Jordanian television broadcast several minutes of Israel Defense Minister Moshe Dayan’s Sunday appearance on the American Broadcasting Company’s “Issues and Answers” program, an interview show on which Gen. Dayan said Israel was prepared to give up “lots” of occupied territory in return for a negotiated peace with its neighbors. The film clips were televised in Amman Monday.
The Jordanian authorities, however, impounded all newspapers carrying or commenting on a London Observer interview Sunday which quoted King Hussein as saying he was prepared to renounce his claim to the West Bank and would welcome the establishment of a Palestinian State there. Amman radio has remained silent on the interview which was reported all over the world. Jordanian authorities have denied the statements attributed to King Hussein.
But Gavin Young, the correspondent who interviewed the Hashemite ruler in the Royal Palace in Amman last week, stuck by his story. Mr. Young arrived here yesterday and said his version was correct. The report that King Hussein offered to give up the West Bank if that would bring peace and if “the people want it” aroused speculation throughout the world. Some observers saw it as a “trial balloon” to test the reaction of all the parties to the Middle East dispute. Others thought it might be a ploy by King Hussein to get West Bankers to beg him not to abandon them. Israeli sources said the alleged offer by the King was “interesting” but that it would have to be presented in a more direct and substantive manner before it could be taken seriously.
(In London, The Guardian said in an editorial that the proposal to give Palestinians their own state on the West Bank of the Jordan would solve more problems that it would create and could be the beginning of coexistence between Israel and the Arabs “without which peace can never come.” The paper said that a Palestinian state, with borders open to both Jordan and Israel, might pose a new danger to Israel “but it could work the other way.” It warned that “the spreading chaos of Jordan may present worse dangers to peace than either Moscow or Cairo.”)
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