Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 42 No. 18. July 30 1979

Sadat Works for Egypt

Sadat Works for Egypt

Hence, notwithstanding ail the names the readers of Syrian. Iraq. Libya and South Yemen are today calling him, and the absurd and cynical accusations of "betrayal". President Sadat has understandably placed Egypt's interests first in his priorities. He had responsibly interpreted these interests to be inwards, to the upbuilding and economic development of his own country, and not outwards — as blue-printed by Nasser's book "The Philosophy of the Revolution" - towards the establishment of some mythical Pharaonic Empire, and the "solution" of some mythical Palestinian Question. For that Question, as presented by the participants of the Baghdad Conference, and their leftist hangers-on abroad, is indeed mythical. They know it, the Palestinians themselves know it, the Egyptians know it, but they, alone, of all the Arabs, have had the courage to acknowledge its mythology;

In essence, the Egypt-Israel Agreement accepts the geo-political reality of Israels's sovereignty and independence and its consequent and indispensible requirement of secure and defensible boundaries; it also accepts the geo-political reality that a Palestinian State on the West Bank and Gaza Strip would - at least for the next five years endanger Israel's sovereignty and defensibility.

Under such circumstances, the options for the Palestinians of this odd 2,300 square miles are either "autonomy", protected from Syria, Iraq and the PLO by the Israeli army, or partition of the West Bank territory between Israel and Jordan, with its populated Arab areas going to the latter. The remainder, vital to Israel's defence, and almost empty of population would be included within Israel's final borders.