Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan said he believes that sooner or later the Palestinians will join the negotiations now going on between Israel, Egypt and the United States. Speaking to some 200 members of a United Jewish Appeal mission from New York at his home in Zahalan, Dayan said that his talks with supporters of the Palestine liberation Organization have convinced him that even the most extreme PLO sympathizer does not want another war with Israel.
“The Palestinians know too well that in any new war it will be them, the Palestinians, that will be caught between the guns of Israel and those of Jordan or Egypt,” Dayan explained. “They will become refugees even before the war is decided.”
Dayan said in his meetings with PLO supporters in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip he was told they did not want Israel to control them. “But they don’t want any barriers between them and Israel.” he said, “and after 11 years of living together, none of them want to go back to the time when they were not allowed to come to Tel Aviv, or we were not allowed to go to Gaza.”
The mission, the largest UJA group ever to come from New York, was organized at the invitation of William Rosenwald, honorary president of the UJA-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies Joint Campaign. It is led by Stephen Peck, a campaign leader and Wall Street stockbroker.
After arriving here last Sunday the group met with President Yitzhak Navon, who told them that American Jewish leaders should “no longer be surprised” when they are met with the “demand” that they personally make aliya. Israel’s greatest need is “people,” Navon declared. “Come with your money, or without your money, but come.” Aliya does not mean that American Jews should give money for Jews to come to Israel from Iran and Turkey, but they should immigrate themselves, the President added.
Leon Dulzin, chairman of the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency Executives, also stressed the need for aliya. Israel’s security will not be achieved just by securing its borders but increasing the Jewish population until it reaches “six, even, eight million,” he said. Dulzin said the Soviet Union was the largest reservoir of future immigrants here and said he believed that large numbers of Soviet Jews would come to Israel.
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.
