Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Yehuda Blum sharply attacked Saudi Arabia’s eight-point peace plan last night, charging that the plan “instead of supporting direct peace negotiations among the parties, attempts to impose upon them its own dictates.”
Appearing before students at Brandeis University, near Boston, the Israeli envoy charged that the Saudi plan, which calls for total Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem, and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, “is nothing but an attempt to dismember the State of Israel in stages.”
Referring to the part of the program which affirms the right of all the countries of the region to live in peace, Blum pointed out that the Secretary General of the Arab League, Shezly al-Kliby and Crown Prince Fahd of Saudi Arabia, who presented the eight-point peace plan last August, have already stated openly that this does not imply the recognition of Israel.
“When Arab rejectionist states refer to ‘countries of the region’ they do not include the State of Israel in the definition of the term countries, since Israel in their view, is ‘a deformed entity’,” Blum said.
Continuing, the Israeli Ambassador stated, “Saudi Arabia has interferred with the peace process since its inception. Saudi Arabia continues to call for a holy war, or Jihad, against Israel and supports and finances the PLO, acting as its international agent. The sole purpose of the so called peace plan,” Blum declared, “is to undermine the Camp David accords and Security Council Resolution 242.”
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