A former Israel government adviser on Arab affairs said today that most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip Arab mayors are “partners for negotiations with Israel” and shared the realism of the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
Prof. Moshe Maoz, one-time adviser to former Defense Minister Ezer Weizman, said that the Arab mayors, who were democratically elected in 1976, recognized the need to coexist with Israel and did not want to hand over the leadership of the territories to the PLO terrorists.
Maoz, who teaches Middle East history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, was in London for the publication of a book he has written on the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank.
Although he claimed the present Israeli government could do more to encourage the West Bank Arab leadership, Maoz praised the present Defense Minister, Moshe Arens, for adopting a “pragmatic and logical” attitude like that favored by Weizman and the late Moshe Dayan.
He contrasted all three men favorably with former Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, who he said had had a “tacit agreement with the Jewish militant faction operating in the territories and who had wanted to neutralize the elected Arab leadership.
OPPOSES SEPARATE PALESTINIAN STATE
Maoz said he was opposed to the creation of a separate Palestinian state west of the Jordan River, and that the road to a peace settlement lay through the Camp David autonomy agreements and a link between the territories and Jordan as envisaged under President Reagan’s initiative of September 1982.
In his book, Maoz argues that the Six-Day War turned the West Bank into a battleground between resurgent Palestinian and Jewish nationalism, whose result would largely determine the destiny of the area and the future character of Israel as a Jewish State.
He claims that the Palestinian mayors elected by the Arabs of the West Bank in 1976 are their authorized leaders, but because their only outlet in the Arab world is via Jordan, any solution to the problem of the West Bank must go via that country.
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