Word: knesset
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...said Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Fahd last week in the most ominous Arab response so far to the July resolution by the Israeli Knesset that declared undivided Jerusalem to be the country's eternal capital. The Saudi prince went on to call on all Arab countries to unite in a jihad (holy war) to liberate Israeli-occupied Arab territory and establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital...
...Saudi statement was also designed to step up pressure on Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to abandon the Camp David peace process and break relations with Israel. Shortly after the Knesset's action on Jerusalem, Sadat shot off an 18-page letter to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, explaining that he had no choice but to suspend the Egyptian-Israeli talks on Palestinian autonomy (see box). Sadat's decision won him plaudits among his estranged Arab neighbors. Morocco's King Hassan II and Jordan's King Hussein have joined the Saudis in trying to lure Sadat back...
Israel was already at the center of an international storm over the Knesset's passage of a bill the previous week affirming the city of Jersualem as the capital of Israel. In response to that defiant vote, Egypt's Anwar Sadat wrote Begin an 18-page letter in which he laid out a forceful and sweeping denunciation of Israeli actions. Unless Begin "removed the obstacles to peace," Sadat concluded, the Palestinian autonomy talks would once again be put off indefinitely...
...Israel's Muslim neighbors, for whom Jerusalem is also a revered religious shrine, the Knesset action seemed not only insensitive but also contemptuous. Rallying round Egypt, Islamic nations in the U.N. drafted a resolution calling on the Security Council to impose strict sanctions on Israel for flouting international laws concerning Jerusalem...
...Knesset vote on Jerusalem did not appear to have damaged irreparably the peace negotiations, but the Carter Administration was worried about the next step Begin was apparently ready to take: the long-threatened transfer of the Prime Minister's office from West to East Jerusalem. Such a move would once again be as pointless as it would be provocative, but Begin seemed determined to do it. Washington feared that this step would particularly anger Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf Arabs, causing them to ask: If the U.S. is unable to stop such a calculated insult to the Arab...