Yitzhak Rabin, a candidate for a ministerial post in the next Cabinet presented his own plan for a peace settlement with Jordan here last night which called for the return of inhabited areas of the West Bank to Jordanian sovereignty but with an Israeli military presence overlooking a Jordanian civil administration in those areas for a 15-20 year interim. According to Rabin’s plan, there will be no return to the pre-June, 1967 borders and Israel will retain sovereignty over some parts of the Judaea-Samaria regions and all of the Gaza Strip.
Rabin, who unveiled his plan to Journalists at Beth Sokolow, the gathering place for newsmen, asserted that an interim period of two or three decades would have to pass before a political settlement between Israel and its neighbors became a real peace. The former Israeli Ambassador to the United States who was elected to the Knesset on the Labor Alignment ticket, said Jerusalem would remain united under Israeli sovereignty but with special arrangements for religious interests.
PALESTINIAN REFUGEES’ RESETTLEMENT INCLUDED
Rabin said his plan would allow for the resettlement of Palestinian refugees, including those in the Gaza Strip, mainly in east Jordan but also on the West Bank. He estimated it would take 15-20 years to complete the refugee resettlement, a period coinciding with the continued Israeli military presence in Jordan administered areas.
He offered no plan for a settlement with Egypt. He noted the major problems in effecting a separation of forces, now under discussion between Israeli and Egyptian military negotiators in Geneva, were the depth of an Israeli pull-back from the Suez Canal and the nature of Egyptian forces that will remain on the east bank of the waterway.
Rabin said the nature of the buffer zone separating the two forces was a secondary problem, but said he doubted Egypt’s willingness to accept the principle of non-belligerency even after disengagement is achieved. He claimed that Cairo’s aim is not to allow the creation of a new status quo and not to give up its bridgehead on the east bank of the canal.
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.
