Aharon Yariv, a former Cabinet minister, warned today that Israel must be prepared for a shift in American policy toward recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the establishment of a Palestinian state between Israel and Jordan within the framework of an overall Middle East peace settlement.
Yariv, who just returned from a six-week visit to Washington to explain Israel’s needs for U.S. military assistance, said he detected the new direction of American policy. But this does not mean that Israel has to accept it and not fight it, he declared in an interview on the army broadcasting service.
Yariv, a former chief of military intelligence who negotiated the original separation of forces agreement with the Egyptians in Sinai after the Yom Kippur War, served briefly as Minister of Communications in Premier Yitzhak Rabin’s Cabinet. He quit the Cabinet post a year ago charging that the Communications Ministry as it was set up was unnecessary and redundant.
He has since undertaken several missions for the government abroad. Regarded as a “dove” in Israel’s politics, he said today that if the government had accepted his formula of expressing willingness to negotiate with the PLO if the latter recognized Israel’s right to exist, Israel’s information campaign overseas would have been easier and more successful.
BROAD POLITICAL BASE NEEDED
Israel’s former Ambassador to the United Nations, Yosef Tekoah, spoke on the same subject in an address in Ashkelon over the weekend. Tekoah, who is president of Ben Gurion University in Beersheba, said the government needed a much broader political base before it could consider dealing with the PLO in any circumstances. He suggested that the general elections scheduled for 1977 be advanced so that the government can command the widest possible support in dealing with the Palestinian question.
Former Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, who met over the weekend with 50 members of the Cleveland United Jewish Appeal delegation, said Israel is in a better position now than previously to secure some kind of settlement with the Arabs. He observed that although Egyptian President Anwar Sadat has ruled out peace with Israel in this generation there was a good chance to reach a state of non-belligerency with Egypt, Syria and Jordan.
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