May 1977, Reminiscence of Israel’s 47 Years Self-Sabotaging Policies

Menachem Begin, in his first interview after he was elected Israel’s Prime Minister, talked about the pressure regarding Judea and Samaria (the correct pronunciation is Yehuda and Shomron), and the situation as part of the sovereign state of Israel.

May 1977 Menachem Begin

In May 1977, four years after the 1973 Yom Kippur war ended, in an interview (in Hebrew, translated into English by this op-ed author) with Ya’akov Achimeir, former senior Israeli journalist, and a television and radio personality, Prime Minister Menachem Begin said the following:

Pay attention that Prime Minister Begin uses the term Arabs not “Palestinians.”

PM Begin: “I am not claiming that the Arabs will accept Israel’s plan. They do not receive any suggested Israeli plan.”

So far, since 1977, the Arabs have turned down each plan Israel presented to them because they want to destroy Israel and not live side-by-side with her.

PM Begin: “The difference is that those who say that we will give up the Judea and Samaria territories do not achieve an agreement with the Arabs; they are unable to achieve such an agreement, but they invite pressure in America as well, to say: you do not agree enough to withdraw. Withdraw just a little more.”

The October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre in Israel opened Israel’s and the world’s eyes to the fact that even Judea and Samaria are a terror wasp nest, where the majority of Arabs residing there support Hamas’ barbarism. That leaves the Palestinian Authority’s jurisdiction in parts of Judea and Samaria in question whether it could continue to exist there.

PM Begin: “And the evidence, President Jimmy Carter’s announcement before the elections, which he said several weeks before May 17, about the withdrawal to the June 4, 67′ lines with minor corrections’ basically according to the well-known Rogers’ plan. Therefore, this concept is completely misleading. It has some [good] sound. As the late Prime Minister Levi Eshkol would say, everyone is in love with his/her own compromises.”

Biden’s Delusion

Once again the sound bites of “a two-state-solution,” and “a Palestinian State” are heard from the Joseph Biden White House. A Palestinian state, 27.81 miles away from Tel Aviv, with an Army and air-force translates to the destruction of Israel.

Israel’s cabinet has rejected Biden’s Palestine, seeing it as “a reward for terrorism.”

The British journalist Douglas Murray in a special interview with Lilat Shemesh on Israel TV channel 14 said that “the west – USA, Britain – is holding to the ‘two state solution’ dead paradigm.” He suggests they “catch up already.” Murray also said that “there is no country in the world that provides humanitarian aid to its enemy” … But Israel, held to a triple standard no other country in the world is held to and will allow to be subjected to such hypocrisy.”

Biden announced that he will unilaterally recognize the “Palestine state” after the Swords of Iron war, Israel vs. Hamas, ends. This announcement only shows how totally detached from reality he and his administration are.

In response however, members of Netanyahu’s war cabinet went as far as to call for Israel to threaten those who are meddling with a “Palestine” idea that it will cancel the Oslo Accords that created the failed Palestinian Authority (PA). I think they should have done that long ago and now the time is as ripe as ever to declare the PA null and void.

Israel’ Ynet News Site quoted Gideon Sa’ar, a member with Benny Gantz’s National Unity Party, who said that the reported US proposal to place a “firm timeline” on the creation of a “Palestine state,” would be like the sacrifice of Czechoslovakia in 1938,” referring to the 1938 Munich Agreement and Europe’s failed strategy of appeasing Germany’s Nazi regime in a bid to avoid a conflict. That debacle took off to become WWII and the extermination of 6 million Jews.

PM Begin: “But this is not about love, rather about policy. And so I ask not to use this misguided and misleading term. I think we will work to explain the common interest between us and the United States and there need not be any confrontation; there doesn’t have to be American pressure.”

Israel must now show strength in the face of Biden’s unilateral “Palestine” announcement and work to explain the common interest between the two countries.

Interviewer: “But your policy is not accepted in Washington, Mr. Begin. From my experience, I know that there is not a single senator in the US, not a single government official, who is willing to put up with a policy that would apply Israeli law to Judea and Samaria.”

PM Begin: “The problem of applying the law is a problem of discussion and a special decision by the Knesset. I want to ask you Ya’akov, to this day, did any Israeli representative ever tell a [US] senator that Judea and Samaria, by law, by justice, by right, should be an inseparable part of Israeli sovereignty?”

It remains true that Israeli law does not yet apply to Judea and Samaria. It is now the time to correct this policy mistake.

PM Begin: “What claims do you or any other Israeli have to these [US] senators when you tell me that they are not ready to accept the policy according to which Judea and Samaria should be an integral part of the sovereignty? Should they be more pro-Israel than the Israelis themselves? They received lessons from Mr. Yigal Allon, from Mr. Shimon Peres and Mr. Yitzhak Rabin and from Mrs. Golda Meir that we are ready to give up the Judea and Samaria territories. Then it entered their heads that this is actually a just policy, because the Israelis themselves preach it.”

Israel Must Change Its Lexicon

What Mr. Begin said in 1977 must be understood in Israel and applied to the language of the 2024 political arena.

Mr. Begin was very correct. So the first message Israel must give to the world is: we changed our lexicon. We will apply a policy according to which Judea and Samaria are finally an integral part of the state of Israel’s sovereignty. After all, it is the ancestral land of the Jewish people. And since Judea and Samaria are an elevated region it must be seen as Israel’s sea shore security protection shield.

The second message Israel must give to the world is: the past is null and void. Israel is no longer willing to give up Judea and Samaria territories to become “a Palestine state.” A “Palestine state” can be established outside of Israel’s borders. One suggestion is Jordan, which is “Palestine.”