Premier Menachem Begin forcefully took issue with recent policy statements by U.S. officials at a session with the American Jewish Committee’s Board of Governors here today. He used the term “appeasement” to describe the American approach that a Palestinian solution would help American strategic deployment in the entire region.
Israel would not be “the sacrifice” in a policy of appeasement towards the Arabs, Begin declared. He did not refer to Administration officials by name but he left no doubt that he was referring especially to recent statements by Secretary of State Cyrus Vance that a resolution of the Palestinian problem would boast American influence with Moslem and Arab states and ease the strategic position against Soviet advances in the Middle East.
AJ Committee officials said later they clearly understood the Premier’s message to them to be a call to resist this line of policy thinking on the part of the American Administration. Begin said Israel for its part would “resist voices which remind us of the thirties … of appeasing a strong combination of states at the expense of a little country, perhaps sealing its fate.” He reasserted Israelis rights to live anywhere in “Eretz Israel.” “A right exists in order to be used, not to remain unused,” he said. The settlements were “part of our national security in the most absolute sense of the word. How can we give them up?”
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