Foreign Minister Yigal Allon called on Israelis last night to make use of the relative calm resulting from the new interim accord with Egypt to remedy the wrongs and inequities within Israel’s society. As Israeli and Egyptian teams were working out the final details of the interim pact in Geneva, Allon warned against a return to pre-Yom Kippur War complacency and urged against a repetition of easy money-making and profiteering such as was done by private contractors employed to build front line fortifications.
Addressing an audience at Ben Gurion University in Beersheba that included community leaders, academicians, students and youths from developing communities, Allon said it might be better to construct Israel’s new line of fortifications in Sinai by the army engineers corps rather than private contractors. He said if the engineers lacked all the equipment, laws could be passed to commandeer equipment for the task.
Allon said the deficiency of the Israeli-Egyptian interim pact in Sinai was that it is not a final peace agreement but only a stage on the road towards peace. Its advantage, he said, was that it may possibly provide the chance for a political settlement instead of a military one.
TWO INTERVIEWS ON U.S. PERSONNEL
In an interview published in Maariv on the eve of Rosh Hashanah last week, Allon was reported as saying that if the United States was for any reason unable to provide American civilian technicians to man an advanced warning station in Sinai as proposed in the interim accord with Egypt, “we shall find a way to implement the agreement without them.”
According to Maariv, Allon, who with Premier Yitzhak Rabin and Defense Minister Shimon Peres, comprised the Israeli negotiating team for the agreement, said. “I did not present the question of American technicians as a demand and I did not regard the American technicians’ presence as an essential condition for the signature of the agreement. I had my reasons for and against American technicians. But I have decided in favor of the technicians because the pros are more than the cons.”
Asked by Marriv if he would implement the agreement should Congress fail to approve the American presence, Allon replied that there was an understanding with the Americans that if the stationing of technicians was not possible, the U.S. would not hold Israel responsible for not reaching an agreement. He said he believed Congress would approve. Pressed on that point, Allon said if there was no approval, “we shall have to find a way how to advance to the agreement under conditions that will result from the cancellation of the American presence.”
(Asked the same question in an interview published in the Sept. 15 edition of U.S. News & World Report, the Israeli Foreign Minister replied: “Now, if Congress fails to approve the Administration’s undertaking to dispatch to the area a couple of hundred technicians, it will be a great disappointment to Israel, and I think, also to Egypt, Such refusal may paralyze the process of implementation of the agreement, and some new methods would-have to be sought out.”)
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.
