Crisis Over Neighborhood Punishment

ISRAEL is determined to maintain order in the territories seized from its neighbors in the 1967 war. To do so, it has taken harsh action against anyone believed to have harbored or assisted Arab terrorists. The houses of suspects have been destroyed, the owners exiled to Arab countries or imprisoned. As the war of terror has intensified, so have Israeli reprisals. When an Israeli soldier was killed by a terrorist hand grenade in the village of Halhoul in occupied Jordanian territory last month, Israelis decided to hold the community responsible. Acting under Defense Minister Moshe Dayan's new concept of "neighborhood punishment," they dynamited 18 dwellings and relocated their inhabitants.

The practice holds responsible for terrorist acts any person who knows of the presence of guerrillas and fails to report it to the authorities. Depending on their political perspective, some critics have compared this to the policies followed by the Nazis in Europe, the French in Algeria and the U.S. in Viet Nam. Though the Israelis have neither killed nor left Arabs homeless in the punitive actions, their decision to adopt the practice brought condemnation from the United Nations General Assembly's Social Committee. A resolution urging the Israelis to desist was passed 51 to 11, with fifty countries abstaining, among them the U.S., Britain and France. In a vicious blast, the Soviets likened the Israelis to Nazi Germany.

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Nowhere else has the debate over neighborhood punishment become as heated as in Israel, where it triggered a Cabinet crisis that nearly cost Dayan his job. Fearful of losing public support in the U.S. and Europe, many Israelis questioned the wisdom and morality of fighting terror with terror. Dayan's opponents in the Israeli Cabinet seized on the issue to attack the Defense Minister.

In a Cabinet meeting that lasted six hours, Foreign Minister Abba Eban and Minister without Portfolio Pinhas Sapir used the punishment issue as a springboard for an attack on Dayan's entire policy for dealing with the occupied territories. They criticized his plans for combining the economies of the occupied areas with that of Israel. They also scored his plans to settle Israelis in strategic areas, such as the Golan Heights, and his quasi-annexation of occupied territory through the gradual spread of Israeli law. Deputy Premier Yigal Alton, Dayan's chief rival for eventual premiership, joined in the attack on the Defense Minister's economic integration policy but, fearing a vote on the issue, walked out of the meeting before the argument ended.

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Angrily refusing to retreat, Dayan also left the Cabinet meeting. While the other Ministers continued the debate, he went to a Jerusalem hotel, where he wrote out a statement of resignation. But before he could make it public, Premier Golda Meir, who apparently had become alarmed at Dayan's stubbornness, sent aides to bring him to her office for a long talk. Under her calm persuasion, Dayan cooled off and withdrew his resignation threat.

Dayan's maneuver proved that Mrs. Meir still considers him a necessary component in her finely balanced Cabinet. Even so, Dayan emerged from the crisis with something less than total victory. Later that day, after Golda and Moshe returned to the Cabinet, which was still in session, the Ministers refused either to approve or disapprove his doctrine of neighborhood punishment. Instead, they agreed on a formula to limit the old war hero's freedom of action. In the future, the general must have clearance from the Cabinet or its security committee before he punishes a whole community for the actions of terrorists operating there.

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