The Israeli Embassy said that solution of the Arab-Israeli impasse “cannot be merely a step-by-step withdrawal” by Israeli forces but “a step-by-step movement towards an overall political settlement between Israel and the Arab states” in which “negotiation of the future boundaries must be a part.”
“The pacification of the Middle East will begin in earnest,” the Embassy said in a “Pink Paper” on Israel policy, “once the Arab governments decide to accept Israel as a legitimate and permanent political entity in the region and, on that basis, move forward together to a settlement of our differences.”
Analyzing the current prospects for a settlement at a time when Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger was in the Middle East seeking progress towards new agreements, the “Pink Paper” said that “retention of at least part” of the “extra territory” it had gained in 1987 “spells a substantial degree of security as was amply demonstrated” in the Yom Kippur War. It did not outline the territory Israel seeks to retain.
Israel, the paper said, is prepared “in the spirit” of United Nations Resolutions 242 and 338 to “offer territorial concessions as part of a general movement” towards a political settlement with its neighbors. It added that “whether indeed Israel make such concessions, how much territory it will yield, and how rapidly it will yield it, depends on the extent of its neighbors’ willingness to show by word and by deed that they, for their part, are also prepared to move towards such a settlement.”
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