Allon Plan Attacked by Nrp Leader Who Terms It ‘expanded Rogers Plan’

Deputy Premier Yigal Allon’s plan for the West Bank came under angry attack last night by a leader of the National Religious Party after publication of a newspaper interview in which Allon said that King Hussein’s proposal for a federation of the West Bank and Jordan was, in principle, not incompatible with his own plan for the region.

Allon’s remarks, published Friday in Maariv, indicated that he thought the Hussein plan and the Allon plan constituted bargaining positions on which Jordan and Israel could start peace negotiations. Allon made it clear, however, that the geographical arrangements proposed by Hussein were totally unacceptable to Israel.

He was assailed by NRP leader Yitzhak Raphael who called the Allon plan an “expanded Rogers plan,” a reference to geographical proposals made by the American Secretary of State William P. Rogers two years ago which Israel has rejected. “A man with the rank of Deputy Premier cannot offer a detailed plan of his own and then simply wave it away by saying his remarks were not binding on anyone but himself. Personal political pronouncements of this kind are liable to damage our overall political efforts,” Raphael told an NRP meeting.

Premier Golda Meir said last week that her government accepted the Allon plan as a minimum bargaining position but that certain Cabinet ministers wanted more territory than would be ceded to Israel under its terms. The NRP, Mrs. Meir’s coalition partner, insists on Israel’s retention of the Judaea and Samaria regions on Biblical grounds. The right-wing nationalist Gahal faction demands that Israel keep all the Arab territories it seized in 1967.

ALLON: HUSSEIN PLAN NOT IN CONFLICT

Allon said in his Maariv interview that West Bank Arabs should be given the opportunity for a national existence of their own. He said Hussein’s federation proposals were not necessarily in conflict with his own but that their geographical concepts were completely contradictory. He justified Mrs. Meir’s rejection of the Hussein proposals “in order to prevent any illusions in the Arab camp that Israel would agree to its geographical implications.”

Allon proposed, meanwhile, the establishment of five additional Israeli settlements in the Jordan Valley besides the six already built there and construction of a new town between Jerusalem and Jericho to strengthen Jerusalem’s eastern approaches. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan was reported today to have suggested the same thing.

NIMEIRY: COULD END WAR WITH ISRAEL

The Hussein plan has been bitterly denounced by most Arab governments who have accused the King of collaboration with Israel. But Premier Gaafar Mohamed al-Nimeiry of Sudan today criticized Egypt, Syria and Libya for rejecting Hussein’s federation proposal without studying it. In an interview published in the Sudanese Army organ “Armed Forces,” Nimeiry said the Hussein plan perhaps could lead to an end of the war with Israel. He said an Arab summit meeting to discuss the plan was more vital than ever. Nimeiry observed, however, that Hussein’s plan like other Arab political and military projects, Ignored the existence of Israel “as a painful reality.”