Mrs. Meir Receives Unanimous Support from Labor Party’s Central Committee

The Labor Party’s central committee rallied unanimously last night behind Premier Golda Meir declaring that it “fully endorses the policies of the Israeli government seeking a just and lasting peace in defensible borders.” The committee also backed the government’s position against a return to the pre-Six-Day War borders, noting that it was those lines that the Arab states and the fedayeen had found it so easy to challenge. In other action, the committee rejected any substitute for a peace pact–such as international guarantees or police forces–and supported the government’s intentions to return to the Jarring talks. The committee’s statements came after a long, detailed summing-up of Israel’s views by Mrs. Meir. There are points, she insisted, from which Israel “most definitely and categorically” will not budge. She strongly rejected guarantees or police forces as substitution or a peace accord with the Arab states, remarking that “there are certain things beyond which our American friends have to realize we will not go.” In that connection, she further criticized Secretary of State William P. Rogers’ emphasis on multi-nation guarantees and de-emphasis on “geography.” Mrs. Meir said “we cannot trust what Rogers offers us even if he does so with the best of intentions.”

Mrs. Meir continued: “Our friends say that secure borders are not important. I have yet to see the U.S. or any other nation with friendly neighbors–not like ours–offering to cancel out their borders–say, with Canada. Why should we serve as guinea pigs for borders that are so unimportant? Why should we be the one and only country in the world that agrees to become a protectorate surrounded by a framework peopled by Americans, Russians, Yugoslavs and Indians?” What is involved, she said, “is not the borders of the U.S. but the borders of the Jewish people.” Mrs. Meir reiterated that it was in the free world’s interest for Israel to be strong and secure. She mentioned aid to Israel by the Nixon administration and American Jewry, but warned: “We have to ready ourselves for a very tough struggle.” (Israel’s Foreign Minister Abba Eban, who arrived in New York this week, is expected to discuss the impasse in the peace talks when he confers tomorrow with Secretary Rogers in Washington. The same topic was reportedly discussed today by Eban and Mideast intermediary Dr. Gunnar V. Jarring during their meeting at the home of Yosef Tekoah, Israel’s ambassador to the UN. Eban also met with Thant today for more than an hour, but declined substantive answers to newsmen’s questions after the meeting.)

Although the Labor Party’s central committee hailed Mrs. Meir’s speech unanimously, there is dissension on territorial concessions within her own party. Seven leaders of a new “Circle for the Indivisibility of the Country” met with Mrs. Meir yesterday and told her they were planning to recruit 3,000 young men and women who have completed their army service to help establish new settlements in the occupied Arab territories. “The Land of Israel Movement,” a non-party organization opposed to Israeli withdrawal, is headed by a leading Laborite, Dr. Haim Yahil, chairman of the Israel Broadcasting Authority. Dr. Yahil, 65, is former ambassador to Sweden, Norway and Iceland and a former director general of the Foreign Ministry. His second son was killed in the Six-Day War. Meanwhile, opposition leader Menachem Beigin left this morning for a series of speeches in the U.S. on what he considers the “dangers” of the Rogers territorial plan. He said here that he would not discuss in his speeches his differences of opinion with the Meir government. “On the contrary,” he said, “I will stress the unanimous opposition to the Rogers plan. To wave off the Rogers plan we will work together. There is a real danger in the American attitude.”