Regarding those [people] who on no account want Israeli
withdrawal from Judea and Samaria – these [transfer] ideas are very
logical. Anyone who aspires to and claims Israeli sovereignty over
Judea, Samaria and Gaza – including the Begin government – must
understand that there is no way out save the removal of the Arabs
from the territories. With over one million Arabs Israeli rule will
not be established in Nablus and Hebron, and all the settlement
will not help. The supporters of the Likud government know this
secretly in their heart. The Gush Emunim people and the ‘Whole
Land of Israel’s Faithful’ are talking about this, some privately and
some publicly. Whereas Rabbi Kahane is not interested in the
refined tactic. He and his followers bring the principles of the
government policy to absurd truth.
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It is hardly surprising, therefore, that some important Likud leaders
have, both openly and privately, voiced support for Arab ‘transfer’.
Immediately after the 1967 conquests, at a secret meeting of the
Israeli Cabinet, Menahem Begin, then minister-without-portfolio,
recommended the demolition of the refugee camps of the West Bank
and Gaza and the ‘transfer’ of their residents to the Sinai Desert,
which had been captured from Egypt.
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In the early 1980s, during
the negotiations between the Likud and Tehiya over the latter
joining the Begin government, a member of the Tehiya delegation,
Tzvi Shiloah, asked Begin whether his ‘government is thinking about
the transfer of refugee camps in southern Lebanon to northern
Lebanon, thus reducing their danger to peace in Galilee?’ Begin’s
reply was: ‘The question of refugees is indeed a serious question. I
am about to appeal in a statement to Saudi Arabia, Libya, Iraq and
other Arab countries to absorb in their countries the refugees of the
camps in Lebanon. What, Iraq has no lands and water and Saudi
Arabia and Libya have no oil revenues?’
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Some of the men around Menahem Begin were even more
extreme than the Prime Minister. There were two senior advisers of
Begin, Shmuel Katz and Dr Moshe Yegar, who publicly declared their
advocacy of Arab ‘transfer’. Yegar was also an adviser on ‘hasbarah’
(information) in the Prime Minister’s Office in 1979. Formerly he
was a Consul in Los Angeles, General Consul in Philadelphia and
New York, Director of the Instruction Division and the Information
Division in the Foreign Ministry and Deputy Director General of the
Foreign Ministry. He was also Israeli Ambassador to Sweden from
1988. Yegar revealed his advocacy of ‘transferring’ the Palestinians,
78 Imperial Israel and the Palestinians