Word: arabism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Middle East were urging Arab leaders to try to tone down the most vitriolic press reaction to Begin's victory on the ground that it is an unnecessary provocation. During an interlude in their negotiations on SALT, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko discussed the Middle East and agreed that despite the uncertainties created by the Israeli election, a Geneva conference should be reconvened this year. They decided to initiate monthly consultations at the ambassadorial level in Washington and Moscow to underscore the two superpowers' shared commitment to a negotiated Middle East settlement...
Israel's supporters, and perhaps also its Arab antagonists, have ample reason to hope that Weizman's judgment will prove correct. For if a Begin government is unwilling or unable to negotiate reasonably with those Arab leaders who seem ready to move toward peace, the fearful alternative is another era of turmoil?and perhaps bloodshed ?in the Middle East...
Begin soon became commander of Irgun, which was diametrically opposed to the methods of the Jewish Agency, headed by Ben-Gurion and other Zionist socialists. The agency sought a Jewish homeland through negotiation with the British and was willing to settle for a Jewish state coexisting with an Arab one in Palestine. The Irgun demanded all of Palestine and Transjordan; its motto: "Judea collapsed in fire and blood...
Irgun and a smaller group, the Stern Gang, began a campaign of terror designed primarily to drive the British out of Palestine. In 1946 Begin's men blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which was then British government headquarters. Ninety people?Jewish and Arab employees, in addition to British officials?were killed. The Irgun also tortured two British soldiers to death, then strung up their booby-trapped bodies in an orange grove...
...incident that shocked the world was an assault on the Arab village of Deir Yassin in April 1948. Begin claimed that the Irgun warned the villagers to leave Deir Yassin before the attack; in fact, the truck carrying the hit team's loudspeaker fell into a ditch. Using Sten guns, rifles, hand grenades and long Arab knives, Begin's men massacred more than 200 villagers, mostly old men, women and children. Many were mutilated and the women raped...