Mrs. Meir: Problems Enormous, ‘but I Am Convinced We Will Overcome Them’

In a Rosh Hashana message to Israelis and world Jewry released today, Premier Golda Meir referred to her nation’s continuing but hitherto unsuccessful quest for peace with its neighbors. She spoke of formidable gains of the domestic front, the high rate of immigration and the support extended to Israel by world Jewry which “has reached hitherto unknown peaks.” But the Premier also referred to “dangerous strains” that have “appeared in the inner fabric of Israeli society” which she said should be neither exaggerated nor minimized.

Speaking of the failure of peace efforts so far, the Premier said, “on the international plane, the attempts to besmirch our position and to lay at Israel’s door the lack of progress toward peace have, I believe, not succeeded in making deep inroads in world opinion. Since Aug., 1970, we have made concession after concession both for an overall settlement and for a partial settlement. All we have asked is that the search for peace should take place through free negotiations, even indirectly at the first stage, without prior conditions on either side and that the circumstances of partial Suez Canal settlement should not leave the threat of renewed war in the air.”

Are we really intransigent,” Mrs. Meir asked, “when we ask for the birthright of every individual nation–that at long last we enjoy a true and lasting peace, that we have frontiers which will minimize any threat of further aggression? How can any reasonable person ignore our experience over the past 20 years and treat the record of three wars, of continuous aggression, of a refusal to recognize our very existence, of uninterrupted violation of agreements, understandings and guarantees as if it were a tabula rasa?”

Mrs. Meir declared that despite the external pressures, Israel has continued in the past year to make great strides in the central task of rebuilding and buttressing the homeland. Recently, she noted, “Dangerous strains have appeared in the inner fabric of Israeli society. While not exaggerating their significance, one dare not minimize the dangers arising from the fact that hundreds of thousands of Israelis live in exiguous economic circumstances and that many tens of thousands of families do not have proper housing.” The government, Mrs. Meir said, is now appropriating vast emergency funds for housing and for education in order to insure the full integration in the future of youth from varying countries of origin and cultural background. “The problems are enormous, but I am convinced we will overcome them,” Mrs. Meir said.