Summary
Mapam minister (Health Minister in Golda Meir’s government) whose 1998 Maariv interview, reproduced as Appendix 13 of Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, calls the February 1971 refusal of the Jarring initiative “catastrophic” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.572-574).
Details
- Shem-Tov: “It is impossible to forgive that. History will not forgive.” Gunnar Jarring’s letters to Israel and Egypt, he argues, must have been coordinated with Dobrynin and Kissinger; Galili advised Meir not to rush, predicting Sadat would reply negatively (PDF p.573).
- On 10 February Sadat instead offered a peace treaty for sovereignty over all Sinai, with no word about evacuating settlements; the government, on Galili’s “basic principles” pretext that Israel would not return to the 1967 borders, replied negatively — “even in return for a peace treaty” (PDF p.573).
- “Galili’s legalistic pretext paralyzed the government. Even the Mapam ministers”; Shem-Tov calls the negative reply “a big mistake” and a failure of the dovish Left, which did not propose changing the basic principles (PDF p.574).
Related pages
Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, Gunnar Jarring, Golda Meir, Mapam, Anwar al-Sadat