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Begin Invites Hussein to Join the Mideast Peace Process

January 31, 1983
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Premier Menachem Begin invited King Hussein of Jordan last night to join in the Middle East peace process. He insisted, however, that the invitation was being extended within the framework of the 1978 Camp David accords from which there must be no deviations, no contradictions and no additions that would change its meaning.

Begin addressed the closing session of the Prime Minister’s 1983 Israel Bond Organization conference here. He said there is no nation in the world which yearns for peace more than the people of Israel. But, he added, the Jewish people have an inalienable right to live in Israel “in all its parts.”

President Yitzhak Navon, addressing the conference delegates earlier at a meeting in the Presidential residence, observed that PLO chief Yasir Arafat tells the Western press and diplomats he is willing to live in peace with Israel but says just the opposite in his messages to the Arab people. Navon said that in reading the Arabic press he found that the PLO leaders adhere faithfully to their charter which calls for the elimination of Israel.

On the subject of Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt, Navon said that while President Hosni Mubarak supports the peace process, the Egyptian press is conducting an anti-Semitic campaign which includes cartoons that could have come from Julius Streicher’s Nazi press.

WORK TO BEGIN SHORTLY ON CANAL PROJECT

A Bonds conference highlight was the dedication of a marker and the burial of a time capsule containing the names of the founding contributors to the Mediterranean-Dead Sea canal, a major hydro-electric project. The capsule was buried at the site where the digging is to begin.

Energy Minister Yitzhal Modai told the delegates that work will begin shortly on designs for the $1.4 billion hydro-electric power plant and the canal which is expected to open a new phase in the agricultural development of the Negev. The Israel Bond Organization is providing seed money for the canal.

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