Premier Yitzhak Shamir told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Security Committee today that there was a significant difference between the U.S.-Israel agreements reached during his talks with President Reagan in Washington last week and the memorandum of understanding for strategic cooperation the U.S. and Israel initialed in 1981 which never became operative.
The discussions in Washington last week revolved around means to deter Syria, not the Soviet Union, and in that respect differed from the memorandum of two years ago, Shamir explained. He assured the committee that the government was not concealing any details of his talks in Washington.
He said last Sunday’s American air strike against Syrian positions in Lebanon resulted from the crisis in that country, not any secret U.S.-Israeli agreement for joint military action.
Shamir made those points to the committee to dispel concern in some coalition and opposition circles that the agreements the Premier and Defense Minister Moshe Arens reached with the Reagan Administration may have drawn Israel into a commitment to undertake military actions in the furtherance of American rather than purely Israeli interests in the region.
NON-CONFIDENCE MOTION DEFEATED
Charges of U.S.-Israeli collusion aimed against the Soviet Union were the substance of a non-confidence motion by the Hadash (Communist) party in the Knesset today. It was overwhelmingly defeated. Only the four Hadash MKs supported the measure. The Labor Alignment and Shinui abstained.
Hadash leader Meir Wilner accused the government of making itself a servant of American policy and anti-Communist ideology for which it was “ready to sacrifice tens of thousands of young Israelis and to endanger the State of Israel.”
ARGUMENTS PRO AND CON
Justice Minister Moshe Nissim, replying for the government, repudiated Wilner’s contention that neither Syria nor the USSR posed a threat of aggression. He said it was clear that Syria is preparing for war and therefore cooperation with the U.S. should be welcome.
Nissim stressed that the agreement with the U.S. did not call for military commitments by Israel. On the other hand, Israel and the U.S. have joint interests in the region and it would be foolish and unacceptable not to take advantage of this identity of interests to strengthen Israel and deter the aggressors, he said.
Labor MK Haim Barlev, a former Chief of Staff, said the opposition had no confidence in either the government’s or the Hadash formulas. Cooperation between Israel and the U.S. is very important in areas such as intelligence, technology, operational lessons and political coordination. “But joint maneuvers and exercises of the Israeli army and the American armed forces” are not “relevant” to any of the issues at hand, he said.
Labor MK Yaacov Tzur, a member of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee, maintained that if war is the only way to get the Syrians out of Lebanon, the government should not hide this fact from the people. His Labor colleague, Amnon Lin, suggested that Syria might agree to withdraw along with Israel if its interests in Lebanon are preserved.
Voice of Israel Radio quoted a “senior source in the defense establishment” today as saying that Israeli air raids over Lebanon were an “efficient means of fighting the terrorists” and a warning to the Syrians that unless they acted to restrain the terrorists, Israel would act against terrorists in areas under Syrian control.
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.
