Parliamentary Assembly

Ms Meir, Prime Minister of Israel

Of course, Mr President.

Ms Meir, Prime Minister of Israel

Thank you very much for what you have said, and I am very glad to answer the two questions. We have said, and the policy has remained up to this moment, and I am sure it will not change after the elections – at least, this will not change after the elections – that we are prepared at any time, at any place, to negotiate with our Arab neighbours on the possibility of a peace treaty which, naturally, will include the question of borders, without any preconditions.

I know it is sometimes said to us, “But you put down conditions when you say” – and the government has said, and parliament has said – “We will not go back to the 1967 borders. Those borders that were destroyed by war.” But we do not ask any one of our neighbours to accept this stand of ours before negotiations.

For instance, President Sadat says that not one inch of the Sinai Desert can remain with Israel. We do not say “Since this is your decision, there is no sense in negotiation; we will not negotiate with you”. He asks us to accept that before negotiation. Therefore, we certainly will not accept his demands, nor do we demand of him that he should accept any one of our positions.

We want to meet. Each side is absolutely free to put all its demands and all its views on the table. That is why there must be negotiation. If we all agreed beforehand to one point of view, there would be no need for negotiations.

There are very serious differences between us and our Arab neighbours. We believe that with a sincere desire for real peace we can overcome the differences. Compromises will have to be made. We believe that after a period of negotiations we can come to a peace agreement.

We do not see any possibility of evacuating any part of the occupied territories without negotiation and without a peace agreement. On the other hand, there is no doubt in my mind that, through negotiations, some territories at any rate will not be kept by Israel. We are dealing also with territories that were never assigned by the League of Nations. The Western Bank was never assigned to Jordan and part of the old city of Jerusalem was not assigned to Jordan. Perhaps the inadmissibility of acquiring territory by force should be applied equally to all sides. At any rate, the Western Bank has very close and dear historic memories for our people, yet I am convinced that through negotiations we can reach agreement; but not evacuation and then letting the Arab armies again come to the same borders on which we were attacked in 1967.

As to efforts, I make this statement without any reservation: we have lost no chance to ask people who have travelled to Egypt or Syria and back to deliver the message that we are prepared, if President Sadat or President Assad is not prepared to meet us immediately in public negotiations, to meet at any level in any way to try to begin to talk. Maybe tomorrow at the Council I shall have something particular to say, at least about one case of this kind. To my sorrow, we have never received a positive answer that in any way, somewhere, somebody can meet somebody just to talk. Even that was not accepted. But we hope for the future.

Ms Meir, Prime Minister of Israel

Thank you very much, Mr Ahlmark. We appreciate greatly what this Council has done, and its attitude towards the possibility of Soviet Jews exercising the elementary freedom to leave their country if they wish and go wherever they want.

All the dangers that Mr Ahlmark mentioned exist. I do not know whether members of the Council ever see any of the close to eighty anti-Semitic books that have been published in the Soviet Union since 1967. As we all know, there are not many private publishing houses in the Soviet Union; every book that is published is from a government publishing house. Those books consist of real anti-Semitism, the like of which we have not read about or heard about for many years. They are quite in the open. Nobody should be led astray when they speak about “Zionists”. Zionists, Jews, Israelis are all of the same kind.

There is no doubt in my mind that a united front of all the countries fighting terrorism would, first, strengthen each one of the countries to hold its own and, secondly, more than anything else discourage terrorist acts. If terrorists are not allowed to work in one country they may find it possible to operate in another, even if only temporarily. Please do not misunderstand me. No governments have given permission for terrorist acts. But the question is of reaction, of making it impossible for terrorists to act.

The fight against terrorism would be helped if all Europe were to be, for that purpose at any rate, one territory where such acts are not permissible and no government will give in to pressure. Sometimes it requires a terrible decision, perhaps endangering somebody’s life at that moment. But please always have in mind how many you will endanger at the moment you give in to terrorist blackmail.

Ms Meir, Prime Minister of Israel

I am sorry to say that the oil wells of Israel cannot produce much more than they are doing, which is practically none. We are not an oil-producing country. We had never felt the necessity to be an oil country until the recent period. But I am afraid we cannot help it.

Perhaps I can introduce here a lighter note. We say among ourselves that it is difficult to forgive Moses for dragging us for forty years through the desert to bring us to the one part of the Middle East where there is no oil. But this is something that we cannot change.

I think it may be wishful thinking, but some people who have made a thorough study of the problem have concluded that even if there were no Israel the problem of Arab oil and the price would still exist. The fact that the Western world – Europe and the United States – have allowed themselves to become so greatly dependent upon this oil naturally encourages Arab governments to use the oil for various purposes, certainly for at least one purpose. It may be unpleasant but it is legitimate: they want to get a higher price for the product, upon which the world depends so much.

It is not that I am for the breaking of contracts or nationalising against contracts, and so on, but this problem does exist and we are convinced that it has little to do with Israel. But, to the extent that it has to do with Israel, we are not the only ones in the world who simply refuse to believe that Arab oil-producing countries will give up the production of oil in order to force other countries to adopt political positions. To the extent that this problem exists, with Arab countries saying that other governments should change their attitude to Israel in exchange for oil, it is merely a continuation of what we are discussing today. Either one uses the gun or economic blackmail – that is the attitude. “Either you do what we say or we do not give you oil.” What then must one do? Is one, politically or any other way, to help the Arabs to destroy Israel?

I do not believe that the world that we live in is a world which can allow something like that and that it will succeed. If they are not encouraged, if all countries in the world say, “It is true that we want your oil but we also have a price, and that price is the liberty of our governments to make our own political decisions as we believe right. You cannot wash away with your oil – something which is very precious to our lives and modem civilisation – our conscience, discretion and liberty to decide what we believe is right.”

Of course, all this brings the world – the United States and, I imagine, also Europe – to the absolute necessity to look about for all resources possible, even if they are not available in the immediate future, so that if a situation like that develops it can be rectified by recourse to other sources.

I do not believe what one gentleman once said to me. He said, “If you ask my people whether they want air conditioners or whether they are worried about the state of Israel, they will choose air conditioners.” I am too old to be as cynical as that. I do not believe that decent people all over the world would give up the life of Israel for air conditioners. I do not believe that the situation is as bad as that. Even if you have to give up some oil, it has not come to that. If the world takes the stand of saying, “We need your oil and are prepared to negotiate a price but our conscience and our freedom of decision is not a commodity to bargain with”, then there will be plenty of oil in the world.

Ms Meir, Prime Minister of Israel

We have a question of prisoners-of-war. After the 1967 war there was a complete exchange of prisoners. The prisoners now on both sides are a result of the war of attrition and sometimes of border incidents which still take place. The last three men who were held by the Syrian Government for quite a while were returned for over thirty Syrians held by us.

We have a very difficult situation with Egypt.

Egypt has ten of our men from during the war of attrition; three or four of them are pilots, the others were people who came with service wagons of food and so on who were taken by force across the Canal. One of them, from the reports of the Red Cross, is very seriously ill. We have close to seventy Egyptian prisoners-or-war. We said without any hesitation, “You can have your seventy, give us back our ten.” By the way, of the one who is so seriously ill that his life really is in extreme danger, as you friends probably know, it is against the Geneva Convention which says that if a man who is taken prisoner-or-war is ill or seriously wounded he should be sent back.

We have during this period received three or four men for whom we have returned many tens of Egyptian prisoners, but we do that without heartache: believe me, we have no joy in keeping prisoners-of-war. Some of them have come in such a condition that when the Egyptian physicians who treated them and who had given them up found them living, they tried to get information of what our doctors had done to make them go on living, because those physicians thought that they were sending them only to die in Israel. Maybe this is one way of co-operation, between medical men at least.

We are very anxious that all ten of them, especially this one who is dangerously ill, should come back to us. We have, every once in a while, sent someone. Sometimes a good friend will suggest sending one or two across and maybe that gesture will be answered. We have done that, we do not feel sorry for that, but this has been to no avail. But the problem of these ten men is very serious. We have had the co-operation of almost everybody who went to Egypt – United Nations people, men of government whom we have asked to intervene. They have done so, but to my sorrow to no avail up to the present time.

Ms Meir, Prime Minister of Israel

This is no doubt a problem. Everyone who has any familiarity with our area knows this problem exists. May I take a very few minutes to say the original Arab refugee problem was of course created as a result of the 1948 war. It was the result of the attack of the Arab countries, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon on the little state of Israel that was twelve hours old.

On the other hand, there was also a Jewish refugee problem. At the time the state of Israel was established there were 350 000 Jews still in camps in Germany. There were over 50 000 Jews who came from these camps to the shores of Israel who were not allowed to enter – this was before the establishment of the state of Israel – and who were sent to Cyprus, and we had over 300 000 Jews who were immediately admitted into Israel. Here we had people with nowhere to live and nothing to live upon. They were poor refugees, they came shattered. They were the remnants of the holocaust, shattered in spirit and in body. Many of us were very doubtful whether they could recuperate or do anything. To my great joy, these men and women with numbers on their arms – you see them wherever you go in Israel – have become normal healthy people who have contributed greatly to the development of Israel.

An additional source of Jewish refugees was the more than one million men, women and children who came to us from Arab countries, from Iraq, Egypt, Syria, North African countries, Libya, from the Yemen. When sometimes someone says the Palestinian refugees must have a country of their own because they cannot mix with other Arab countries, I only want to draw to your attention, believe me, that the gap between a Jew who came from the caves of Libya and a Jew who came from Western Europe or the United States or was born an Israeli was much, much greater than anything there could be between an Arab who lived in Jaffa, Nablus or Amman.

So we have this problem of integrating these Jewish tribes that are sometimes centuries apart in culture and way of living, integrating them into a modem people in a modern civilisation. We are greatly thankful to these men and women who came to us in 1949, 1950 and 1951, illiterate, with no skill of any kind: they were never farmers. You will know that some of the vegetables and fruit and poultry products – and in this city especially one should remember that – that you people enjoy at various times in your countries have been produced by these men and women who until they came to Israel never knew how to plant a seed or cultivate anything. They have become excellent farmers. They have revived the desert. They have done something to the hills of Israel and have become different people. The second generation, of course, is fantastic.

There is no reason whatever why the same thing could not have been done with the Arab refugees. They are smaller in numbers, they had no problems with language. With us, you can get twenty people in one room and have to speak five or six languages to be able to communicate with them directly. Now, less than twenty years after, they have learned Hebrew. With the Palestinian refugees there is no question of a language problem, no question of way-of-living, and no reason why that refugee problem could not have been solved years and years ago. There was international money. We were helped by Jewish communities, by governments. I suggest, since we spoke about oil a little while ago, that we know at least one, two or three Arab governments whose incomes are not so bad. Maybe a constructive use for some of that money would have been to help resettle these refugees. We in Israel have from the very first moment to this day said we are prepared and anxious to pay compensation for all that was left behind in Israel by these Arab refugees.

Now we think there is one solution and one solution only. Between the Mediterranean and the Iraqui borders – the eastern desert – there are two countries, one Jewish, one Arab, Israel and then the Arab country which should include the Palestinian refugees. This is where the boundary will be.

It is a question of negotiation between us and Jordan. When the boundary is established all that will be Jordanian. Part of the Western Bank will be the country of Jordanians and Arab refugees – Palestinians. What they call that country, whether they call it Jordanian or Palestinian or have a combination of the two names, is none of our business. Whether they will decide to have a federated country, as King Hussein has suggested, is also not our affair. That is something they should do themselves.

There are two things that we do not accept. These refugees have for 25 years been poisoned against us. We have found arithmetic books in Gaza saying: “There were five Israelis. Three were killed. How many left?” This is a mathematical problem for youngsters of 6 of 7 years of age. We cannot accept these refugees in Israel, for that would mean the destruction of Israel. Another thing we cannot accept is that between Israel and Jordan there should be another little Arab state, Palestine, in addition to the eighteen or nineteen they already have, without any possibility of existence whatsoever. This kind of state would serve one purpose and one only, and that is as a spearhead against Israel. It is not necessary for them. We would be in a very difficult position if they had no other solution. They have. Jordan needs the population. Jordan actually is a Palestinian state. It has Bedouins, that is true, but 50 % of the government are Palestinians, 50 % of the parliament are Palestinians. They have had Palestinian Prime Ministers and Foreign Ministers. Jordan needs the people. The people can make out of Jordan a very modern and developed country.

This is bur proposition for the constructive solution of the Palestinian problem. We are extremely anxious, one, to pay compensation and, two, to co-operate in any way that they wish, for we have experience of how these things are done. With joy we would cross the border, not with tanks or with planes but with knowledge and with a real and sincere desire to help them find their place in a normal way of living.

Ms Meir, Prime Minister of Israel

Thank you very much, Eliav is a member of my party. I do not know what happens in other parties but in my party there are differences of opinion. We try very hard to solve these differences by many, many long drawn-out arguments and debates, and finally find a way of living together. Despite our differences of opinion, Eliav and I are very good friends. We argue sometimes with a lot of emotion one against the other, but the fact is that we are going to the elections, which will take place on 30 October, on one list. My party, which is the largest in the country and always has been, has never expected and never demanded of our members that they should be uniform in their thinking. By this means we have avoided having many splinter parties, with each one thinking in a particular way and having differences with the other parties. We have kept it all inside. Not only that, but since 1967 the two groups which broke away from my party have come back and rejoined us, and with another group which was never in my party we have an alliance. We shall be going to the elections together and will solve our problems together. So it would not be natural if there were not differences of opinion, and I disagree firmly with Eliav on this issue.

When we speak of secure borders it must be realised that borders cannot be drawn in the air. Eliav agrees with me completely – when I say “with me” I mean with those who think as I do, or with me thinking as they do – that it cannot be the 1967 borders, because these 1967 borders were attacked, and we do not want to go back to the same borders on which we were attacked before.

By the way, we did that once. In 1957, under the pressure of the United Nations, we went back. We left Sharm-el-Sheikh, where we are today, we left the Gaza Strip, where we are today, and we left the Sinai Desert because all the good people in the world said “Go back this time and we will have not only UN observers but a UN emergency force”. I will not take up your time and patience by saying what happened. In 1967 the United Nations personnel were asked by the late President Nasser to leave, and they evaporated – they just did not exist any more.

They were not in Sharm-el-Sheikh, they were not in the Gaza Strip and they were not in the Sinai Desert.

Why were they asked to leave? Because the tanks had to come in. They came in not to pay us a friendly, neighbourly visit – there were 100 000 people, 1 000 tanks, aeroplanes etc. Now are we to be asked to go back again? It is true that we won the war in 1956 and in 1967, but, as I said in my remarks before, some people are dead because of that. Nobody can guarantee us that we will never have to go to war again, but we want on our part to do everything possible so that it may be avoided.

When we speak of a defensible border there must be two qualities present. It must be a border of such a kind that any Arab leader thinking of attacking us will know in his mind or heart that he has no hope of crossing it. The best example is the Syrian border. When the border was on the Golan Heights and we were down below that was easy. There was no need even to declare war. For 19 years there were Syrian guns there shooting at every one of the houses in our kibbutzim. But if we are somewhere on the plateau I think that any Syrian President will think many times before he attacks again. So the main thing is that it must in itself be a deterrent.

Secondly, if despite that we are attacked, is it too much of a luxury to ask that we should be able to defend ourselves with as small a number of casualties as possible? If the Syrian President attacks us on the plateau there will be fewer casualties than if we are below and have to do as we did in 1967 – crawling up in daylight with our tanks.

Since lines cannot be drawn in the air but must be drawn on the soil and since we will not go back to the 1967 borders, changes have to be made. So Eliav is not against all that we do across the borders. He has his opinions. He may be right. He may be wrong. But that is the view of the vast majority of my party, on that one point, and the point about the 1967 borders may result in more than a 90 % majority at the elections. On all else the parties are divided. There are about twenty-four lists. I am not proud of it and I am not happy about it. But the elections are to take place on 30 October and there is no doubt that Eliav himself agrees about the 1967 borders.

So here we are in a democracy and in a democratic socialist party. Ideas are permissible. My ideas are as permissible as Eliav’s. His ideas are as permissible as mine. So we live together in one party.

Ms Meir, Prime Minister of Israel

We are dealing with what has now become the famous Resolution 242 of 1967. Israel has accepted it, but accepted it as it was passed and not in the Arab interpretation. To my sorrow some other countries in the world have now improved it or spoiled, it, according to their different points of view.

Resolution 242 included several elements. One involved leaving occupied territories. It did not say withdrawal from all occupied territories. Nor did it say withdrawal from the occupied territories.

It was not a matter of chance. It was not that someone did not know the word “all” or the word “the”. I do not always agree with members of the Security Council, but I am absolutely sure that every one of them knows these two little words. As a matter of fact, there were some members of the Security Council who suggested that they be included in Resolution 242. They were not included. They were not included by those who sponsored the resolution, nor by those who voted for it. Certainly they were not included by us when we consented to it. Neither the American delegate nor the British, who claim sponsorship or fatherhood for the resolution, said that they were included. George Brown, Lord Caradon and Mr Attlee in the English Parliament said over and over again that the resolution did not say the occupied territories, and they said that it was very carefully worded so that all the parties could accept it.

I do not know whether it is possible to say it in this way in all languages. There are some in which it is impossible to get along without the word “the”. But if it is a matter of difficulty in language as opposed to what we consider to be the security of a state, then the language should give way in favour of the safety of a state.

Another point is that the resolution does not call for withdrawal. It calls for negotiations between the parties in order to reach a peace agreement. That is exactly what we are asking for. To my sorrow, the Arabs have interpreted Resolution 242 in one way only, insisting on withdrawal from all territories without negotiations and without any peace agreement. That is contrary to Resolution 242.

We are prepared and always have been to begin negotiations with any of our Arab neighbours on the basis of that resolution, without any preconditions. That does not mean that they will not be allowed to come to the table saying, “Never mind Resolution 242. We want you to withdraw from all territories.” That is perfectly all right. But this is a matter for discussion and negotiation. We are not prepared to go along with that misinterpretation of the resolution. We are not prepared to accept a situation where we say, “We will not withdraw from all territories”, and they say, “You are not acting in accordance with Resolution 242”. Anyone objectively reading the resolution and the minutes of the Security 'Council when it was dealt with and accepted will have no doubt that there is only one interpretation. It talks about withdrawal from occupied territories. It does not mean all the territories. It also talks about negotiations between the parties in order to come to a peace settlement.

Ms Meir, Prime Minister of Israel

Thank you very much. The Palestine refugee problem is naturally a very serious one. It concerns human beings. But the war in 1948 was launched by Arab states with the very active participation of the Arab community then in Palestine – also on the side of what was supposed to be Israel. The United Nations in 1947 decided on the partitioning of Palestine. This was the second partitioning. When the United Kingdom got the mandate for Palestine from the League of Nations, Palestine extended geographically from the Mediterranean Sea to the western border of Iraq, the eastern desert.

In 1922 Mr Winston Churchill, on behalf of the Government of the United Kingdom, partitioned Palestine, and Palestine remained west of the Jordan – it was then called Transjordan – until 1948, with one High Commissioner and the same laws on both sides. In 1947 the West Bank of the Jordan River was again partitioned. The Arabs claimed all of it. We claimed all of it. The United Nations partitioned it into a Jewish state and an Arab state, with terrible boundaries on the map with an internationalised Jerusalem and with an economic union between the two states.

We accepted it. We immediately busied ourselves to lay the foundation for the Jewish state. The Arabs immediately busied themselves with doing everything possible to destroy us. Many fled. Nothing happened to those who remained. Those who fled did so because they were promised by the Mufti and Arab leaders and Arab states, “Leave Palestine. We will bomb Palestine and you can come back soon, when it is all over.”

Since then we have received, for the reunion of families, about 70 000. They have the same rights as the rights of my own people, of which I have spoken, but with one difference. There are 18 Arab independent countries occupying 8 % of the earth’s surface. We have a tiny spot in the Middle East. There is no other Jewish state; there never will be one more Jewish state.

If the so-called refugees – they are now Palestinian warriors – come back, what will happen? Arafat speaks in very nice terms, saying “Let us have a democratic state, with Jews, Christians and Moslems all living together.” Sometimes he says the entire truth and says that only those Jews that came to Palestine before 1917 will be allowed to remain. But let me accept a very liberal Arafat. He has never said it, but I will say it instead: “Never mind all those that remain. We will come back, and this will be a Jewish, Moslem and Christian state. No more Jews will be able to come in.” Then I ask “Is there justice in it, that having been for 2 000 years a minority in every country in the world that accepted us at all we must now become again a minority in a so-called democratic Moslem state?” There would then be only one people in the world for whom sovereignty was simply not considered as a primary right, because others want a nineteenth state.

It is not so much that they want that state as that they want us out. They believe, they say, that the Jews have no right to be in that area. They refuse to accept the fact that we have been there. They say that there is no Jewish people. Whom the pogroms were held against, I do not know. We are a people only when there is anti-Semitism. For other purposes we are not a people at all. I cannot accept that it is not exactly the same thing.

As for terrorism, I understand that the United Nations decided a year ago to try to work out a policy against terrorism. What the committee has done instead is to study very thoroughly – one year is evidently not sufficient – to find out the reasons for terrorism. It has not yet come to a conclusion, and terrorism flourishes. Similarly, the only thing that was quickly decided concerned the Lebanese plane, but on the other hijackings there is no decision by ICAO. I am sure that most of the people at the United Nations are of good intention, but no decision has been taken on action against terrorism.

I am sure that Dr Jarring has done his best. He was up against a brick wall. With all due respect to him, I think he made some mistakes. But we accepted the mediation of Dr Jarring, and we would accept the mediation of anybody as long as he saw his task primarily as bringing the parties together. The minute a mediator also becomes one who puts out plans of his own he destroys his mission.

To my sorrow, we have met the Arabs on the battlefield over and over again. If they really want to live in peace with us, which is what we want, we have to be able to meet at a table where we lay the plans for peace. This nobody can do for them, and nobody can do it for us. It is something we must handle by ourselves, no matter how drawn out and how painful it is. Both sides that are directly concerned with the matter will have to meet and discuss it and fight over it, not on the battlefield but at the conference table, and try to reach a solution. They will have to live with the result.

I turn to the question of hopes for the future. I belong to a people that would not be around today if it had allowed itself to be without hope at any moment of its history. Maybe it would be a little easier for the world if we were no longer around, because we create so many problems. Anyway, we have never given up hope.

If I thought that peace was essential for Israel but that the Arab countries could live without it, I might not be so optimistic. But I am convinced that the masses in the Arab countries need peace even more than Israel does – and Israel needs it. I am not ashamed to say that. The Arab states seem to think for some reason that it is a sign of weakness to say that one wants peace. We want peace. We have more important things to do than to watch, and to have more arms and to train more men. Our men can do more important things, and more things with joy, than winning wars.

I am convinced that the Arab countries need peace. Egypt has had an addition of about four million people since 1967. Nobody, no Egyptian, will say that there are no problems there of poverty, disease and lack of education. I have said over and over again that the heartache of an Egyptian mother who loses her son in battle is no less than that of a Jewish mother and vice versa. A mother who gives birth to a child wants that child to live and develop, and not to die through lack of food or to die on the battleground. That is something that we have in common.

The difference with Israel is that the government have no differences on that scale with their own people. The day must come when there will be peace between us and the Arabs. It is a pity that days should pass and nothing is done, when there could be concrete progress.

Since 1967 hundreds and thousands of Arabs from Kuwait and Egypt and all kinds of Arab countries have come to Israel and have not only gone through the occupied territories but have visited Arab villages and have seen how we in Jerusalem live together with the Arabs. I know many capitals of the world, whose names I will not mention, where it is much more dangerous to walk the streets at night than it is in Jerusalem. In Jerusalem there is no danger; nothing happens. Maybe those Arabs have learned something from their experience. Maybe they have learned that we can live together in peace and that not every Israeli has horns.

As to what may happen, what has been said about demography and the wealth of the Arab countries is all true. But what does it mean? Does it mean that we say we give up? We do not want to repeat that we cannot give up. We want to live, and we hope that in time there will be no war.

Certainly nobody is foolish enough not to take numbers into consideration. But there is something else, and it is not mysticism. It is the purpose that a pilot feels he has been sent up in the air for. Has he been sent up to take something away from somebody or to defend what he and his people have? Maybe that is one of the main reasons why our pilots do better than the others. One day each pilot going up will ask himself “What for? Is it to kill somebody else or to defend people; to prevent them being killed?” The motivation is extremely important. But we do not lose sight of what may happen.

I was also asked about the problem of religious places in Jerusalem. Before 1967, despite the armistice agreement, we were not allowed to go to our religious places in the old city. Now everyone goes where he wants. Immediately after 1967 we said that we would be not only prepared but happy to come to an arrangement with representatives of the Christian sects whereby they could administer their religious holy places. We have no interest or desire to administer the holy places of any other religions. I hope that that will be accepted. When negotiations begin, this should be a very easy problem to solve.

The same, of course, applies to Moslem holy places. If someone can present himself as representing the Moslem religious places, we will be more than anxious to make it possible that only Moslems administer them. Indeed, that is the situation today. Jews do not, in the old city of Jerusalem, administer either the Christian or the Moslem holy places. But the situation should be finalised and agreements and arrangements made. There would be no problem whatever about the religious places or free access for everyone to any place he wants to go. That situation exists today and will exist in the future.