Dayan: Israel Prepared to Discuss Territorial Compromise on West Bank Viewed As Softening of Israel’

Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan told the Knesset today that Israel is prepared to discuss a territorial compromise on the West Bank if one is proposed and that it would be prepared to discuss the question of sovereignty for that territory after five years of self-rule.

Opening the foreign policy debate with a report on his meeting at Leeds Castle, England last week with Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohammed Kaamel and U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, Dayan said he offered his proposals to Vance on his own authority. He noted that the Cabinet endorsed them yesterday and authorized him to present this position to the Knesset.

Dayan has expressed these ideas before but never formally and with the full authority of the government. The position he stated, especially the willingness to consider the sovereignty issue, represented a considerable softening of the position Israel took in its reply to the American questions on the future of the West Bank and Gaza Strip last month. At that time, the Cabinet would say only that Israel would review its relations with the parties after five years of self-rule on the West Bank and Gaza.

PROJECTING MODERATE IMAGE

Dayan explained that the Cabinet’s earlier negative reply was predicated on the fact that “our peace plan had not even been put on the table for discussion. This was not the case following the Leeds Castle conference when both the Israeli and Egyptian plans were discussed,” he said. He told the Knesset that “several points of contact” between the Israeli and Egyptian plans emerged at the talks in England but the differences were still “immeasurably greater” than the areas of agreement. The Cabinet’s endorsement of Dayan’s proposals seemed to reflect the government’s desire to project as moderate an image as possible.

(But Premier Menachem Begin, appearing in a previously taped interview on the CBS-TV “Face the Nation” program yesterday, did not respond directly when asked about the possibility of an Israeli compromise on the West Bank. He insisted that his own “self-rule” proposal was a “real” compromise and said he saw no reason to offer any compromise now because the Egyptians were not amenable to one.

(Begin said Dayan had specifically asked the Egyptians at the Leeds Castle meeting whether they believed a compromise on the West Bank and Gaza Strip was practical and, according to Begin, “Their reply was twice, of course not, of course not.”)

(Vance, who appeared on the ABC-TV “Issues and Answers” program yesterday said in reply to a question that Israel must accept the principle of withdrawal from the West Bank as a precondition for continued negotiations. “I have always believed that the basic principle underlying the peace negotiations is (UN) Resolution 242…which very clearly talks about withdrawal from occupied territories,” he said. Vance said the foreign ministers’ meeting in England did not narrow the fundamental differences between Israel and Egypt.)

Dayan told the Knesset that the Egyptians had presented their most rigid stance at the Leeds Castle talks. He said they opposed any Israeli troop presence on the West Bank after a peace treaty is signed and insisted that any border changes would be negligible. However, on the positive side, Dayan noted that in their formal presentation the Egyptians no longer demanded a Palestinian state and referred only to a Palestinian “entity” linked to Jordan.

LISTS POINTS OF CONTACT

He listed the following points of contact “in conception” between himself and Foreign Minister Kaamel:

An end to Israeli military rule on the West Bank; some form of Palestinian local authority there and in the Gaza Strip; a five-year interim period; discussion of the long-term disposition of those territories after the five years; joint negotiations on the refugee problem; free Jewish-Arab intercourse on the West Bank and in Israel after peace is established; special status at the holy places in Jerusalem; no re-division of Jerusalem; and the need to prevent terrorism.

THREE BASIC DIFFERENCES

“But the gap is immeasurably wider than the common ground,” Dayan said. He said the differences focussed on three basic issues: the permanent sovereign status of the West Bank which the Egyptians regard as Arab territory and Begin regards as “liberated” Jewish land; security arrangements; and the timetable and mechanism for decision-making on the West Bank.

Dayan said the security measures Egypt proposed were mutual demilitarization, limited forces zones, UN supervision, American-manned advance waming devices, third party supervision, free access of all shipping to international waterways, including the Suez Canal and full peace and normalization of relations, which Egypt sees as the best security guarantee of all.

But, Dayan said, the Egyptians would not countenance any Israeli troops or settlements across the border. He said their “readiness for minor border changes” as Kaamel explained it, meant only such changes that would assure that villages were not divided by a border line. Dayan said “Israel has not agreed to any territorial compromise. We asked them (the Egyptians) if they would accept the Allon plan and they said, no, of course not.” The plan, proposed after the 1967 war by former Foreign Minister Yigal Allon, never officially adopted by Israel, called for partition of the West Bank with Israel maintaining a security border on the Jordan River.

Allon was the first spokesman for the Labor opposition at today’s debate. He dwelt at length on the Middle East formula drafted earlier this month by Chancellor Bruno Kreisky of Austria and former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt and adopted by the Labor Party last night.

Allon called it “the best international interpretation of Resolution 242 ever” and told Likud, “don’t let your jealousy blind you.” He accused the government of being fearful of a declaration of principles with Egypt because that might bring Jordan into the negotiating process and then “you would have to give up your castles in the air,” meaning Likud’s commitment to a “Greater Israel.”