Word: palestinians
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Dayan (after receiving Begin's permission to proceed): We cannot live side by side with an independent Palestinian state, and we cannot carry out 100% withdrawal from the territories. This does not mean Israeli sovereignty over those areas, you understand, but these details can be discussed later...
...being in an "impossible position," that phrase was less applicable to Egypt than to the P.L.O., whose panicky leaders last week worried whether they might end up as the losers in the new Middle East diplomatic moves. Although Sadat spoke forthrightly to the Knesset about Palestinian rights to a homeland, never once did he mention the P.L.O.-which Arab leaders, at their 1974 Rabat summit, had designated as the sole legitimate representative ofthe Palestinian people...
Responding to sharp Palestinian criticism of his trip, Sadat on his return home shut down the Egyptian Voice of Palestine, a P.L.O. radio station, and expelled 20 Palestinians who had tried to organize demonstrations against his mission. He also arranged for Egypt's majority political group, the Arab Socialist Party, to invite leaders of Palestinian Arabs who live on the West Bank to Cairo for consultations about the resumption of Geneva talks. The invitation pointedly called on the Palestinian people "to differentiate between those who seek peace and those who want to destroy everything...
Before, during and after the visit, Sadat made it clear that a solution to the Palestinian problem was the key to any Middle East peace settlement. He had advised the Israelis not to be excessively legalistic in trying to veto whoever would represent the Palestinians at Geneva. His invitation to the West Bank leaders may also have been a warning to the P.L.O. to soften its anti-Israel stance in the interests of a greater good -a settlement that could lead to a Palestinian entity. Privately, some P.L.O. members thought that if the organization was being neglected by Arab moderates...
Carter has been criticized unduly for the way he has revised the vocabulary of the dispute. Israelis and their supporters in the U.S. have been especially incensed by his repeated use of the phrase "legitimate rights of the Palestinian people." Carter chose not to accept the standing taboo on the term, which, as used by many Arabs, is a code word for the creation of an independent Palestinian state bent on the destruction of Israel. He recognized that it was sad testimony to the rarefied and hopeless level of the Middle East debate if he were prohibited from saying that...