(Editor's note: This is an edited version of the pamphlet published by the Ariel Center for Policy Research with the subtitle: A Study in the Jewish Attitude toward National Sovereignty. AFSI/ will be publishing it in three sections over the next three issues. )
The Israeli death wish finds expression in the systematic destruction of the national existential purpose. This process is implemented both by the leadership -- whose actions stand in direct contrast to their words -- and the general public.
At Camp David, Menachem Begin signed an agreement which he himself characterized as "a war treaty." Yitzhak Rabin's decisive contribution to the establishment of a Palestinian state stands in polar opposition to his claims that a Palestinian state signaled the end of the Jewish state. Shimon Peres, who has taken the lead in sending Israel back to the 1967 borders, repeatedly sounded warnings that "in the absence of defensible borders the State will be obliterated in war." Benjamin Netanyahu's spiritual world is based on the assumption that Judea and Samaria, the cradle of the Hebrew nation, are an organic part of the Jewish state and relinquishing them means terminating the national existential purpose. But it was he who, in the Hebron agreement and with greater vigor in the Wye Plantation agreements, ceded most of Judea and Samaria, and did more than any of his predecessors to bring about the actual partition of Jerusalem.
Let us look at just a few of the pronouncements of these leaders that reveal the yawning gap between what they know to be true and what they do. In the Autumn issue of the quarterly Ha-Umma, published in October 1977, this is what then Prime Minister Begin had to say about Anwar Sadat's policies.
"Sadat adopted the policy of 'continuing the war through alternative tactics.' This became apparent especially in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War. In the interim agreement, Sadat made enormous gains without paying any real price. Therefore, he hopes to attain his remaining goals by adopting a policy which perpetuates the war without the fighting -- and why not? That monstrous creature [Begin refers to Hitler, admired by Sadat] preferred conquests without wars...
"Sadat therefore is continuing this policy vis-a-vis Israel, a prolongation of the Yom Kippur War employing different tactics...The 'peace' which he hopes to achieve on his terms, that is a complete Israel withdrawal from Sinai, in addition to what he refers to as 'restoring the rights of the Palestinian nation,' in other words, simple and clear to anyone in this country with a molecule of sense in his head, obliteration of the Jewish state. If this goal can be achieved without war -- all the better! This is his aspiration...this is not a peace agreement; it's a war treaty...and I, Menachem Begin, will never sign it."
But of course, Menachem Begin subsequently signed just such a treaty. More than that, only two months prior to the publication of the article from which the above quotations come, he initiated the process that allowed Sadat to reach precisely the destructive goals (for Israel) that Begin so clearly laid out. For at the end of August 1977, Begin visited Bucharest and asked President Ceaucescu to apprise Sadat of his readiness to relinquish Sinai to him. The surprised Sadat refused to believe the Rumanian tyrant and so Moshe Dayan was dispatched to Morocco on September 16 for a meeting with Hassan Tohami, the Egyptian Deputy Prime Minister, where he repeated Begin's promise to return to the June 4, 1967 border with Egypt. This time, Sadat relented and the "peace" commenced.
At Camp David then, Begin signed an agreement which he had characterized a few months before as a "war treaty," including a paragraph calling for the "restoration of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian
Yitzhak Rabin said in July 1978, "Begin's autonomy plan is a catastrophe which leads directly to a Palestinian state...autonomy must be prevented."
At the time, one of the most vociferous opponents of Begin's policy was none other than Yitzhak Rabin. Said Rabin to a meeting of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Security Committee (reported in Ha'aretz of August 1, 1978): "Begin's autonomy plan is a catastrophe which leads directly to a Palestinian state...autonomy must be prevented...the Labor Party will vote against it."
Almost a decade later, Rabin was echoing this perspective. At an economic forum in Rehovot (reported in Ma'ariv, August 3, 1986) Rabin declared: "Those who
(Continued on p.4)
July-August 1999 - 3 - Outpost