Premier Golda Meir who will be 75 on May 3, 1973, said last night that she didn’t think Israel would achieve peace with its Arab neighbors during her lifetime. Mrs. Meir addressed the opening session of the 9th annual board conference of the American Women’s ORT, the first conference of the organization ever held outside the US. “I do not expect it (peace) in my lifetime, although I’d like it to happen,” she said. She said she did not think that during her lifetime “there will be at the head of any Arab government people who will want to live at peace with Israel.”
The Premier stressed that peace with the Arabs would come only when the Arab states are convinced of Israel’s strength and “the Arab leaders will just have to conclude that they cannot get rid of us.” She also told the 1500 ORT delegates that once a peace agreement is reached with the Arabs, Israel must make sure that it remains a Jewish State with “a large majority of Jews so that we don’t have to wake up each morning and ask if the babies born during the night were Jews or Arabs.”
Mrs. Meir dismissed as “nonsense” allegations that Israel was intransigent on withdrawal from the occupied Arab territories. But she observed that it would be impossible for anyone to be elected to the Israeli government on a platform of total withdrawal. “We’ve learned our lesson,” she said. “Nobody will be elected to the government of Israel if they want to be cooperative and say we’ll just move back and start all over again. If those (old) boundaries were so good, why were they attacked?” she asked.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
