King Hussein of Jordan, addressing the Egyptian Parliament today, offered a hard-line solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict and made it clear that he remains adamantly opposed to the Camp David accords that resulted in the only peace treaty between Israel and one of its Arab neighbors — the pact signed in 1979 by the late President Anwar Sadat and then Premier Menachem Begin of Israel.
Hussein appeared before the Egyptian legislature fresh from the weeklong Palestine National Council (PNC) meeting in Amman where he played host to Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasir Arafat and the so-called Palestinian-parliament-in-exile.
He outlined to the Egyptians, with whom Jordan resumed diplomatic relations last September 25 after breaking them in 1979, a five-point “peace plan” which he said should be the basis for an international peace conference attended by the permanent members of the UN Security Council, with the PLO participating on an equal footing with all other parties.
The basis of his plan, Hussein stressed, would be a trade-off of Israel occupied Arab territory for peace. He insisted that the territory returned must include “Arab East Jerusalem,” the West Bank and Gaza and the Golan Heights, all occupied by Israel in 1967.
Hussein faulted the Camp David accords for not treating the West Bank, Gaza and Golan Heights in the same way as Israel-occupied Sinai. Sinai was returned to Egypt in April, 1982, under the terms of the Israel-Egyptian peace traety. There was no immediate Israeli reaction to Hussein’s speech.
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.
