Sapir Questions Dayan Views on Future of Rights of Arabs in Occupied Areas

Defense Minister Moshe Dayan’s controversial call on the government to draft a “clear policy” of equal rights for the Arabs in the administered territories has been rebuffed by Finance Minister Pinhas Sapir, a fellow Laborite Cabinet member. In a television interview yesterday, Sapir said that while economic ties between Israel and those Arabs were likely after a peace settlement, Israel should resist pressure to integrate them into the Jewish State in more substantial ways.

Sapir agreed that the Labor Party and the government, which it rules, should decide on the nature of Israel’s relations with the territories, but he warned that the Jewish majority in Israel could be outnumbered by an escalating Arab birthrate. Sapir said he feared that Arab labor in Israel would imperil the fabric of Israeli society, cause a deterioration in Jewish-Arab relations and, in the event of a recession, force Israeli firms to choose whether to lay off Israelis or Arabs.

The Finance Minister suggested that the Defense Minister raise the issue in the Labor Party’s Leadership Bureau, of which Dayan is a member and Sapir is not. In an indirect criticism of Dayan, Sapir remarked that “no one has bothered to table such a motion at the Cabinet.”

Although Sapir has long objected to integrating Arabs of the administered areas into Israel, his comments yesterday represented a new effort on his part to underscore the importance of preserving what he calls the integrity of the Jewish State. For Dayan, preserving this integrity begs the question of what to do with the 1.3 million Arabs under Israeli administration.