Former Defense Minister Moshe Dayan believes that Israel should negotiate simultaneously with Egypt and Syria and not with Egypt alone. In an interview to be published tomorrow in Maariv, Dayan argued that it was a mistake to conduct negotiations only with Egypt in a second-stage disengagement accord because any settlement reached with the Egyptians would be in danger as long as there was no parallel agreement with the Syrians.
Dayan reiterated, however, that if Egyptian President Anwar Sadat is not prepared to renounce the state of belligerency, Israel should not withdraw from another inch of territory in Sinai. Dayan, who is on a private tour of the Far East and is in Bangkok today, warned in his Maariv interview that Israel cannot continue to defer the Syrian problem for long if there is an agreement with Egypt.
Syria will not remain quiet nor will the Russians agree that their client in Damascus should get less than the American client in Cairo, he said, A new eruption on the Syrian front would not only jeopardize a pact with Egypt but would focus the world’s attention on the Golan Heights where Israel will be told, “For some lousy kilometers you are willing to risk another war and undermine the agreement reached with Egypt,” Dayan warned.
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.
