Premier Menachem Begin advised some 300 reserve soldiers and airmen who had questioned his government’s policies, to let the government run the peace negotiations as it sees fit and stop interfering. Begin delivered a stem lecture in response to a petition signed by the reservists earlier this week asking him to choose “peace over territories.”
He chided the signatories for making their petition public before he received it. He told them, “It is the privilege of the petitioners to express their views.” But “do they believe they can impose these views on the nation’s representatives who were elected to run the country’s affairs?” he asked.
He also asked the soldiers to tell him personally if they accepted the claims by Egypt, Jordan and other Arab countries for Israel’s a priori commitment to withdraw to its 1967 borders and grant the West Bank and Gaza Strip residents the right of self-determination. He said he hoped their answers would be negative. He assured the reservists that his government is doing its utmost to end war and bring peace.
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