Word: premier
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...spirit of Jerusalem"? Though U.S. Special Envoy Alfred ("Roy") Atherton resumed his shuttle diplomacy between Jerusalem and Cairo last week, the peace process is essentially stalled. Both sides have made mistakes, but most dispassionate observers place the larger share of the blame on Israel and its doctrinaire Premier. Few of his countrymen would fault Begin for his aims or his principles, but a growing number disapprove of his tactics as a peacemaker, as TIME Jerusalem Bureau Chief Donald Neff reported last week...
...Sadat's visit to Jerusalem was brilliant," says Tali Bashan, 21, a political science student at Hebrew University, "but it was no argument for our making large concessions." Adds Geula Cohen, a Knesset member and an old comrade of the Premier's in the Irgun movement: "Begin didn't think. He gave away the sovereignty of the Sinai like a present, without getting anything in return...
...method of negotiating on the Sinai was a mistake," says Opposition Leader Shimon Peres. "He didn't keep a fallback position. He started from the end, apparently forgetting that negotiations are supposed to result in each side giving something. What else did he expect to give?" Former Labor Premier Yitzhak Rabin makes virtually the same point: "I believe Sadat's conditions in his Knesset speech were his opening position. But Begin started out with Israel's end position. What was he thinking of?" Even Begin's resolute cheerfulness is being criticized. "His unflagging optimism," declares former Chief of Staff Haim...
...Premier is respected and admired at home, especially among lowincome, less-educated groups of Middle Eastern origin, for his mystical devotion to Eretz Israel (the land of Israel, including the biblical provinces of Samaria and Judea, which is how Begin refers to the West Bank). At the same time, many Israelis doubt his capacity to lead his country to peace because they fear he is too rigid, too suspicious of the Arabs, whom he barely knows, and too traumatized by Jewish history. His harshest critics call him a Yehudi Galuti, a Diaspora Jew, and it is true that...
...Israel bring itself to surrender territory that could be used to launch a new war against it? Even so moderate and rational a man as Archaeologist Yigael Yadin, leader of the D.M.C. and Deputy Premier, says no. "When we come to an issue like the West Bank," he argues, "Israel's dilemma is whether to yield to U.S. pressure or jeopardize its very existence. When the country is faced with such a dilemma, Israel will not yield, come what may." Says David Glass of the National Religious Party: "You can't push Israel too hard. When we begin to feel...