To the Editor:
In his perceptive article on Moshe Dayan [“Dayan as Politician,” January], Hillel Halkin analyzes the positions of the Israeli Right and the Labor government toward the occupied territories and demonstrates that neither side has any claim to moral purity. Unfortunately, however, Dayan’s own thoughts on the matter are only mentioned in passing. Mr. Halkin also prefers not to draw the obvious conclusion—namely, that Dayan’s program combines the worst aspects of both the government and the opposition plans, and is completely devoid of any moral justification.
As Mr. Halkin notes, the Right in Israel calls for immediate annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, but would offer their inhabitants full Israeli citizenship. The Labor government, on the other hand, professes to oppose annexation of most heavily-populated areas; yet it seems content to permit an indefinite prolongation of the status quo, which leaves the Arabs in those areas as stateless non-citizens. What is Dayan’s solution? He advocates both annexation of the territories and denial of Israeli citizenship to the Arab population.
Dayan’s statements are never entirely clear, and it may be that he envisions something less than formal annexation. There is no doubt, however, that in his view the territories are to remain under Israel’s firm control. His proposal to grant the Arabs Jordanian citizenship is therefore meaningless and insulting. Of what use is Jordanian citizenship in the West Bank if Jordan does not enjoy sovereignty there?
A number of Israeli politicians and columnists, realizing the ominous implications of Dayan’s proposal, have vigorously attacked it as a veiled form of colonialism. Their distress is understandable when we realize that Dayan is the first major Zionist leader to suggest that a solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict be based upon a rejection of democratic principles. What Mr. Halkin describes as Dayan’s empathy for the Arabs does not make this fact any less disturbing.
Mr. Halkin believes that Dayan will be Prime Minister someday. He doesn’t seem to realize how dangerous a prospect that may be.
Eric H. Yoffie
New York City
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Hillel Halkin writes:
I mentioned Moshe Dayan’s thoughts on the future of the West Bank and Gaza Strip only “in passing” because these thoughts are not much clearer to me than they are to Eric H. Yoffie himself. As far as I understand them, however, I agree with Mr. Yoffie that they do not represent either a democratic or an ultimately desirable solution to the problem. At the same time, however, I find it difficult to accept the opinion that it would be better for the inhabitants of the West Bank to be stateless than to carry a Jordanian passport, which, if nothing else, at least permits them to travel freely in the Arab world and elsewhere. Mr. Yoffie also seems unaware of the potentialities in the distinction made by Israeli law between citizens of Israel and “permanent residents” who are citizens of other countries and have either not sought or not been granted Israeli nationality.
Members of the latter group, it is true, cannot participate in national elections for the Knesset, but they are able to vote in all local elections. This is currently the status of most of the Arabs of East Jerusalem, and it is presumably the one that Dayan has in mind for the inhabitants of the occupied territories as well, who would thereby be given at least a degree of local autonomy. It was Dayan, indeed, who was instrumental in sponsoring the municipal elections held in the major towns of the West Bank in 1972, and who, it is rumored, pressed unsuccessfully for widening the severely limited franchise decreed by Jordanian law, which bars women and non-property-owners from the polls. The Palestinian resistance organizations may disagree, but the high turnout at these elections would seem to indicate that the average West Bank resident prefers having some political say, no matter how small, to none at all.
Mr. Yoffie does not care for Dayan, and I think I can understand why; I myself am ambivalent toward him, as, I think, are many Israelis. On the one hand, he seems to me the only major political figure in Israel sufficiently free of the dead weight of past rhetoric to be capable of taking a fresh look at the country’s problems, the Palestinian one included; on the other hand, his record on basic issues of the democratic process has been worrisomely spotty at best, including the Palestinian question again. Conceivably, he could break up the current party logjam which makes Israeli politics today seem so stultifying and distressing; conceivably too, however, the logs could prove dangerous once they began to move, and in this respect I can share Mr. Yoffie’s concern. Would I personally vote for Dayan if he were to run for the prime ministry the next time around? The honest answer would have to be that I really don’t know.
