Documents / FOIA release
This is a Central Intelligence Agency release of Foreign Broadcast Information Service coverage of the Middle East peace talks from December 1977. It collects British, Israeli and Soviet press and radio items on President as-Sadat's initiative and the planned Cairo conference. It also covers Prime Minister Begin's visit to London, Secretary of State Vance's regional tour and the Knesset debate on the peace plan. It contains no material on unidentified aerial phenomena.
“Cairo”42 pages
PPROVED FOR RELEASE CIA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS DIVISION AR 70-14 13NOV201 eV. 28 Dec 77 N 10 ISRAEL I love them, am fond of them and will continue to be fond of them. But there is no choice. You have to accept responsibility with a degree of civilian courage, without which there can be no crucial political decisions. It is clear to me that we are taking the right road to facilitate negotiations for a peace treaty and to facilitate its signing, After examining all the other paths, as they have been mentioned more than once in the course of Knesset discussions, I no longer have any doubts that the only path to faci- litate negotiations toward the signing of a peace treaty is the path proposed by the government. Thus, if it will be necessary to insist on this. In debates with dear and beloved friends, we shall do so. It is a fact, however, that the responsibility is great and that there are risks. I repeat, therefore: In Ismailia, in the wake of the visit in Washington and in London, we, the Government of Israel, have done our share; we have made our contribution; and now it is the turn of the other side. If those people in the Egyptian Foreign Ministry whose thinking is limited to the routine assume that they will succeed in exerting international pressures on us so that we accept the positions of that ministry that are unacceptable to us and with which we shall not agree, they are mistaken. Even if pressure were exerted upon us, Mr Chairman, it would be of no avail, because we are accustomed to pressure and to not surrendering to it. I am convinced, however, that no international pressure will be exerted on the State of Israel. That is impossible. The people who praised our peace plan as fair, as constructive, as a breakthrough, are very serious people. They know its full content, except for certain amendments which, too, have been submitted to our American friends and which do not change the substance of the plan. This is the plan I submitted td President Carter and to President as-Sadat. And they cannot, at the beck and call of routineathinking people at the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, change their opinion within a few weeks. We now enjoy great moral support throughout the United States, both in the administration and in both houses of Congress. In the House of Representatives, the leader of the Democratic majority in the house, Mr Wright, praises and accepts this peace plan. The same goes for U.S. public opinion and, last but not least, among the Jewish community in the United States. Hence, the routine people in the Egyptian Foreign Ministry are only falsely deluding themselves that if we do not accept their outdated and completely unrealistic formulas, international pressure will be exerted on us. It will not be exerted. And we shall pursue our path of bringing peace to the Israeli nation, of establishing peace in the Middle East. This has been my innermost ambition--not since the days of May-June 1977, but since November-December 1947;. since the days when, after a respite of peaceful relations between Eretz Yisra'el Arabs and Eretz Yisra'el Jews, the first bullet was dispatched by an Arab hand into the heart of a Jew; and since the days when I called, 'from the underground, on the Arabs of Eretz Yisra'el and urged them: Do not shed Jewish blood; let us build the land together, so that it may be a glorious land for both peoples. The bloodshed, however, continued and there have been the five bloody wars we want to put an end to by making peace and by signing peace treaties. [indistinct interjections from the floor] This is our innermst ambition. And I am certain, Mr Chairman, and I can express the view of the entire house--except, perhaps for the opinion of a single faction--when I say that this is the innermost ambition of the entire Jewish nation: to give peace to the land, after we have made this land free.
Not linked to a story yet.
FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 65 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.