New Chief of Staff Will Be Named After New Defense Minister is Chosen

No new Chief of Staff will be named for Israel’s armed forces until a new Defense Minister is selected, informed sources indicated today. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan has refrained from appointing a successor to Lt. Gen. David Elazar, who resigned last week, because his own future position in the Cabinet remains uncertain. Should Dayan be forced to resign, as it appeared increasingly likely today, he is expected to be replaced by Gen. Yitzhak Rabin, the Labor Minister, and himself a former Chief of Staff.

Rabin, it was rumored today, would select a new Chief of Staff from among several high ranking officers who recently retired from active duty. These include Maj. Gen. Israel Tal, the former Deputy Chief of Staff; Gen. Yeshayahu Gavish; and Gen. Ariel (Arik) Sharon, the Likud leader.

Sharon said today that he would be prepared to quit politics and return to the army if he is asked to be Chief of Staff. He was strongly supported for that position by his fellow Likud leader, Menachem Beigin, who acknowledged that Sharon’s return to uniform would weaken Likud. “But the needs of the State come first,” Beigin told a Likud forum last night.

ELAZAR SEEKING TO CLEAR HIMSELF

Meanwhile, Elazar continued to insist that he was done a serious injustice by the Agranat Committee which, in its partial report released last week, placed the burden of responsibility on him for Israel’s lack of military preparedness when the Yom Kippur War broke out. Elazar said in a series of newspaper interviews published over the weekend that he would strive to clear his name of “all those unjustified charges” raised against him. “I can understand that the overall responsibility is placed on the Chief of Staff, but I think that the committee exaggerated in dealing with me and in setting my personal responsibility,” he said.

Elazar also charged that the committee acted in violation of its own rules when it failed to invite him to reply to the various charges before its report was released. Although he had no choice but to resign after the Agranat report came out, Elazar insisted that “The way I performed my duties during the Yom Kippur War makes me, even today, the man that can assume this responsibility until the end of my term.” He said he had told Premier Golda Meir “that I was hurt above and beyond cause.”