Dayan: Mideast Peace Will Not Come All at Once but in a Series of Stages

Defense Minister Moshe Dayan said last night that the formal act of signing a peace treaty with the Arabs will not bring real peace to the Middle East. Real peace will take a long time to come about because it requires a basic change in the Arab approach to Israel–a renunciation of their hatred for the Jewish State–Dayan told an overflow audience of 3,000 persons who occupied every seat and packed the aisles at last night’s session of the 28th World Zionist Congress here.

The Defense Minister predicted that peace would not come in one step but would be the end result of a process that starts with a termination of belligerency followed by an extended period of “peace in practice.” “I think we are far from this but I am sure it will come,” Dayan declared.

Speaking as a military man, Dayan stressed the adverse effect of the Soviet military presence in Egypt on the NATO alliance and in particular on the US Sixth Fleet which is challenged by Soviet missile boats, Tupolev bombers and MIG-23 jet fighters based in Egypt. Dayan said the Russians did not want to fight Israel on behalf of the Arabs but observed that they “have reached a very thin line between aid (to Egypt) and participation.”

U.S. SEEKS TO PREVENT WAR

Referring to President Nixon’s State of the Union message, Dayan said Nixon mentioned two principles of US security policy which Dayan said he hoped referred to Israel although Nixon had not specifically said as much. These were aid to

He added that Egypt, Syria and Jordan needed peace with Israel as much as Israel needs peace with them. But Egyptian tactics over the past two years have been aimed at evading a decision, Dayan observed. He said the war of attrition and the pressures on the US to extract concessions from Israel were intended to defeat Israel without fighting it. “Five years after the Six-Day War I cannot honestly say that there has been any real advance toward peace,” Dayan said.