Edward Sanders, senior advisor to President Carter and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, and a liaison to the American Jewish community, said today that in his view the Carter Administration does not “push” for an overall peace settlement in the Mideast in an attempt to frustrate a separate Egyptian Israeli peace treaty.
Answering questions at the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith’s national commission meeting at the New York Hilton, Sanders said “I believe there is a dedication in the Administration to achieve peace between Egypt and Israel.” He added, however, that his understanding is that the Administration sees the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt as the first stage for a settlement in the Mideast and that it wants the peace process to continue after an agreement between those two countries is concluded.
Sanders, who answered questions by ADL leaders expressing concern that the Carter Administration is “biased” against Israel and tilting towards the Arabs, said that according to his “experience” the President is not tilting toward the Arab position. He said, in response to another question, that the relations between Carter, Premier Menachem Begin of Israel and President Anwar Sadat of Egypt “are fine and excellent.” Recently, reports in the American press contended that Carter and Begin distrust and dislike one another.
On the issue of the future of Jerusalem and the West Bank, Sanders said that presently the Administration’s position is that “the future of Jerusalem is negotiable.” He added that the Administration believes Jerusalem should not be “physically separated” in the future. He pointed out that U.S. policy supports the nation that Israeli security presence on the West Bank should extend beyond any political arrangement achieved in the future.
Sanders told the meeting that he views his job as representing American Jew, “your opinions, thoughts and fears” and to see to it that the Administration understands these views.
URGES NON-INTERVENTION BY CARTER
At an earlier session, Sen. Robert Dole (R. Kansas) called the Camp David accords “a smashing success” but said that now Carter should adopt a non-intervention attitude and allow Egypt and Israel to find a permanent peace between themselves. He suggested that the Carter Administration has reverted back to a “bankrupt” policy of “bringing all of Israel’s adversaries together on one side and putting Israel on the other.” Jordan will not come to the table, he observed, and therefore “Israel is being asked to negotiate with phantoms.”
Dole said that the Carter Administration’s “principal failing” in pushing for on overall peace is its view of Arab nations in “monolithic terms.” He pointed out: “This not only ignores a history of fratricidal conflict between the Arab states, but it pushes aside the open hostilities which go on today.”
Dole, who made an unsuccessful bid for Vice President in 1976, remarked that the two “frameworks” for peace achieved at Camp David — one between Israel and Egypt, the other a general peace treaty — “looked conspicuously like the step-by-step process which Governor Carter campaigned against. ” He quipped, sarcastically, that “only a cynic would think the timing of it had anything to do” with the then-upcoming November elections.
Now, Dole declared, “when the shouting died down,” the differences of opinions between the U.S. and Israel about the overall peace are emerging. “The clock was being turned back,” he asserted and “the groundwork was reconstructed for portraying Israeli Premier Menachem Begin as an impediment to peace.”
The Senator told the approximately 500 Jewish communal leaders that the disputes are “not between the U.S. and Israel’s enemies, but between the U.S. and Israel on behalf of her enemies.” Calling for less interference by the U.S., Dole suggested that “real peace with Egypt would lay the groundwork for eventual peace elsewhere, and, in the meantime, would reflect a pragmatic approach to peace, and a turning away from the dogma of a comprehensive settlement.”
He expressed hope the U.S. finds “its way back to that truth,” or else “Egypt and Israel ought to proceed bilaterally as they set out to do last November.”
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.
