Former Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan predicted here today that the next peace move in the Middle East will be with Jordan and not with the Palestinians. He also dismissed what he called the sensationalism surrounding the arrest and deportation order against Mayor Bassam Shaka of Nablus. He said that if the Israeli Supreme Court rules this Thursday that Shaka should be released, the government will submit, as it did in the recent case of the Elon Moreh settlement.
Addressing 200 local Jewish leaders at a luncheon meeting of the Allied Jewish Appeal, Dayan outlined Israel’s policies which, he said, are based on the urgency of assuring security. He said that the Camp David decisions will redound to the benefit of Israel and the Palestinian people as well as to the benefit of Egypt and the prestige of the U.S.
Dayan emphasized that the Palestinians will not be deprived of their rights. He said that Israel’s policy of creating settlements in the occupied territories mean the retention of defensive forces on its borders to assure the nation’s safety. The Arabs, he said, will have the benefits of self-rule as well as amity in relations with Israel. But Israel’s neighbor will be Jordan, Dayan declared in his augury of an early peace agreement with that country.
He was equally emphatic in expressing confidence that President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and the Egyptian people will adhere to the Camp David agreements because they are good, for Egypt.
Recalling events of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Dayan said that when counter-attacking Israeli forces were within 100 kilometers of Cairo, Sadat asked U.S. aid to end the Israeli advances. At that time, Dayan said, the Soviet Union offered to help Sadat repel the Israeli army but Sadat rejected Soviet participation in Middle Eastern affairs. Dayan noted that this and other developments preceded Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem on Nov. 19, 1977 and the eventual peace negotiations.
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.
