Moshe Dayan said last night that he had received a double assurance that an Israeli government led by Menachem Begin would not unilaterally annex the West Bank. Interviewed on BBC television’s Panorama program, Dayan said Begin had agreed that there would be no annexation by Israel as long as negotiations went on. Nor would it happen automatically if negotiations broke down. If that happened, he said, “then we shall sit together and see where do we go from there.”
Dayan said Begin had also agreed “completely” to his insistence that the people of the West Bank should retain the right to send their representatives to Amman as members of Jordan’s Parliament. He defended his readiness to serve as Begin’s Foreign Minister on grounds that he was closer to the Likud leader than to the Labor Party in believing that no part of the West Bank should ever be given up. He said he and Begin agreed, however, that Israel should set no prior conditions to negotiations.
On President Carter’s suggestion that Israel should withdraw approximately to the 1967 lines, Dayan said: “I just don’t believe that there is any reasonable line of partition of the West Bank and whoever talks about it should just show me what the line will look like.”
SEES TWO OPTIONS AT GENEVA
Dayan was optimistic that the Geneva conference could take place and about its outcome. However, he put more emphasis on the current diplomatic contacts, adding that it would be necessary to go to Geneva only for the final signing of an agreement. The parties should aim initially at an all-out peace. But since that appeared unattainable, they should also work towards an ending of the state of war, he said. Although Israel must be very careful not to fall into a trop, he believed that President Sadat did not want a war.
Dayan denied that he had betrayed the Labor Party and justified his agreement with Likud claiming it was made under “very special circumstances.” He had not jumped at Begin’s offer but had been given four days to think it over, he said. When he had held similar talks with Likud just before the election, they had failed to come to terms about the political formula under which the West Bank would not be annexed. Now, he believed that he would be able to negotiate on behalf of Begin without compromising his own personal position on the West Bank, Dayan said.
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