Moshe Dayan, who may be Israel’s next Foreign Minister, and Anwar Nusseibe, the former Defense Minister of Jordon who lives in East Jerusalem, indicated last night that for the time being there is almost no room for agreement between Arabs and Jews on a solution of the West Bank problem.
Dayan and Nusseibe participated in a panel discussion of the lessons learned during 10 years of Israel’s administration of Arab territories captured in the 1967 Six-Day War. The discussion marked the end of a three-day seminar on Jerus- alem and the administered territories sponsored by the Truman Institute of the Hebrew University.
Dayan claimed that the main lesson of the last 10 years was that Jews and Arabs could live together without any accepted agreements and that Israel’s policies toward the administered territories should continue as they are. He noted that this policy allowed the Arabs free access to Israel to find work, free travel by Israelis in the Arab territories, the right of West Bankers to send their representatives to Jordan’s parliament and the right of Israelis to buy land in the administered territories. Dayan also said that Israel should continue to establish settlements in the territories and that the Arabs should have the right to decide which passport they wish to hold.
Nusseibe said that Israel has three alternatives: to obtain real security through peace by with drawing from the territories; to agree to establishment of a multi-racial state; or to continue to rule the territories by force. He warned that by following the latter course, Israel exposed itself to corruption. He objected to Dayan’s concept of forcing Arabs to live under an Israeli administration while allowing them to vote for the Jordanian parliament. By implementing this system, the Israelis empty the West Bank of its political content, a prelude to emptying it of its Arab population, Nusseibe said. He also apposed the view that Israel has the right to establish new settlements in the territories.
CITES LINK WITH JORDON
Another speaker, Dr. Clinton Bailey of Tel Aviv University, said that most West Bank Arabs link their future with Jordan. He said he reached that conclusion after talking to numerous West Bank residents. He said they consider Jordan their economic and political base but demand administrative changes that would “Palestinize” the Hashemite Kingdom. Bailey said the success of that approach would depend on the extent to which the Palestine Liberation Organization succeeded in its efforts to become the sole representative of the Palestinian people.
Earlier, Yehuda Zvi Blum, a professor of international law at the Hebrew University claimed that by rejecting the 1947 United Nations partition plan for Palestine and their subsequent aggression against Israel, the Arab states forfeited all claims to East Jerusalem and the West Bank. He maintained that under international law, neither Jordan nor any other Arab state could lay claim to any parts of Mandatory Palestine which they occupied by aggression in 1948 and from which they were ousted by Israel in 1967.
Blum noted that Israel had accepted the partition plan on condition that the Arabs also accepted it and that it was implemented peacefully. But the Arabs used force to prevent peaceful implementation of the plan, he said, and no rights accrued to them from that act. According to Blum, Israel’s claims to what was Mandatory Palestine are better than those of any other state under international law.
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