Menachem Beigin, leader of the Likud opposition, said here today that President Ford is a “great friend” of Israel but claimed that to blame Israel for the breakdown of Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger’s efforts to achieve a second-stage Sinai agree- ment was an “absolutely unfair judgment” and a “gross injustice.” Beigin was questioned by a panel of journalists on the NBC-TV “Meet the Press” program.
“Negotiations are always possible, we stand for negotiations,” Beigin said when asked if he thought the search for a bilateral accord with Egypt could be resumed. But he said that Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s demands, if accepted by Israel, would have jeopardized Israel’s ability to defend itself.
He observed that no nation has ever relinquished territory taken in war while the state of war was still in effect, Sadat’s terms are aimed at the destruction of Israel and his position amounts to offering non-belligerency to a non-existent state, the Likud leader declared.
Beigin said he recognized the “Arab nation” which comprises 20 sovereign states of some 12 million square kilometers, of which the people “who call themselves Palestinians” are part. He said no injustice would be perpetrated if one percent of the Arab people lived under the sovereignty of the Jewish State.
NO EQUATION BETWEEN PLO, IRGUN
He said Arabs living in Israeli territory were entitled to social and cultural autonomy and the right to opt for Israeli citizenship or retain their previous citizenship. But he stressed his position that the land from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River belonged by historic right “to all of the Jewish people” and that no other state can be interposed between those boundaries.
Beigin denied that he had ever foreclosed returning “an inch” of territory to the Arabs and asserted that Israeli-Egyptian borders could be established in Sinai within the framework of a peace settlement. He maintained that Egypt could reach a settlement with Israel independent of the other Arab states.
Beigin denounced as “sacrilege” any equation of the Palestine Liberation Organization with the underground Irgun that he headed during the era of the British Mandate in Palestine. He said the difference was in aims and methods. The Irgun, he said, was building a nation while the PLO, which he branded the “PDO–Palestine Destruction Organization,” aims to destroy a people. He said Irgun took great risks to forewarn the British authorities and all civilians before acting while the PLO deliberately “murders children.”
Asked why he thought that he, who was born in Poland had more right to live in Palestine than PLO chieftain Yasir Arafat who was born in Jerusalem, Beigin replied, “historically, we (the Jews) were all born in Jerusalem and came back to the land of our forefathers. We built, Arafat tries to destroy.” He said that Arabs had a right to live in Palestine but the land belongs to the Jews.
Beigin recalled that when he served as a minister in former Premier Golda Meir’s short-lived national coalition government after the 1967 Six-Day War, President Nixon sent a message to Mrs. Meir pledging that the U.S. would not press Israel to return any territory before a final peace treaty is signed. However, Beigin indicated that Nixon’s Secretary of State, Kissinger, was in his opinion applying “salami” tactics–stripping territory from Israel slice-by-slice.
CERTAIN OF CONTINUED U.S. SUPPORT
He said he was not concerned by reported neo-isolationism in the U.S. and said that whatever the reappraisal by the Ford Administration of its Mideast policy, he was certain that Israel would continue to receive American support and military supplies while the Soviets arm the Arabs. He warned that a cut-off of American military supplies to Israel could result in a miscalculation by the Arabs and lead to a new war. In that event, he predicted the Arabs would suffer a stunning defeat.
Beigin said he was not opposed to reconvening the Geneva conference. “No one will shoot at us in Geneva. They may shout at us,” he said, but Israel would “state calmly the justice of its cause, its right to its land and all of its positive proposals.” Later today Beigin was scheduled to address the national executive committee of the Zionist Organization of America.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
