44 Statement in the Knesset by Prime Minister Begin upon the Presentation of his Second Government- 5 August 1981

44. Statement in the Knesset by Prime Minister Begin upon the Presentation of his Second Government, 5 August 1981.

Permit me now to turn to political matters: Recently there has figured most potently on our agenda, as on that of the international community, the problem of national self-defense. It is our duty to try to clarify it in the most exhaustive fashion possible.

A definition of this concept appears in the United Nations charter, Article 51, which reads: "Nothing in the present charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attacked occurs against a member of the United Nations until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security."

There is not a great deal to be learned from this generalized definition. It does contain, however, an important concept, namely that self-defense is natural. It enshrines a serious factual stipulation that a nation which is attacked is not obliged to wait until the Security Council has, in the charter language, taken necessary measures. A nation has the right to defend itself. And since it is a natural right, one can also emphatically state: It has a duty to defend itself.

A much more exact definition is to be found in the famous Treaty of Locarno, which Churchill described as the most precise of all international agreements. The Treaty of Locarno stipulates:

"Germany and Belgium and also Germany and France mutually undertake that they will in no case attack or invade each other or resort to war against each other.

This stipulation shall now, however, apply in the case of the exercise of the right of legitimate defense, that is to say, resistance to violation of the undertaking contained in the previous paragraph."

In other words, if one of the countries signatory to the agreement attacks its neighbor or invades its territory or wages war against it, the assaulted country, in exercising its right to legal defense, has the right to attack the aggressor country, to invade its territory and to wage war in return.

In this context, the definition of aggression as proposed time and again by the Soviet Union in the United Nations is of great interest. And aggression, obviously renders to the violated country the full right to legitimate self-defense. In the Soviet document it is written, inter alia:

"The use by a state of armed force by sending armed bands, mercenaries, terrorists, or saboteurs to the territory of another state... All these shall be considered as acts of indirect aggression."

And clearly, indirect aggression is aggression.

Whatever the definitions be, and whatever their interpretations, it is clear to every man of goodwill that the Israel Air Force in going forth to destroy the atomic reactor near Baghdad - which was constructed to produce atomic bombs as attested to by the most authoritative and reliable information reaching us - by that deed our country acted in the name of legitimate national self-defense in the highest sense of the term. We have at our command the means to document the proof that the Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein, erected the 70 kilowatt atomic reactor for one decisive purpose - the production of nuclear weapons intended against the state of Israel. The mission of our Air Force was in the fullest sense of the term an act of rescue of hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens, amongst them tens of thousands of Israeli children. Let us pay tribute here before the Knesset, to the heroism of our sons who so defended their people.

The very same applies to the operations of all branches of the Israel Defense Forces against the terrorist organizations in Lebanon which receive their weapons in massive quantities - including Katyusha missiles, tanks and long-range artillery from the Soviet Union, North Korea, Bulgaria, Syria, Libya and also, as we discovered with absolute certainty a few days ago, from Saudi Arabia.

There are, among allies and non-allies alike, those who distort truth by saying that our air force sent out to bomb Beirut by the decision of the Government. Not so. It was the Syrians and the terrorists who shelled and bombed Beirut, sowing the death of thousands of civilians by turning their weapons directly and intentionally against the civilian population and transforming the once beautiful city into a ghost town. Our Air Force was on a mission to attack the Terrorist Headquarters in Beirut and elsewhere, those same headquarters from which the orders were issued to shell, brutally and incessantly, Kiryat Shmonah and Nahariya, Misgav Am and Metullah - townships, moshav villages, kibbutzim, all with the sole premeditated purpose of striking at the civilian population. In this defensive operation civilians too were hurt, and we deeply regret it. However, we could not grant these murderous headquarters immunity forever.

I shall say but one more brief word on this matter. He who, whether in Israel or abroad, would throw the first stone at us, let him please turn the pages of his own history, which, by chance or otherwise, is completely familiar to us - he will then know, and let him ponder.

During these days, with the exception of certain violations on the part of the terrorists, a cessation of violent acts is being maintained along both sides of the northern border. We want the situation, in which there shall be no hostile acts, to continue.

We shall not violate what was agreed upon, but we have to stipulate, first, that it was specifically agreed upon between ourselves and the United States, with whom we conducted negotiations through its representative Mr. Philip Habib, that we shall continue reconnaissance flights over Lebanese territory. Let it be clearly understood, therefore, that anyone who shall try again to interfere with our pilots in the performance of this essential task - which was categorically not included in the term "Hostile Acts" shall bear the consequences of his interference."

Secondly, the unilateral violations of the calm from across the Lebanese border cannot continue.

Permit me now to address myself to a number of political, national and international problems.

The government will continue to work for the advancement of the Arabs and Druze in Israel, and will act to solve their problems and their full integration into Israeli society on the basis of full and equal rights.

The government will act to strengthen the positive elements among the Arab citizens of Israel, and give them the fullest support in their loyal stand against negative and subversive elements.

We express our satisfaction at the signing of the agreement on the establishment of the multi-national force. It is of great importance for the maintenance of the security and the peace.

For the last 14 months there have been no discussions on the arrangements for the full autonomy for the Arab inhabitants in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district. It was not we who halted these talks. It is our duty to register that it was the Egyptians who stopped them, in our view with no justified reason.

We adhere to the Camp David Accord. We shall not return to the past, it is the future that is important. It is our view that the negotiations on the autonomy should be renewed forthwith and that it be consummated in total faithfulness to what was determined in the second part - or, rather, the first part in terms of sequence - of the Camp David agreement.

In the relations between the State of Israel and the United States positive political changes have occurred and also negative actual events have taken place.

We shall begin with the positive: Of importance was the declaration of the President of the United States that Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel is not illegal. The double negative, according to laws of any language, becomes a positive. An end, therefore has been put to that period in which an endless argument took place between the American administration and the government of Israel, the representatives of the American administration repeatedly insisting that Jewish settlement is illegal, and we repeatedly answering that it is absolutely legal. Now, from the lips of the highest authority in the United States, we have heard an unequivocal declaration that Jewish settlement is not illegal.

Of great importance is the announcement, reiterated a number of times by the

President of the United States, that Israel is a strategic asset of the U.S. in the Middle East, that Israel is a friend and ally of America, that Israel performs an important role in blocking Soviet expansionism.

The truth is, as we have also said to our American friends and allies, that we have no special affection for the term "strategic asset." It has something of a commercial connotation about it. We were happy, therefore, to hear from the Secretary of State, Alexander Haig, that Israel and America are friends and allies, for both countries live in permanent alliance.

True, no written and signed alliance exists between us. I have been asked more than once by American statesmen whether we would wish or be prepared to sign with their country a written defense pact. I have answered them consistently: "If you make such a proposal to us, I shall recommend to my colleagues in government to sign such an agreement." We, on our part, cannot assume the initiative on a matter of this kind, in case we are refused. It is proper that the mighty power take the initiative; no country, including a small one, wants to court refusal. And this is my answer again today to such a question put to me in the past, and which may be asked in the future.

The truth is that an unwritten alliance, too, which often is no less important than a signed one, determines the relations between peoples on matters of a common stand, especially in times of crisis. Suffice it to recall the entente cordiale between Britain and France which was given supreme expression during the four years of World War I, beginning with the stepping on the soil of France of the first British soldier and culminating in the destruction of German militarism. We do not want soldiers of other nations to fight our wars. We know how to defend ourselves. We knew how to do so in the past, we know in the present, and we shall know in the future. But a common stand for a common cause is an altogether different matter. Joint defense of freedom and democracy - such an alliance and such a posture have been known, it may verily be said, to have occurred in the past. And presently, when totalitarianism is on the offensive and is spreading and freedom is shrinking, in days as these an alliance and posture of this kind are perhaps more necessary than ever before.

With regard to the practical negative developments, the first of them is the suspension of the supply to Israel of the F-16 aircraft which the United States undertook, by contract, to deliver to Israel. I hope, therefore, that in the very near future this suspension will be lifted and the deliveries in their totality will be renewed and shall never be suspended again.

The second issue relates to the supply of offensive equipment for the F-15s and the supply of the most sophisticated surveillance aircraft in the world of the AWACS type to Saudi Arabia. With the aid of the first, the Saudi F-15s would have the capability of reaching Tel Aviv, and returning to Saudi Arabia without landing and refueling in mid-air. This is a danger to Israel's civilian population of the most serious kind.

The AWACS intelligence-gathering aircraft will make our country with its airfields, its aircraft and even its other weapons systems, absolutely transparent.

No so-called arrangements have the capacity to remove or weaken these two threats. In these very days, tangible proof has been given to this, our conclusion.

Saudi Arabia transported via Jordan and Syria supplies of weapons and ammunition to South Lebanon for the use of the terrorists against Israel. Who, in light of this reality, can rely on any kind of commitment whatsoever of the Saudis with respect to Israel, particularly when from that country came forth the cry for Jihad - holy war - a war of destruction against our people and country.

It is my duty to point out that the reference is to our national security in the most fundamental sense of the term: The protection of our lives and of the means of defending our lives. We are duty-bound to alert every friend of the dangers emanating from this twofold deal made with the Saudi enemy.

We are in favor of the normalization of the relations between ourselves and the Soviet Union. Our regimes are different. Let each go his own way. However, normal relations are possible, even between countries which maintain regimes that are fundamentally different.

Who knows this better than the Soviet Union? It was the Soviet Union which, with the outbreak of the war of defense and salvation of 1967 severed its relations with us, it is the Soviet Union which should take the initiative to renew them. If it does so, we shall first insist on the freeing of the Prisoners of Zion, and the granting of the right to leave the Soviet Union and return to the historic homeland of the Jewish people any Jew who so wishes. And thus will we be able to renew the direct dialogue between ourselves and the Soviet Union.

There is hope that with the presidency of M. Francois Mitterrand, the relations between France and Israel will improve. I have been acquainted with the present president of France since 1954. His ideology is not mine nor that of my colleagues. He believes in socialism, we embrace liberalism. Not laissez faire, but laissez passer, not abandoning our fellow human beings but caring for him whilst safeguarding his free creative initiative. With all the differences of ideology, it is my right and duty to state that Mr. Mitterrand is a friend of Israel. We do have differences of opinion, and we shall not hide them, on the means to achieve peace in the Middle East. But in the Elysee there sits a man of goodwill towards our people and country.

We, on our part, have always admired France for its revolution for freedom, its quest for liberty and justice, which it carried aloft beginning with 1789 and even before then, since the days of the Encyclopedistes. We stood together and we also fought together. France has many friends in Israel. Israel has many friends in France. Let us reach out to each other and renew the friendship and cooperation between our peoples and countries.

Mr. Speaker, ladies and gentlemen, members of the Knesset:

The basic guidelines of the government's policy and the coalition agreement are placed before you. Nothing hidden has been introduced in the negotiations between the parties who, together, have joined in a brotherly covenant and have established the government for the administration of the affairs of the nation towards - so we hope, and with God's help - security and peace, construction and progress.

I have the honor to present to you the government which I have assembled in accordance with that task placed upon me by His Excellency, the President of the State, in accordance with the law: