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Declassified documents reveal Golda Meir was 'open' to Palestinian state
The Israeli PM said she was willing to consider all solutions to the question of Palestinian statehood
August 1, 2023 16:02
The Israeli PM said she was willing to consider all solutions to the question of Palestinian statehood
August 1, 2023 16:02Golda Meir considered the establishment of a Palestinian state three years after the Six-Day War, recently declassified documents reveal.
The first female Israeli prime minister famously rejected the idea of a Palestinian state, saying:“there are no Palestinians, there are Arabs,” on several occasions.
However, top-secret documents released by the Israeli state archives show that in October 1970, Meir considered the idea of a Palestinian state as part of a discussion with senior ministers.
Minutes from the highly classified meeting between Meir and government colleagues, show that the prime minister’s mind was “open to it.”
According to the minutes, Meir said: “I am ready to listen as to whether there is a glimmer of hope for an independent Arab statelet in Samaria and Judea, and maybe Gaza too ... If they call it Palestine, so be it. What do I care?”
The new documents are said to have come as a surprise to Shaul Rahavi, Meir’s grandson who runs the Golda Meir Institute for Leadership and Society. After he was shown the documents by Israeli newspaper Haaretz, he confirmed that he had never seen them before.
The talk is said to have taken place on October 9, 1970 with attendees listed as defence minister Moshe Dayan and education minister Yigal Allon.
Also present was police minister Shlomo Hillel, finance minister Pinchas Sapir, justice minister Yaakov Shimshon Shapir and minister without portfolio Yisrael Galili.
Meir went on to say: “The Arabs of Judea and Samaria must eventually be given the option of self-determination, if and when we desire it … that is, there will be another state.
“I said from the first day after the war, that the problem is what the second state will be called.
“That is as interesting to me as last year’s snow, or the snow that fell 2,000 years ago.”
She added: “Whether as an independent state, linked in a confederal relationship with Israel or with Israel and Jordan together, or if they want it, even with Jordan alone, as part of a peace treaty.
“I understand that another independent Arab state puts us in the bed of Sodom [an impossible situation], yet one day it will be necessary to break this bed and get out of it.”
Meir, who is played by Helen Mirren in the recently released Golda biopic, held the meeting at a key point in Palestinian history in the wake of the Black September massacre carried out by Jordanian troops in 1970.
The PLO, whose fighters were targeted in Jordanian raids, was led by Yasser Arafat.
At the time, Meir said she was willing to negotiate with Arafat saying: "if [Yasser] Arafat becomes the prime minister of Jordan, we will hold talks with him. Arafat as the head of a terrorist organisation – no. But, if it happens that he becomes prime minister and represents the country as a Palestinian – go ahead."
Meir told the meeting: “In my opinion, the main thing is what we want in the end.”
On the topic of whether Jerusalem would be considered the capital of any Palestinian state, she replied “certainly not Jerusalem.”
It is understood that records of another meeting that took place after the initial discussion have not been made available by the state archives.
Meir had a long political career and served as Israel’s fourth prime minister from 1969 to 1974 as a member of the Israeli Labour party.
She resigned due to public criticism following the 1973 Yom Kippur War and died in 1978.