Sen. Jacob Javits (R.NY), speaking at a solidarity dinner at the Shaar Hashomayim Synagogue here last Thursday night, on the occasion of the launching of the 1978 Combined Jewish Appeal and Israel Emergency Fund, said that the American people “will not be willing to support any peace plan which Israel will consider as a mortal danger.”
Javits said that the Camp David summit conference “was brought on by a state of desperation and the President of the United States recognized that it was taken as an extreme measure.” He said that “it seems clear to me” that Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s “strategy was to force the United States to propose its own plan of peace tilted towards Egypt.”
The Senator noted that with the Soviet Union “mucking up the situation in the Middle East, the U.S. emerged as the only credible party to both Egypt and Israel.” Despite the American sale of planes to Saudi Arabia and Egypt last spring “it is a great tribute to Israel that its confidence in the United States was not shaken and it is an equal tribute to the U.S. that it remained loyal in its commitments to Israel,” Javits observed.
As to the Camp David talks, he said he believes that what will emerge regarding a settlement “will be a meaningful contribution to peace. I hope that Sadat will speak not only about guarantees for Israel in terms of paper guarantees but of real guarantees which will give Israel a feeling of total security. The alternative to peace may be war.” Javits also stated that he hoped the Aswan formula which Carter projected during his visit with Sadat last January “will prevail and that the Palestinians will have a voice in those deliberations which will be a matter of the future and no more.”
Carter said at Aswan Jan. 4 that one of his principles for peace was, “there must be a resolution of the Palestinian problem in all its aspects. The resolution of the Palestinian problem must recognize the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and enable the Palestinians to participate in the determination of their own future.” Unlike Carter’s previous references to a Palestinian state, the Aswan statement did not contain this reference and left open the specifics of the future for the Palestinians.
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.
