Word: knesset
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Israeli Knesset, or parliament, must vote within the next two weeks on whether to allow the settlements to be a negotiable issue in the treaty discussions between Israel and Egypt scheduled to take place within three months...
Sadat made an important concession to the Israelis by journeying to Jerusalem, saluting the Israeli flag and battle banners, standing before the assembled Knesset and declaring on behalf of his fellow Egyptians: "We welcome you among us with full security and safety . . . We accept to live with you in a permanent peace." That was tantamount to Egyptian recognition of Israel, which Israel has long demanded as a condition for reaching a settlement...
Sadat sees the declaration of principles as an essential step toward an eventual Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories, because the declaration would, in effect, affirm Arab sovereignty over the lands. He said to the Knesset, "Our land does not yield itself to bargaining . . . We insist on complete withdrawal from these territories...
Israel understandably does not want to give up territory that it feels it needs for security. But the U.S. has long argued that it should be possible to satisfy Israel's security requirements without a full-scale Israeli occupation of Arab territories. And Sadat, for one, told the Knesset: "We agree to any guarantees you accept." Egyptian officials have indicated that they would even be willing to permit some kind of Israeli military presence on the West Bank for a limited time (perhaps up to ten years), if it did not undermine the principle of Arab sovereignty. Last week, moreover...
...fiercely devout Begin has introduced a troubling religious factor into the argument by maintaining that events related in the Old Testament give Israel a historic claim to the West Bank. He even insists on calling the region by its Biblical names of Samaria and Judea. He declared to the Knesset: "We did not take strange land; we returned to our homeland. The tie between our nation and this land is eternal...