Egyptian President Anwar Sadat apparently agrees with Israeli Premier Menachem Begin and not with President Carter regarding the period of the freeze on Israeli settlements on the West Bank. In a news conference with Arab reporters shortly after the conclusion of the Camp David summit conference, Sadat said the moratorium is for three months as Begin has contended and not for the five-year transitional period for the West Bank as Carter has been claiming.
“The freezing of the settlements is through the next three months,” Sadat told the Arab reporters. “By that time we shall have concluded the peace settlement” between Egypt and Israel as stipulated in the Egyptian-Israeli framework.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency was provided with the questions and answers last Friday of this phase of the news conference Sadat held. He also said that Egypt and the United States are in agreement that the Israeli settlements are illegal. He urged that his “personal advice” on handling the settlements issue was to avoid polemics but “put it on the table for negotiations” since it is a “delicate” matter.
Sadat made no mention in his remarks of a five-year period, the duration for the negotiations by Israel with Egypt, Jordan and the inhabitants of the West Bank which Carter has been noting in support of his contention that the freeze period was beyond three months.
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.
