President Anwar el-Sadat, Statement Before the Egyptian People's Assembly, November 9, 1977

I frankly tell you, our people and the entire world: we are prepared to go to Geneva and sit there for the sake of peace, irrespective or all the procedural claims Israel is making in its desire to make us lose the opportunity or to make us nervous so that we my say, as we have said in the past: No, we do not want to go and we will not go and then Israel will appear to the world as the advocate or peace. Never. I agree to any procedural process. [Applause] Why? Because when we eventually go to Geneva, Israel will not be able to prevent me from demanding the return or the Arab territory occupied in 1967. Neither Israel nor any power will be able to prevent from demanding the legitimate rights; the right to self-determination and the right of the Palestinian to establish their state. [applause] This is what Israel wants to avoid by trying to play with the procedural process by adding a word or omitting a word or by issuing a declaration after an Israeli cabinet meeting by which they try to excite the Arab nation as they used to do in the past in order that we may have a nervous breakdown, that some may suffer a fit and that we may come out and say: We do not want to go to Geneva. No, never. I declare before you and the Arab nation that I am not interested at all in procedural processes. Let there be procedures. Regardless of Israel's exceptionalism and hysteria, I am going to Geneva. As I have said, neither Israel nor the powers of the world can dissuade us from what I want—the Arab territory occupied in 1967 and the rights or the Palestinian people, including their right to establish their state.

As long as this is my conviction, it is Israel which fears the Geneva conference. No Arab must ever fear the Geneva conference. Why? It is because we have exported to the Israeli society the division, fear, defeatism, doubt and suspicion and everything which we suffered from in the past.

Why should we return to this state? No. never. I am ready to go to Geneva. I will not hide it from you as representatives or the people and I say it to all our people here and our Arab nation to hear—and you have heard me say it—I am ready to go to the ends or the earth if this will prevent a soldier or an officer of my sons from being wounded—not being killed, but wounded. [applause]

I say now that I am ready to go to the ends of the earth. Israel will be astonished when it hears me saying now before you that I am ready to go to their house, to the Knesset itself and to talk to them. [applause]

SOURCE: United States Congress. House. Committee on Foreign Affairs. The Search for Peace in the Middle East, Documents and Statements, 1967-79. Prepared by the Congressional Research Service. (Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979), 223, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007396474.