Indications That Israel Wants to Close Episode of Airline Tragedy

Defense Minister Moshe Dayan made a brief statement on the Libyan plane disaster in the Knesset today. Observers took the brevity of his remarks and his failure to reveal any new information to mean that the Israeli government wants to close the episode and will make no more public statements on the subject. A sharp Knesset debate followed his remarks.

Dayan renewed his call for a “hot line” between Israel and the Arab states to avert a recurrence of the chain of errors that led to the tragedy last week. He said the only real solution was peace and normal relations between Israel and its neighbors, but failing that, the Arabs should agree to establish emergency communications means with Israel. The Arab governments have already rejected a “hot line” with Israel.

Dayan spoke for only seven minutes. He read out yesterday’s Cabinet decision to pay the victims’ families out of humanitarian considerations. He reiterated that the Israeli pilots who shot down the Libyan airliner had acted according to international law and said they fired on the plane only after the pilot ignored international signals to land. “The Israeli assumption that the Libyan plane was bent on evil was the product of a chain of errors by the Libyan pilot and the Egyptian ground control,” Dayan said.

Menachem Beigin, leader of the Gahal opposition, said the shooting was an honest mistake by the Israelis and deplored what he called “a false and slanderous campaign of vilification against Israel in reaction to it.” According to Beigin, the Israeli pilots could only assume that the Libyan plane was on a destructive mission because it had come unchallenged from an area heavily defended by Egyptian missiles. “It’s easy to say post facto that we should have let him go–but how would we feel had the plane dropped a bomb on Israel’s front lines at Suez?” Beigin asked.

Haim Zadok, of the Labor Alignment, said it was untrue to imply, as Beigin had, that the whole world was anti-Israel or anti-Semitic. He said Israel must explain to its friends what had happened. The fact that the plane was Libyan was irrelevant. Any plane would have been shot at under the circumstances, he said. Uri Avneri, of the Haolam Hazeh faction, called for a commission of inquiry into the tragedy, if only for Israel’s peace of mind. Yaacov Hazan, a Mapam leader, said he no longer favored that approach because the appointment of a commission could be interpreted as a basic lack of faith in Israel’s military commanders.