Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger made no deal with the Soviet Union beyond the cease-fire agreement–and he was able to persuade Premier Golda Meir and her ministers on Monday that this was so. JTA learned this from a reliable source. The source, close to the government, was not prepared, however, to rule out the possibility of such deals in the future. Mrs. Meir and her senior ministers met with Dr. Kissinger for over three hours to discuss the cease-fire resolution that he and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev had worked out on Sunday.
Dr. Kissinger told the Israeli leaders that the cease-fire resolution was an achievement for U.S. diplomacy and a concession by the Russians The item speaking of immediate negotiations between the parties concerned is a formulation which Israel has long wanted to see embodied in an official document agreed upon by the Arabs.
Of course the clause which speaks of immediate implementation of Security Council Resolution 242 was phrased and inserted by the USSR. But in this, too, Dr. Kissinger was able to tell Mrs. Meir that this was an American achievement since there was no mention of restoring the rights of the Palestinians. Resolution 242 only speaks of a just settlement of the refugee problem–which Israel interprets as social and economic rehabilitation without political overtones.
The U.S.-Soviet decision to propose a cease-fire rather than a total standstill as in 1970 is also seen on the whole as favorable to Israel. A standstill would have made it difficult for Israel to reinforce and refurbish its forces on the Suez Canal’s west bank. A well-placed Israeli source told the JTA that Israel had felt itself obliged to accept the first cease-fire adopted by the Security Council early Monday for both political and moral considerations. Israel had a choice–and did not feel that the cease-fire had been imposed upon it, the source stressed.
The Prime Minister and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan had felt that a cease-fire in position, opening the path to peace negotiations, was a satisfactory achievement for Israel. Israel’s political image has been much battered of late–and it could not allow itself to be cast in the image of intransigence on the cease-fire resolution. The cessation of bloodshed was also a factor weighing very heavily in the Premier’s and the Defense Minister’s considerations, the sources said.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
