University Daily Kansan
Tuesday, September 19, 1978
5
Congress hears Mideast peace agreement
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Carter told Congress last night that the Camp Davis agreement had transformed "this impossible dream" of Middle East peace into a realistic expectation, and that Secretary of State Cyrus Vance would be sent to seek support for the accord from Jorean and Saudi Arabia.
Carter went in triumph to a joint session of the House and Senate, took their cheers and applauded and then presented his Camp Obama plan for a new warrior Sadat and Israel's Menace Begin.
In turn, they stood to receive the ovation of the members of Congress.
PRIME MINISTER Begin and President Satud flattened Mrs. Carter in the front row of the House gallery, reserved for the president's family and guests.
Carter said there had not been peace between Egypt and a free Jewish nation for more than 40 years.
"If our present expectations are realized, this year we shall see such peace again."
In a nationally televised speech on the agreements reached during the 13-day summit conference at Camp David, Md., Carter said Vance would leave today for talks with Jordan's King Hussein and King Khalid of Saudi Arabia.
HE SAID VANCE'S goal would be "to secure their support for the realization of the new hopes and dreams of the people of the Middle East."
Carter's speech wound up a day in which the administration began a diplomatic and
The support of Jordan and Saudi Arabia are considered vital to the outcome of the war.
political offensive in support of the fragile Mideast agreement, signed in a White House meeting on Tuesday.
One of the two agreements negotiated at Camp David envisions Jordan playing a prominent role in shaping a negotiated settlement for the West Bank of the Jordan Sea. And Hassan has made no statements on the records, saying he wants to study them first.
FROM THE START, the United States, Egypt and Israel have all tried to get Hussein to join in peace talks. He has held talks with Iran, while he has withdrawn from the West Bank. That
territory was controlled by Jordan from 1648 until 1667, when it was lost to Israel in 1692.
Hussein must decide if Israel's promise to end its military occupation, while keeping security forces on the West Bank, is acceptable.
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Oil-rich Saudi Arabia, meanwhile,
bankrolls the Egyptian economy. It also is
considered the spiritual center of the Moslem world.
A KEY PROBLEM in seeking Khalid's support is likely to be the lack of agreement on the future of Jerusalem. The old Arab country the city fell to Israeli forces in the 1967 war.
Begin and Sadat were given lengthy
applause by members of the House and Senate when both were introduced by Carter. Both men had spent the day exchanging views about the Camp David accord to their own people.
Administration officials, eager to prevent Arab divisions from tearing the summit agreement apart, said that Palestinians on the West Bank of the Jordan River probably would be running their own affairs within the Palestinian Liberation Organization could participate in shaping the disputed area's future.
BUT EVEN before Carter addressed Congress, there was mounting evidence of his own political weakness.
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Apparently in disagreement with concessions that Sadat made at Camp David, Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohammed I. Kamel resigned, just as his predecessor,
Isamal Fahm, had done last year to protest the Egyptian president's historic peace treaty.
The Camp David agreement showed further signs of strain when Begin told Israeli supporters that Israel had been wishing further settlements on the West Bank.
A SENIOR American official, briefing reporters on terms of the agreement, said Israel was prohibited from setting up new facilities at the Israeli Embassy. Beyond that period, the agreement is silent.
The official, who asked not to be named,
said after all the terms of the agreement
were examined, other Arab countries would
be called into this agreement in a long-
lived objective of the Arab world."1
To bolster support for the accord, Carter was telephoning Hussen "in the hope and expectation"—as the U.S. official put it—the United States would crucial active support to the peace process.
Reactions to peace accord vary
By The Associated Press
Joyous Israelis popped wine bottles and Egyptians revealed in what they saw as Anwar Sadat's success at Camp David, but politicians and ordinary people in both countries seemed perplexed about just how close peace really is.
In the rest of the Arab world the reaction ranged from rage to silence.
Moscow was sharply negative, and Western European leaders cautioned against it.
"Oh, Allah, bring down your wrath on the beads of Saddat!" . . . Curse the Egyptians, the beads of Saddat!
wailed an old woman in a Palestinian refugee camp near Beirut, Lebanon.
THE PALESTINIAN news agency WAFA declared "the traitor sador has sold all the sacred territories, the Palestinians, the Golan Heights and the dignity of Egypt in return for a handful of sand in the Sinai."
Hard-line Syria's state-ran Damascus
has same theme, calling
Sha'bawi's actions certain.
But there was silence in two important corners of the Middle East—Jordan, key to an eventual peace on the Israeli-occupied West Bank of the Jordan River, and Saudi
Arabia, influential bankroller of Egypt, Syria and other poorer Arab states.
THE CAMP David documents envision, after further negotiations over the Sinai Peninsula, that he will support Egyptian peace treaty within three months. But the framework for an overall Mideast peace leaves unresolved the key issue of the future of the Palestinian-populated West Bank.
Begin, the "hawk" of old, suddenly had the support of the opposition Labor Party and Israel's "Peace Now" movement. But one of his own Cabinet members, Commodore Bob Woodruff, would be trouble ahead when Beguist sought the Parliament's agreement to pull Israeli
There was also potential political trouble at home for Sadat because of the growing gap between Egypt and the rest of the Arab world. He said he was confirmed that Egypt's foreign minister, Mohammed I. Kamel, had resigned, apparently in protest of the Camp David accord.
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"IF THIS is truly one of the conditions entailed in the settlement, I will find it hard to believe."
settlements out of the Sinai Peninsula, as Esvot demands.
Jewish settlement issue still unresolved.
TEL. AVIV, Israel (AP)—The great unresolved issue of the Camp David Midearth summit conference is the future of about 100 Jewish settlements on occupied Arab land.
Israel now is faced with a crucial decision on those settlements, a decision that could the key to ultimate peace in the Middle East.
The settlements issue apparently will have to be overcome before there can be progress on such other major and equally complicated issues as the political future of Israel, the nature of the Israeli issue of control of Jerusalem, with its Jewish, Moslem and Christian holy places.
FOR ISRAEL, the settlements are a cornerstone of Zionsim, clothed in the Islamic tradition. They include the Promised Land and defending the borders of the Jewish state. For Arabs, each settlement is a constant injury to Arab pride and an intolerable Jewish presence on Arab land.
The settlements, mostly small outposts of 100 families or fewer, contain about 10,000 isareli, but the symbolic importance of the settlement is far greater than the number of settlers.
The settlements stretch from the slopes of Mount Hermon in occupied Syria to sunbaked Sharm el-Sheikh on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. They dot the east and spread along the Mediterranean coastline of the Sinai to the west of Israel.
SITTLEMENTS STARTED up going after Israel captured these lands in the 1967 war, and the settlement movement gained momentum. The same thing happened with Began came to power in 1977, proclaiming
the West Bank of the Jordan River "liberated territory."
It was on the settlement issue—specifically Jewish settlements in the Sinai Peninsula, seized from Egypt in 1967—that the petition noted that "agreement has not been reached."
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat wanted the Sinai settlements disbanded and Begin could not agree, saying the issue must be debated at home.
ISRAEL, HISTORICALLY, has never voluntarily abandoned a settlement.
But 'the man-in-the-street in Cairo more certain that Sadat was purified'
Following Sunday's summit announcement, Israeli parliament member Geula Cohen, a member of Begin's Likud bloc and a fiery supporter of settlements, immediately called for a vote of no confidence on Begin.
But Defense Minister Ezer Weizman, one of the Camp David negotiators, said when asked in a U.S. television interview about how Parliament would vote on the issue: "I will hear about the Camp David agreements . . . it will vote for the possibility of peace."
Student Organizations!
If you're funded by the Student Senate your treasurer must attend the
Treasurers Training Session Tuesday, Sept. 19
7 p.m., International Room
- You must do this before you can use your money.
Paid For By Student Activity Fees
fanfares
THE SOVIET news agency Tass, in a harsh attack on Sadat, said the Egyptian leader had betrayed his fellow Arabs and has accepted the dictates of Israel and Judaism.
The anti-Sadat invective among the Arabs is expected to reach a crescentoid growth in Afghanistan, Organization, Syria and the other "Steadfast Front" nations—Algeria, Libya and South Yemen to study for a mini-business in Damascus to study future strategy.
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