A Foreign Ministry spokesman today denied a report in the London Daily Telegraph yesterday that Foreign Minister Abba Eban would present Israel’s plan for the West Bank on Oct. 8. The spokesman, David Rivlin, said that Mr. Eban’s address would deal with ideas and views that may promote peace in the area. Observers here took the denial to mean that territorial questions will not be touched on by Mr. Eban.
When Mr. Eban arrived in London for a brief private visit yesterday he said he would outline a plan before the General Assembly based on peace originating in the Middle East, not engineered by outside parties. His reference was obviously to the Soviet four-point peace proposal offered to Washington which Israel has rejected.
The London Times speculated that Mr. Eban would discuss the Arab refugee problem, Israel’s approach to the question of direct or indirect peace talks, and the terms of Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied Arab territories. According to the Times, Eban’s speech would “apparently contain a reasonably clear definition of the price Israel is prepared to pay for a written and signed peace treaty.”
The Daily Telegraph’s Jerusalem correspondent David Loshak reported that Israel would offer the so-called “Allon Plan” to the General Assembly which, the writer said, Arab and Palestinian sources indicated may be acceptable. According to Mr. Loshak, Israel would offer to return most of the West Bank to Jordan, with the exception of East Jerusalem, and would offer Jordan access to a Mediterranean port, either Haifa or Ashdod. Israel would retain a corridor to the Allenby Bridge, near Jericho, and a salient of Jordanian territory near Latrun which commands the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, Mr. Loshak reported. Mr. Loshak said that the “Allon Plan” was formulated as an alternative to a plan advocated by Defense Minister Gen. Moshe Dayan which envisaged the West Bank as an autonomous region containing Israeli bases. An advantage of the “Allon Plan,” Mr. Loshak wrote, is that it would give Israel additional security without bringing more than about 6,000 Arabs under permanent Israeli rule.
Another war in the Middle East appears more likely now than it did a few months ago, Gen. Dayan said here in a speech. He declared that the situation along the cease-fire lines had deteriorated. He also declared, without elaboration, that if a permanent peace settlement was not reached, Israel might have to modify its policy in the occupied areas. In London, Mr. Eban said he did not see war as likely.
BEIGIN DENOUNCES SOVIET PEACE PROGRAM, URGES U.S. OPPOSITION
The four-point Soviet Middle East peace plan was angrily denounced yesterday by Menachem Beigin, leader of the Herut Party and a minister-without-portfolio in the national coalition Government. Mr. Beigin called the proposal a “Communist plot that threatens genocide” and urged U.S. opposition to it. The Soviet plan, now under study by the U.S. State Department, stipulated complete Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Arab territories in return for a declaration of non-belligerence by the Arabs, a four-power guarantee of peace in the region and the establishment of a United Nations force in the evacuated territories.
(Sources close to the British Foreign Office in London said that “this plan would suit the Arabs but will not suit Israel since it does not guarantee her peace or equality in navigation. The Arabs will like it because it offers them evacuation by Israel without humiliation and absolves them of the need to negotiate.” There was no official British comment on the plan.)
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
