David Kimche, Director-General of the Israel Foreign Ministry, maintained here that Israel cannot leave south Lebanon until it is certain not only of the security of its northern border but of the safety of the people living in south Lebanon.
Kimche, in a talk at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) last Friday, stressed that those who call for Israel to withdraw now do not take into account that such a withdrawal could endanger the 50,000-70, Christians in south Lebanon as well as the sands of Palestinians in the refugee camps near Sidon.
“If we were just to get out and leave without anybody taking over I believe there would be very, very great danger of acts of massacre on a very large scale against those two communities,” he said.
He said that “we showed our willingness to withdraw when we signed the May 17 (1983) agreement. We had no intention of staying and we have no intention of staying.”
Kimche stressed that Israel “wants to leave as soon as possible, but only when we can be fairly reasonably certain that there will be security measures which will prevent massacres on the one hand and which prevent the return of hostile elements and terrorist attacks on our settlements and villages on the other hand.” He said the Lebanese army has not shown the capability or the willingness to do so as of yet.
ISRAEL’S ENTRY ENTRY INTO LEBANON WAS UNAVOIDABLE
Kimche said he was “absolutely convinced that we had no choice” and that Israel’s going into Lebanon in June, 1982 “was completely unavoidable.” He said it was made unavoidable by the “tremendous buildup” of arms by the Palestine Liberation Organization, especially after the July 1981 cease-fire agreements. He noted that the PLO was talking to Libya about putting in ground-to-ground missiles.
“We could not possibly stand by passively watching our towns and villages in northern Galilee gradually being emptied of population under the threat of Katyusha bombings,” Kimche declared. “If we had not entered Lebanon the entire Galilee would have eventually become an abnormal frontline zone and this we would not have afforded to happen. Our country is small enough as it is.”
Kimche said that events in Lebanon have proven that the creation of a strong central government in Lebanon is “wishful thinking” although he credited President Amin Gemayel with having “tried valiantly.” He implied that Gemayel’s assassinated brother, Bashir, might have accomplished it.
He envisioned as the solution for Lebanon a series of ethnic cantons, noting that the Druze and the Christians already had such “defacto” cantons. Lebanon should be “neutralized” and taken out of the Arab-Israel conflict as sort of a Mideast Switzerland or Austria, Kimche suggested.
But he stressed that while this may take years, it did not mean that the conditions for Israeli withdrawal could not come sooner.
On the wider issue of Mideast peace, Kimche said the next step should be “gradual but increasing realization in the Arab world that Israel exists and they can coexist with it.” He saw encouraging signs in the trade that is now going on through Jordan and thousands of Arabs who come across the Allenby Bridge to visit Israel.
“I can only hope that the Jordanians will for once become more courageous and that King Hussein will at long last put his foot in the cold water of the swimming pool and dive in,” he said. He pointed out that Israel has been “waiting for him since 1967” when then Defense Minister Moshe Dayan awaited a telephone call from the King.
Kimche rejected the argument that Israeli settlements were an obstacle to negotiations and said they should instead be an “incentive” for Hussein. He noted that there were only 30,000 Jewish settlers in Judaea, Samaria and Gaza against 1.2 million Arab inhabitants. “If King Hussein waits much longer, that 30,000 will probably be a great deal more,” he warned.
Kimche noted that when Israeli Premier Menachem Begin met with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat at Camp David they “were poles apart, they couldn’t have been further apart.” He said if they were able to reach an agreement, then Israel and other Arab countries can do so, too.
“The important thing is to come and sit down and talk peace,” he said. “I think that this is the very basic the most important factor in the Middle East today that so far none of our neighbors, with the exception of Egypt and Lebanon, have been willing to come and sit down.”
Kimche said that since 1967 there has been a great deal of criticism and condemnation of Israel but “we haven’t seen much pressure or much condemnation of those who refuse to come to the negotiating table.” He said this has made the chances of them agreeing to negotiate “much less.”
PEACE WITH EGYPT IS ‘VERY FIRM’
As for Israel’s peace with Egypt, Kimche said that while Israel would “like it to be a warmer peace,” he believes it is “very very firm and in place.” He said that Egypt wants to keep its relations with Israel in “low profile” in order to achieve a rapprochement with the Arab world. He added that while it is “legitimate” for Egypt to regain its place in the Arab world, Israel does not want to see it “at the expense” of Egypt’s relations with Israel.
Kimche spoke at the AEI after two days of meetings with State Department officials. He said there is “a greater amount of understanding” between the U.S. and Israel than has existed for a long time and at present there are no basic differences.
At a meeting with reporters earlier Friday, Kimche denied that Israel is providing arms for the U.S.-backed Contras who are fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. “We have not, we are not, and I presume, we will not be supplying arms or military equipment to the Contras,” he said.
Kimche said Israel would sell arms only to “properly constituted” governments, but he said El Salvador is not receiving any Israeli arms. He said during his talks in Washington he discussed means of increasing Israel’s technical assistance for peaceful purposes to the Third World, including Central America.
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