Yigal Allon former Deputy Premier of Israel, told the annual convention of the Labor Zionist Alliance here that the “temptation for Egypt to get back the Sinai so great that if the United States government does not create unobtainable expectations in Cairo for greater concessions from Israel, a peace treaty may be signed.”
The weekend convention ended today with the election of Prof. Allen Pollack, 40, a member of the World Zionist Organization Executive, as president, succeeding I.K. Goldstein of New York who was elected vice president and chairman of the LZA administrative committee. Among his numerous activities, Pollack is also a member of the board of governors of the Jewish Agency and of the board of directors of the United Israel Appeal, and is a member of the American Zionist Federation executive committee. Under a Ford Foundation grant, he was a Visiting Fellow at the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute at the University of Leningrad. He was instrumental in establishing the American Professors for Peace in the Middle East.
Allon, who is world chairman of the Labor Zionist Movement spoke against the backdrop of the scheduled resumption of Israeli-Egyptian peace talks at Camp David on Wednesday, also declared that signing of a peace treaty depended on Egypt dropping “its strange demand to weaken its commitment to live up to the maintenance of peace, and agrees that the treaty is not conditional upon any act or developments between the other Arab states and Israel.”
ISRAEL WILL NOT ACCEPT PRESSURE
Allon told the 500 delegates he hoped that no U.S. pressure “will be used against Israel to accept a treaty which is conditioned by the behavior of other factors or countries other than Egypt and Israel.” He declared that Israel would not accept, “even under pressure,” any compromise which would jeopardize Israel’s capability “of defending herself by herself.”
Allon said the Camp David frameworks, “in spite of deficiencies, are binding. They have been signed by legitimate governments and approved by the Knesset and they should be honored on a recipes local basis by the Egyptians.” He said a peace treaty would have been signed by Dec. 17, the target date set at Camp David, if the Egyptian government had been faithful to the Camp David agreements and approved the text for a peace treaty which was worked out at Blair House.
Allon called on the Egyptian government not to be deterred by the “rejectionist elements” in the Arab world and sign the peace treaty “in good faith for the benefit of both countries.”
DOUBTS ABOUT CARTER ADMINISTRATION
Prof. Shlomo Avineri, former director general of the Israel Foreign Ministry, said at the Saturday evening convention session that “there may be grave doubts” whether the Carter Administration “really grasps some of the movements which have now been unleashed in the Middle East, ” a reference to the upheaval in Iran.
He added that regardless of these considerations, “they should never be used as an alibi by Israel in the substantive negotiations that will be under taken, “especially those” at the resumption of talks at Camp David.
Avineri said that among the considerations the Israeli government will have to take into ac count in its peace talks are not only problems of security and power balance, but also Israel’s standing “in the Jewish community in the world” which “tends to be predominantly liberal and identified with the more open-minded and intellectual sectors of the population.”
Avineri warned that if Jews throughout the world ever became convinced that “what is foremost in the Israeli government’s mind is territorial aggrandizement and not security, a tragic cleavage, between Israel and the diaspora might be opened.” He said Israel must be a Jewish State “in the sense that it will reflect the pluralism and diversity of Jewish life in the diaspora.
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.
