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When Menachem Begin Met Margaret Thatcher

(Jerusalem Post) Yehuda Avner - British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher invited Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to 10 Downing Street for lunch shortly after her election victory in 1979. During lunch, Lord Peter Carrington, the foreign secretary, said: "Your settlement policy is a barrier to peace. It is inconsistent with British interests." Thatcher then affirmed, "The foreign secretary is speaking on behalf of Her Majesty's Government in this matter." Begin responded to Carrington: The settlements were not an obstacle to peace. No Palestinian Arab sovereignty had ever existed in the biblical provinces of Judea and Samaria. The Arabs had refused to make peace before there was a single settlement anywhere. The settlements were built on state-owned, not Arab-owned, land. Their construction was an assertion of basic Jewish historic rights. The settlement enterprise was critical to Israel's national security. Begin then turned to Thatcher. "Madam Prime Minister, I shall tell you why the settlements are vital: because I speak of Eretz Yisrael, a land redeemed, not occupied; because without these settlements Israel could be at the mercy of a Palestinian state astride the commanding heights of Judea and Samaria. We would be living on borrowed time. And, whenever we Jews are attacked, we are always alone." "The story of the Jewish people is very much a tale of survival against bouts of irrationality and hysteria," said Begin. "It occurs in every generation."
2003-11-28 00:00:00
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