FBIS Coverage of the Middle East Peace Talks- 1978 September

PPROVED FOR RELEASE CIA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS DIVISION AR 70-14 NOV201
V. 2 9 Sep 78 N 14
I asked myself: Can you take the responsibility u;pon yourself and place it on yourcolleagues to make a decision today and not to decide about the settlements, or decidethat they should remain knowing that negotiatins would not even begin, and all our toilof 12 days and 12 nights at Camp David would be in vain; would sink to a bottomless depth.Or, take the responsibility, place it on your shoulders, bear words of despise, bear wordsof vilification, both within this house and outside it,.accept everything with love. Thisis the love without return, as has been a tradition with Israel. Take the responsibilityand tell the Knesset and the nation: This is the most practical chance to reach a peacetreaty for the first time in 30 years.'
The peace treaty is almost already prepared, what has been agreed upon with respect to thebilateral relations between Egypt and Israel isaalmost the entire peace treaty. One mustonly copy it, perhaps add several things, several clauses which normally do not causedifferences, and we will have a peace treaty perhaps within the next 2 or 3 months. Every-thing I talked about previously is attainable. It lies in the palm of our hand. It is notNovembe~r or December in Ismailia. It is not Leeds Castle. It is Camp David. We have infact already attained the entire contents of a peace treaty._
How should you vote? How should you decide? To throw all this to the sea, and say thatour settlements must remain?
I.wish to tell you something about the settlements: How they are dear to me. I am notdistinguishing between parties and settlenents. Everyone knows that I love every settler-When I was a member of the National Unity Qatinet, the NAPAM kibbutzim invited me to lectue
there and heard, and saw, and knee wht alovebi~pmthethart is. Throughout my life you havenot paid attention to this; perhaps you. did not want to read.
Zeev Jabotinsky and also his disciples said that the pioneering enterprise in Israel is agreat enterprise. In 1948, after we emerged from slavery to freedom, I told the membersof the.Irgun: The war is over; let us go and till our motherland, and thus the settlementswere established. I love them all. All of them are entrenched deep in my heart. True,in the Rafah approaches there are three Betar Movement (established by Jabotinsky followers]settlements. There are young people, youth, and a relatively large number of them have comeo me--as a member of the Betar :Movenent who joined the movement at the age of 16--and they,of course, say their thing: How it hurts, how the heart aches.
However, when.I serve in the office of prime minister, it is my duty to think about therealities of another resolution, when I know that a peace treaty is within reach. Then,when I know this, may I--as a friend of theirs.-think about their sons, lest they reiainand the peace treaty slip from between our fingers, that same treaty which can be felt inthe hand, and their sons might fall in battle if, God forbid, war breaks out? .May a primeminister worry about the sons in these settlements or not? Even if they tell me: Do notworry, we are, the fathers and the mothers and we worry about our children--even if theysay so, still the prime minister is obligated to make suxe that another war does not breakout and there is not more slaughter and there are no more orphans and bereaved people,because this has been the aspiration throughout all these dozens of years of my servicefor this nation, not since 1907, but since 30 November 1947.,
For 4 and 1/2 years we fou:ght against the British rule, no Arab ever raised a hand againsta Jew, total peace prevailed between Jews and .Arabs. After the-decision in the UnitedNations, the following days, there were the first battles, the first deaths, the firstkilled. Since then, there has been no man who wants peace more than I do. This is myconfession. Like me, so all of you, but none more than I.
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