Monday, Nov. 23, 1970
Middle East: A Secret Rendezvous
DUSK had just descended on the flat, lonely Arava wilderness north of Elath when the two convoys of cars approached each other at a border point where Israel and Jordan meet. Prearranged signals were flashed, and the convoy from Jordan sped into Israel. Some of the Jordanians joined the Israeli convoy, which moved to a secluded spot. For 90 minutes, Jordan's King Hussein and Israel's Deputy Premier Yigal Allon carried on an undisturbed conversation in an air-conditioned car. Israeli security men maintained a lookout, and Israeli army units near by went on the alert, without being told why.
The meeting was the latest of ten or so that have been held since September 1968, when Hussein met Allon and Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban in London. The King has conferred at least once during that period with Israel's Premier Golda Meir.
Stronger Throne. During the parley, Hussein and Allon conversed in Arabic and English. The opening topic was peace. In the past few weeks, Israel has held a cursory discussion with United Nations Mediator Gunnar Jarring. Allon asked the King whether Jordan might be interested in carrying on peace talks with Israel, either through Jarring or directly. Hussein acknowledged that conditions have changed since the death of Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, and that his throne is stronger as a result of Jordan's civil war. But he held that the time was not ripe for unilateral discussions. Even so, one result of the border meeting is that broader negotiations with Representatives of other Arab states can be expected to follow.
Turning to the question of the guerrillas, the two leaders agreed that the fedayeen were a nuisance to both coun tries and that coordination was necessary to neutralize them. The King received promises of Israeli help.
Hussein and Allon also agreed to expand economic relations. At the same time, however, Hussein protested that Mrs. Meir was undercutting him by observing during her latest U.S. visit that Palestinian statehood was only a question of redrawing Jordan's boundaries. The King was prepared to grant Palestinian autonomy of a sort, he said, but under his rule, and not as the nucleus of an independent Palestinian state.
Seeking the Mantle. On that note of amiability the meeting ended. Both sides kept the discussion secret, but Israel was particularly sensitive. Mrs. Meir's government has publicly insisted that it will not talk with the U.N.'s Jarring until Egypt removes its newly emplaced Soviet-built missiles from the Suez Canal Zone. Israel's Cabinet was startled, therefore, when an opposition member said in the Knesset last week that he had heard about the Hussein-Allon talks and demanded to know why Israel's parliament had not been briefed on them. His question was erased from parliamentary records, and censors refused to let newsmen report it.
There was speculation that the question had been planted by supporters of Defense Minister Moshe Dayan. With key Labor Party elections set for mid-December, Dayan is locked in an increasingly bitter battle with Allon, Eban and Finance Minister Pinhas Sapir, the party's kingmaker, over who should be designated heir apparent to Mrs. Meir, 72. Dayan wants the mantle; so does Allon, an Oxford-educated Kibbutznik who was a military hero (in the 1948 War of Independence) before he shifted from the army to politics.
To make himself more acceptable to party moderates and to demonstrate independence, Dayan is striving to change his hawkish image. In recent months, for example, he has proposed that both Israel and Egypt pull back 13 miles from their Suez Canal fortifications so that the canal can be reopened. Two weeks ago, at a Labor Party meeting in Haifa, Dayan also suggested that Israel reopen the Jarring talks in earnest. To end the Arab conflict, he said, "we must plunge into some very cold water, because we are not interested in continuing the war."
Furious, Mrs. Meir telephoned Dayan and reminded him that her government was still publicly opposed to talks because of Egyptian and Soviet missile movements near Suez, and that the U.S. was increasing its arms shipments to Israel to counterbalance those movements. In fact, both the U.S. and Israel have quietly decided that "rectification," or rollback, of the missiles is a dead issue. Even so, when Dayan told Golda that he had been misquoted, the Premier hung up on him.
After that conversation, articles critical of Dayan began to appear in major Israeli newspapers last week. They were almost certainly inspired by anti-Dayan leaders of the Labor Party. Dayan's enemies are not all congregated in the Labor hierarchy. Earlier, the magazine Ha'olam Hazeh (This World) had published a highly suspicious story claiming to document an attempt to recruit the Defense Minister into the CIA in 1959, when he was a private citizen. The magazine reproduced a letter, purported to be from the Pentagon to a U.S. military attache in Tel Aviv, which ordered him to arrange Dayan's enlistment with the local CIA station chief. In the same issue of Ha'olam Hazeh was another story, which took laudatory note of Allon's "heavy work schedule."
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