Storm Awaits Rabin in Israel

A domestic political storm awaits Premier Yitzhak Rabin when he returns from the U.S. this Thursday over a remark allegedly made in Washington that was denigrating to Israel’s defense establishment and reflected poorly on Defense Minister Shimon Peres and Chief of Staff Gen. Mordechai Gur.

The remark, said to have been made by a “senior source in the Premier’s party” during a Washington press briefing last Thursday, criticized Israel’s weapons “shopping list” that was drawn up by the Defense Ministry. The source was quoted as saying that the list “did not add honor to the State of Israel” and that it was “drawn up in a very negligent manner.”

The Israeli news media, apparently convinced even before the Premier’s return that he had failed to persuade President Ford to restore the proposed $500 million cut in U.S. military aid to Israel in fiscal 1977, seized on the alleged remark about the weapons list as the signal of a widening rift between Rabin and Peres. According to the local press, the Rabin party in the U.S. was severely embarrassed by the remark.

Peres has refused to comment publicly. He reportedly told friends in private that he could not attack Rabin while he was on a state visit abroad because a modicum of dignity had to be preserved. But defense circles and their supporters. particularly “hawks” of Likud and other factions, were clearly angered. Likud MK Shmuel Tamir has already submitted a sharp question for the Premier in the Knesset.

Sources within the Defense Ministry emphasized to newsmen that Israel’s weapons purchase list was personally approved by the Premier who. as a former Chief of Staff, could not claim ignorance of its details and meaning. It was thus tendentious to pretend that the list was exclusively the effort of the Defense Ministry and that Rabin was unaware of its contents until he came to Washington, the sources said.