to visit their mother whom they didn't see for twenty-five years, by the personal approval of the President. It's a great gesture.
Yesterday, we had a different talk. Yesterday we raised the basic issues concerning the mutual relations between our two countries and also the situation in the Middle East. There were issues in which we were in complete agreement; there were some problems on which we agreed to differ. We didn't hide anything from each other. We opened our hearts to each other and therefore both of us, President Sadat and I, said openly and publicly that we consider yesterday's talk between us as the most important between us for the last two years and one of the most important of our lives. I am going in the afternoon to phone President Carter and I will tell him about those conversations between President Sadat and myself as I promised him, answering his wonderful message he sent to me a day before my departure for Alexandria. And then I will cable to him details too. When we agreed to differ, we said so at the press conference. On the question of settlements, we have different opinions and they stay. But, the whole talk was heartwarming, friendly, in an atmosphere of understanding and cooperation. We will continue with the peace-making process. As I said in the press-conference in Alexandria, "Now both of us understand, President Sadat and I, that peace between Israel and Egypt is real and forever." And so this is the importance of the visit to Alexandria. As you know, I invited President Sadat to pay me a visit; he immediately agreed. And as I visited him at a Mediterranean port, he win pay me a visit also to a Mediterranean port in Israel, in Haifa. And in the afternoon, I will phone the mayor of Haifa to make all the preparations. The visit of President Sadat to Haifa will take place after Ramadan, the last week of August. He will come with his yacht, I hope together with his family which was very gracious to me. And then my wife and perhaps also my children will go abroad and then we shall drive together throughout Haifa. I'm sure that Haifa will give President Sadat the most cordial reception possible. And so, mutually, in understanding, we continue building reality of peace.
PRESS CONFERENCE
Q: Mr. Prime Minister, you mentioned the proposed building or rebuilding of the railroad line between Lod and Cairo and also some limited visits of some Egyptian Jews to Israel. But what I'm wondering is when will the average Israeli and the average Egyptian begin to feel this peace process is actually happening?
A: Very soon. I really brought the figures before President Sadat - he didn't know about them. We got twenty visas for our citizens and there were more than two-hundred applications. He said, of course, "I didn't know about it; it is a matter for officials to deal." But immediately he gave the instruction to make possible for all the applicants to go to Egypt. So very soon several hundred people will go to Egypt and the relatives of the families which live in Israel, the relatives who live in Alexandria and Cairo, will be able to go freely to our country. So it will develop in the near future, I think to the satisfaction of both sides.
Q: Mr. Begin, do you have the sense from your talks with President Sadat yesterday, that the two of you have succeeded in smoothing the way for the autonomy talks now going on?
A: No, I wouldn't say so, because my colleagues in Alexandria and the Egyptian delegation, with the assistance of Mr. Robert Strauss, already reached an agreement, namely that there will be two working groups, Egyptian, Israeli and an American and they will start working out the modalities and the responsibilities and powers of the administrative council which is the central institution of the autonomy for the Palestinian Arabs of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip. The talks between President Sadat and myself on this issue were of great importance because now we do know that the road we are going to travel together is to create all the conditions necessary for having the full autonomy for the Palestinian Arab inhabitants of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip.
Q: Mr. Begin, were you able to solve the problem of oil supplies and so forth of Israel?
A: Yes, we will hand over the oil wells to the Egyptians on November 26. What I said to the President is that the following day we will come with our tankers and take the oil and pay for it at the world market price. And there is absolute agreement about it. We will fulfill our commitments, seven months after the exchange of the instruments of ratification the oil wells will be under Egyptian sovereignty, but we will be able to the following day to take oil and we shall pay for it at the world market price.
Q: Mr. Begin, you said earlier that you had disagreements with President Sadat. Were there any areas of political exchange where you had some agreement at least?
A: All the talk was one great agreement. We agreed on many issues. President Sadat said yesterday we are not supposed to inform about those areas agreed upon in whispering into a microphone. This would be a very intimate whispering that I can do. But the fields of agreement are very wide. There is a very limited number of issues which we agreed to differ and then we didn't make a secret of it. Let me give you this example. For instance, the issue of Lebanon. We didn't talk about it during our meeting. But the President, before we went to the press said to me that he is going to announce his stand towards Lebanon that the territorial integrity of Lebanon must be preserved and there must be no partition and no disintegration. I told him on the spot, "Mr. President, I agree with you and I will say so openly; only, I will add that we have a special problem - our security." And then, when we reached the press conference the President made clear his stand; I said I agree completely with the President that there must be the territorial integrity of Lebanon but we have two problems - we have the Christians in danger of being annihilated or wiped out and secondly, our security problem because we are attacked by the so-called P.L.O. and then there is always an announcement in Beirut that that was done, by the P.L.O., they will continue to do so and even step up their attacks against our civilian population. We are not going to acquiesce in it; we carried out legitimate acts of self-defence and so we shall do. As you can see, the basic issue we agreed completely; both President Sadat and I stand for territorial integrity of Lebanon. We haven't any claim to one square metre of Lebanese territory but, of course, we shall go on defending our people against those attacks by the so-called P.L.O. Now this is a proof that mainly we are at fields of agreement. Whenever we agreed to differ, we said so.
Q: Is President Sadat hesitant to visit Jerusalem for any political reason? Does he still insist that Jerusalem is part of the West Bank, as he would put it, and was Jerusalem one of the topics upon which you agreed to disagree?
A: We had a discussion about Jerusalem. President Sadat explained to me with complete candour his stand, and I listened to him attentively and then I answered. I made clear my stand; President Sadat gave me full attention. That's all I can tell you about the question of Jerusalem.