FBIS Coverage of the Middle East Peace Talks- 1978 September

P F R RELEAS ISTORICAL DI I N AR 70-1 V2 -_3 ' - )
V. 26 Sep 78 ISR Ni1
BE ADDRESSES KNESSET ON CAMP DAVID ACCORDS 12 IS LL
TA250936Y Jerusalem Domestic Telev sion Service in Hebrew 0822 GMT 25 Sep 78 TA
[peech to Knesset by Prime MinistefMenahem Begin on 25 September--liveJ
[Text] Mr. Chairman, I have no alternative but o repeat my remarks for the thirdtime.. [After several interruptions by MK Gerula Kohen.) I am bt'inging to theKnesset and, through it, to the nation, the structure for the makin; of peace withthe strongest and greatest of the Arab countries and in the course of time, unavoid-ably, with all our neighbors. The documents agreed upon at the Camp David conferenceand signed by me on behalf of the Government of Israel, in the White House, are setout before you. Therefore I will not read them. I will not be able to make such aspeech today, because of political, psychological reasons, Iwill not be able to re-veal the contents of two other documents, which are the first Egyptian document whichwas presented to President Carter and me at our first meeting at Camp David,.and thefirst U. S. document which was presented to the two delegations, the Israeli and theEgyptian. One of these :days these two documents, too, will be published and thenit will be made plain to everyone in Israel and the other countries of the worldwhat we achieved and what we did not achieve; what we prevented, what we rejected,what we accepted and what sacrifices we made for the sake of peace, for the sake ofpreventing encirclement, for the sake of the wellbeing of our people and that of thepeople around us.
Before anything else, I wish, as is my duty, to thank the team: Foreign MinisteMoshe Dayan and Defense Minister 'Ezer Weizman, without whose help and activity theachievement of the agreements would have been impossible; and our ambassador in theUnited States, Simha Dinitz and Professor Baraq and Dr. Rosenne, our two thoroughlyexpert legalists, who worked day and night. MaJ Gen Avraham Tamir, one of thebest of the experts on Israelis security; Brigadier General Poran; Col Ilan Tehilaand Yehirel Qadishay, Dan Pattir, Eli Rubinstein and our security staff, who guardedus night and day with boundless devotion and loyalty. We had a team. We worked asa team. After every meeting between us and the U.S. delegation, after every talkbetween one of our colleagues and one of the members of the Egyptian delegation,would meet, whether it was day or night, for a jdint consultation, and each ofdelegation members, with no difference of national rank, expressed his views with
complete freedom and everyone tried to take into account the views of the others.To this team I will say, in plain words, all honor is due.
From this podium I am again going to thank the President of the United States,Mr Jimmy Carter, for the very fact of his initiative in convening such an un-precedented conference. We searched through the history of the last century forprecedents for the Camp David conference; we did not find any. This--was a uniqueconference and the U.S. President initiated'it, conducted it, devoted to it notonly days, but nights, too;. worked until dawn and after an hour or so was on hisfeet again; took a direct interest in the formulations And not only in the ideas,deliberated with us on every clause, on every sentence, on every word and sometimes,as I will yet prove, even on every letter. There were difficulties at the con-ferences. They were unavoidable.' There were crises at the conference. Those,
too, could not have been prevented fromthe beginning.
The U.S. President never despaired for even a moment, even at the gravest moments, andhe believed that the end would be positive. He went from representative to representa-tive and never did he hesitate to, suggest visiting the cabins of the heads of theEgyptian and Israeli delegations. He did not rest, did not flag, he did not despairuntil the tripartite agreement was achieved. I am sure that I will express theviews of all the members of the Knesset if from here, from Jerusalem, from thepodium of the house of the elected, I send our heartfelt thanks and recognition tothe President of the United States for his initiative, for his toil and for hisdevotion during the days of the deliberations at that important international conference.