Dayan Says Israel is Ready to Discuss Any Proposals and Does Not Regard Its Own Views As Ultimatums

Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan told correspondents covering the Israeli-Egyptian political committee today that Israel was ready to “listen to, to discuss, to negotiate any proposal” put forward by the other parties. It did not regard its own ideas as ultimatums and, consequently it could not accept ultimatums from Egypt couched in “take-it-or-leave-it” terms, he said. Egypt has “a free hand” to submit whatever proposals she saw fit, “and we will negotiate over them–just as we would expect Egypt to negotiate over our proposals,” Dayan declared.

He was at pains throughout his hour-long press conference to express an attitude of open-mindedness on Israel’s part. While he offered no specific new concessions in Israel’s stated positions, his apparent aim was to indicate readiness for compromise and reconsideration of established doctrines. The concessions and compromises themselves, he said, would be made at the negotiating table, not through the media.

Dayan explained that the 27-hour recess in the committee’s deliberations was intended to give the parties time to study each other’s position papers, submitted at today’s brief first working session. These papers concerned item one on the agenda, he said, “principles of a peace settlement” between Israel and its neighbors. They contained “no surprises,” but pointed up the fundamental differences over the issues of total withdrawal and Palestinian self-determination.

ON THE ISSUE OF SINAI

Pressed by reporters on the Sinai settlements question, Dayan said Israel, under Premier Menachem Begin, had put forward a new “concept,” based on restoring Egyptian sovereignty to the entire peninsula, but demanding “special arrangements” for the security-sensitive points of Sharmel-Sheikh and the Rafah salient.

The alternative concept which Israel could advance, Dayan said, was a return to the previous Labor-led government’s idea of a territorial change, with a strip of land from just east of El Arish in the north to Sharm el-Sheikh in the south becoming Israeli territory.

“Would this be more acceptable to Egypt?” Dayan asked. “I doubt it.” He pointed out that such border amendments would not contravene Resolution 242, which, by the interpretation endorsed by the U.S., did not require Israel to withdraw from “the” territories. At any rate, Israel was not demanding acceptance of either one concept, or the other, or nothing. It was prepared to consider any alternative idea to be put forward by Egypt, Dayan said.

Asked about a proposal current in some Washington quarters for an exchange of land in Sinai, with Israel keeping Rafah and ceding land else-where in the Negev, Dayan said Israel had made no such proposal “and I don’t think we shall. But we would consider it if it were proposed by Egypt. Some observers took this as an indirect invitation to Egypt to suggest a land swap in Sinai as a last resort means of overcoming the settlements obstacle.

THE PALESTINIAN QUESTION

On the Palestinian question, too, Dayan sounded conciliatory without wavering from any of Israel’s known positions. He did not think, he said, “that a fraction of a nation should have its won independent state.” But if Egypt, Jordan or Palestinian Arab representatives had other ideas, Israel would willingly “discuss, examine, negotiate, them.

Dayan conceded to a questioner that President Carter’s formula for a solution of the Palestinian problem, restated by Secretary of State Cyrus Vance at the opening session, did not entirely accord with Israel’s position. “We have our own formulation,” Dayan said. “It is not identical with that of the U.S. but we are ready to discuss their proposal.”

He said he had not been informed officially of an American compromise proposal on the Palestinian issue which would regard Israel’s self-rule plans as a good basis for a transitional arrangement which would remain open-ended as for as the ultimate future of the region was concerned.

“Can President Sadat, or anyone, assure us as to what attitude a future Palestinian state run by the PLO would have towards Israel?” Dayan asked. And similarly, on the Golan Heights, could Sadat in Cairo give a “guarantee for Israel,” as he claimed of its future security in the event of its withdrawal from the heights? On the issue of Jerusalem Dayan said it would be “a very hard question” to resolve.