From then Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin's rejection of Ronald Reagan's 1982 peace proposal --
What some call the ''West Bank,'' Mr. President, is Judea and Samaria; and this simple historic truth will never change. ... By aggressive war, by invasion, King Abdullah conquered parts of Judea and Samaria in 1948; and in a war of most legitimate self-defense in 1967, after being attacked by King Hussein, we liberated, with God's help, that portion of our homeland. Judea and Samaria will never again be the ''West Bank'' of the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan which was created by British colonialism after the French Army expelled King Feisal from Damascus. ... The matter of security is of paramount importance. Geography and history have ordained that Judea and Samaria be mountainous country and that two-thirds of our population dwell in the coastal plain dominated by those mountains. From them you can hit every city, every town, each township and village and, last but not least, our principal airport in the plain below.
Nearly 40 years later, the mindset of Begin's letter is now fully reflected in an American -- not Israeli -- "peace" proposal. And Reagan's idea of Palestinian autonomy achieved by an association with Jordan, which at the time seemed like a retreat from a Palestinian state, now looks positively benign compared to what's currently in the table. And this was before the settlements issue had reached the scale it has today.
If that's what the last 4 decades have done, what is a reasonable expectation for the next four?
What some call the ''West Bank,'' Mr. President, is Judea and Samaria; and this simple historic truth will never change. ... By aggressive war, by invasion, King Abdullah conquered parts of Judea and Samaria in 1948; and in a war of most legitimate self-defense in 1967, after being attacked by King Hussein, we liberated, with God's help, that portion of our homeland. Judea and Samaria will never again be the ''West Bank'' of the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan which was created by British colonialism after the French Army expelled King Feisal from Damascus. ... The matter of security is of paramount importance. Geography and history have ordained that Judea and Samaria be mountainous country and that two-thirds of our population dwell in the coastal plain dominated by those mountains. From them you can hit every city, every town, each township and village and, last but not least, our principal airport in the plain below.
Nearly 40 years later, the mindset of Begin's letter is now fully reflected in an American -- not Israeli -- "peace" proposal. And Reagan's idea of Palestinian autonomy achieved by an association with Jordan, which at the time seemed like a retreat from a Palestinian state, now looks positively benign compared to what's currently in the table. And this was before the settlements issue had reached the scale it has today.
If that's what the last 4 decades have done, what is a reasonable expectation for the next four?
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