A MOMENT Interview with Yigal Allon
MOMENT INTERVIEW WITH YIGAL ALLON moment: Before we deal with the present situation, I wonder whether you think now, in retrospect, that the Labor government missed any significant opportunities...
...And demography hasn't changed either, except for the worse—that is, the number of Arabs who live in Judea and Samaria is larger than it was...
...Some new kibbutzim are being established by people who have not come out of the youth movements, although they, of course, remain the most important element...
...Each individual kibbutz grows, and new kibbutzim are established each year...
...I think it's the only way out...
...The very fact that the delegation to Camp David and again to the Blair House did not even include an economist, who could say something about the economic consequences of such an agreement, shows that this government does not function properly...
...We would withdraw to the first line of withdrawal specified in the Camp David agreement, and hold onto the rest, which is very important strategically and as a bargaining counter in the future...
...And the Labor party should adopt this as its major goal for the future, whether in opposition or in government...
...We must return to an education based on values, and build a normative society—and that is not easy...
...The infrastructure is already there...
...And he did, and I chaired the committee for a number of years...
...You see, the government contained such divergent viewpoints that every position was cancelled out from within...
...You've been in the Opposition for over a year now...
...M: But in pure security terms, is the Begin approach satisfactory...
...A: It's true that there was a big difference within the Labor party itself...
...So why not just leave it open, don't ask for a vote...
...To me, as a Labor Zionist, this is a most distressing development...
...A: You know that I think we gave up too much too soon in Sinai...
...As Jews, as people of social conscience, we are doing our best to build a special kind of country...
...If we combine our efforts, all together, we can reverse the mode, the fashion, and provide our people once again with the chance to live up to the ideals of the founding fathers of our movement and of our country—with whatever necessary adaptations are required for the latter part of the 20th century...
...I hate this compromise...
...Yigal Allon, former Foreign Minister of Israel, is a Member of Knesset and Chairman of the World Labor Zionist Movement...
...And this is what must be done...
...The point is to provide for a transitional period before negotiations start, and to permit them to start without any preconditions...
...And at that time, Mr...
...Because this is an axiom: Israel will belong to those who cultivate its land, who run its factories...
...I am also sorry that the bilateral relations between Israel and the United States weren't adequately clarified, as they were when we negotiated the interim agreement with Egypt back in 1975—an agreement which Begin criticized and voted against, by the way...
...When I decided to propose the compromise I did in 1967, to give up by far the greatest part of the West Bank and Gaza in return for peace—providing, of course, for defensible borders—I did it not because there are no historical ties between us and that land, but in spite of those ties...
...Why did we deserve to be punished...
...It's really a tremendous achievement, and it's a shame that we tend to take it for granted...
...How does it feel...
...The West Bank and Gaza could have been led by people elected in and from those areas, and that would have minimized the importance of the PLO...
...MOMENT INTERVIEW WITH YIGAL ALLON moment: Before we deal with the present situation, I wonder whether you think now, in retrospect, that the Labor government missed any significant opportunities for peace between 1967 and 1977...
...They go instead to other diasporas...
...And I am particularly distressed that too few Jews come from the affluent countries...
...Now they have established their own kibbutz in the mountains of the central Galilee, and we have adopted them until they become economically and socially independent...
...And my answer is very simple...
...He refrained from making it, I am afraid, because he wants to keep open the option for extending Israel's sovereignty over the whole area of Judea and Samaria and Gaza, a notion I think is simply irrelevant, and will be even more irrelevant after five years of autonomy...
...A: Being in opposition gives us the chance to pull ourselves together, to reshape our appearance, to recruit new members among workers, youth, academics, and to prepare ourselves organizationally and ideologically for going back into office in a proper way...
...So, if we propose it, and it meets acceptance, that's a good thing...
...They are still shuttling between one diaspora and another rather than moving directly...
...Begin and his colleagues...
...But 1 have to add that even if the present stalemate continues, I don't think it is the last word in Egyptian-Israeli relations...
...ifiprqp'inpi...
...But we are seeing groups of people who get together in the cities and simply decide to establish a kibbutz together...
...We cared for them socially, economically, educationally, culturally, but not ideologically...
...But we have to be ready...
...A: I'm not thrilled, even though 1 accept the Camp David agreements...
...we must restore the status of the worker, put him once again at the center of Israel's society...
...Theirs is a government of schlemiels and schlimazels...
...It is not intended as a permanent solution...
...What happened was that a few months after I had made my proposal, Eshkol called me into his office—I was then Minister of Labor—and he said, "I'd like to talk with you about your plan...
...You have to remember that after 1967, we had a national coalition government...
...I don't need more than that in my life...
...And then both parties would be able to say, "Look, we didn't solve all the problems we were expected to solve, but at least we didn't come away emp-tyhanded, at least we're secure—no war, and the foundations for the final steps, which will follow in a few years, have been established...
...But we must revive the concept of the dignity of labor...
...So the "crisis of the kibbutz" is really over...
...And that is very distressing...
...And to be industrious...
...M: In general, you don't sound thrilled with what's happening...
...Not a leadership that can speak fluently and eloquently, although that is important, but above all, a leadership that can set a personal example...
...Obviously, I am in favor of autonomy...
...It was just six months after the Six Day War, and we enjoyed the sympathy and understanding of the rest of the world...
...I prefer the term "tarbut chayim"—the culture of life...
...It is a rational plan that rests on topography, demography and geography...
...Sadat is permitted to believe that they are the nucleus for an independent Palestinian state that will be controlled by the PLO, and the Jordanians are permitted to dream of them as a canton in a future Jordanian-Palestinian federation...
...These days, people sometimes ask me whether I don't think that it's time, after eleven or twelve years, to modify the plan...
...I don't want Israel to become a mini-empire...
...The His-tadrut has a tremendous role to play here, educationally and socially...
...And if we propose it, and it's rejected, at least people will see that we are interested in a compromise...
...We could have done it without any problem, and that would have developed the framework for home rule...
...Less than this," they said, "Israel cannot accept...
...The other major disappointment is that aliyah to Israel has been so reduced...
...One of them is security...
...In fact, I don't think there's a single undertaking in the Likud platform that has been accomplished...
...It simply doesn't function, either as a team or within individual ministries...
...That's the way to see to it that a peace treaty is more than a piece of paper...
...The compromise is the result of the need for territorial adjustments in order to provide defensible boundaries, not the other way around...
...First, that when we in fact work out our land settlement policy, no Israeli settlements will be established outside the parameters of the plan, and, second, that you will try unofficially to find out whether it's feasible to sell the plan to somebody...
...And if we try to deprive them of their rights, or of their citizenship, then we will cease to be a democracy...
...When they finally understand that they can no longer survive in those countries, and decide to move somewhere, it would seem to me the most natural thing for them to want this to be their last voyage, a voyage to the home harbor, to the land of Israel, with its open gates and its open hearts...
...and Israel...
...I think the logical thing under those circumstances would be to go back to negotiating an interim agreement, one which will terminate the state of war but fall short of normalizing relations...
...A: I am as sensitive to historical considerations as Mr...
...I also think that our policies weren't clear enough...
...So when I suggested eleven or twelve years ago a territorial compromise, I didn't do so because I was in love with the compromise...
...I don't mean, of course, that Likud deserved its victory...
...When the late Prime Minister Eshkol visited the late President Johnson, in 1968, we were still at the height of our prestige...
...A: Let me begin by admitting that Labor deserved the defeat the electorate handed it...
...A: Well, the people were impressed with Likud's demagogic promise to freeze prices and fight inflation, to insure that there wouldn't be a price rise in basic commodities for two years—a promise they couldn't even keep for two months...
...There are hardcore, important strongholds, not only in the kibbutz movement and part of the moshav movement, but also in the cities...
...Begin...
...Now maybe it wouldn't have made any difference if he'd had an answer, if he had been in a position to say, "All right, just give me defensible borders, no dramatic changes in the old demarcation lines, and we'll give everything else back in return for peace...
...And that is the difference between our policy and Mr...
...President, I lead a national coalition which has decided not to decide, and I can't tell you what kind of an Israel I want...
...What are the military consequences of a certain proposal...
...The eastern and central European Jewish youth were very Zionist, strongly oriented to socialism, pioneering in their outlook...
...I did it in order to achieve a more important goal, namely peace...
...The economic situation is chaotic, because the government, which believes in laissez-faire, is trying to impose an economy on a poor country that even a rich country cannot afford...
...Begin rejected it as a "treacherous" proposal...
...By the spring of 1979, we'll have our unification convention, I hope at Degania Alef, the first kibbutz, on the occasion of its 70th birthday...
...And if the stalemate lasts for a while, we will have to conclude that Egypt is simply too afraid to go the whole way right now...
...And these basic interests may overcome the difficulties Egypt has encountered since the Baghdad conference, and the internal opposition Sadat may be facing, and they may overcome the psychological barriers that we in Israel have to deal with...
...But that's what a parliamentary democracy is about— when one side of the scale goes down, the other goes up...
...There are people of good will, people with a pioneering spirit...
...Of course, the kibbutz has deficiencies, and difficulties, and deviations...
...And I know it's possible...
...And to add to that, we had the problem of corruption—just a few cases, but enough to matter...
...We believed that there was no point in developing a policy, in having the inevitably sharp debate that developing such a policy would mean, until there was some indication from the Arab side that they would respond...
...A: Look, there are two considerations here...
...In that respect, we are not behind America...
...I want you to know that I am for it...
...What he has done is to adopt a strategy in which he can still imagine getting everything—that is, sovereignty—or in which he loses everything, including important strategic assets...
...it's home...
...But it is the least evil solution...
...M: Didn't the problem continue even after the coalition came apart and the government returned to more direct Labor control...
...It's quite enough for us to deal with our own Arab population, which is already half a million strong...
...As to geography, the new conventional weaponry has become so much more effective that defensible borders are even more indispensable than they were in the past...
...I'm against collective punishment, but if there is corruption in a party, the people will blame the entire parry...
...And now we are planning for their reinforcement by training a second group along the same lines...
...But even Jews who live in the oppressive diasporas, such as Argentina and the Soviet Union, go elsewhere...
...And the children of the kibbutz are able to realize the height of their potential...
...So the prophecy of the founding fathers—it was a prophetic approach, not just a psychological analysis—from Syrkin to my generation, was that labor—in all its manifestations, from the simplest manual worker to the most distinguished scientist in the laboratory and the artist on the stage—must be the heart of our society...
...M: In light of all that, how do you feel about the autonomy plan as it has now been proposed by Mr...
...There's been so much happening on the Israel-Arab side this past year that we're in danger of losing sight of developments within Israeli society...
...Eshkol was very smart about h. The Allon Plan, as it came to be known, was never officially adopted as our policy...
...it may change some of its practices, but it will not change its principles...
...The agreement provides that three years after the day of holding free elections with secret ballots for an autonomous administrative council—the only freely elected Arab institution in the world, by the way—negotiations will start between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, together with the Egyptians and the Jordanians...
...I don't want to criticize the United States, but I'm doubtful whether certain aspects of its culture and society suit you any more than they suit us...
...Begin hoped that if he gave Sadat a free hand in Sinai, Sadat would give him a free hand in the West Bank and Gaza...
...Allon: No, I don't think so...
...We're talking about a movement that survived the establishment of the state, with all the new outlets that were then created, that survived the diminishing of idealism and fading of voluntarism, and if we survived all that, we are here to stay forever...
...And poor Eshkol had to say, "Mr...
...Whatever we can produce ourselves we do...
...M: Aside from foreign policy questions, what's your assessment of the Likud government...
...But if you read the rich literature on social justice and the equality of man, on human dignity and comradeship, that has been produced throughout history, you see that the kibbutz is the first example of people choosing voluntarily to live together in complete equality...
...I'll give you an example: two years ago, my own kibbutz, Ginosar, invited 60 men and women in their late 20's and early 30's, some married, some single, to organize themselves as a nucleus for a future kibbutz...
...Begin is permitted to dream irrelevant dreams of extending Israel's sovereignty over these areas, and Mr...
...And I would have preferred that such a distinction be made...
...People are now learning the real nature of Likud, and we will come back...
...But if that's the case, we shouldn't despair...
...But it would have helped us to convince our friends abroad, especially in Washington, London, and some of the west European capitals that we really wanted to be constructive...
...The hawks will say you're giving up too much, the doves will say you're giving up too little, some people will oppose it simply because it was you who proposed it...
...M: And what is Labor doing...
...A: It's quite explicit in the Camp David agreements that the current plan is transitional...
...And the Arab response was the famous "three no's" of Khartoum—no negotiations, no recognition, no peace...
...We can live with them...
...M: That will surprise many people...
...And the fact is that with just two or three exceptions, after I left the post, all the settlements we established were in keeping with the Allon Plan, which we never adopted...
...I have been ever since I proposed it more than a decade ago, at a time when Mr...
...And I fear we shall lose everything...
...irl »ri in |R ^i M: Aside from those reservations, how do you feel about the way the negotiations have been conducted...
...So I answered him, "I'll agree, but I'd like you to promise me two things...
...No decisions were reached regarding financing the new military installations, and the result is that Camp David was incomplete, a generalized agreement containing many time bombs...
...We began to behave more like an American political party, which is just a shell between elections...
...It's not enough to wait for a telephone call from an Arab country...
...If you add to them the 1.1 million Arabs who live today in the West Bank and Gaza, and if we are to remain a democracy, that means that we automatically cease to be a Jewish state...
...The magnet of the diaspora turns out to be stronger, for some people, than the magnet of the homeland...
...I'm also sorry that neither the coalition government we had at the beginning of that period nor the Labor governments which followed it produced a full-fledged peace plan...
...The kibbutz may improve...
...I know that Johnson appointed a committee—it was chaired by McGeorge Bundy—to consider American policy towards the conflict, and that committee begged us to come appear before them, but we couldn't, because of the coalition...
...It's a real home, the realization of the finest ideals a human being can have...
...But that was a wrong conception, because we don't operate in a vacuum...
...Look at the proposed unification of our two kibbutz movements, the Kibbutz M'uchad and the Ichud Hakibbutzim...
...And if we continue to concentrate only on the top level professions, and to assign manual labor to the Arab community, then the society will be weakened and our hold on the country will diminish...
...Just look at it: no personal economic incentive, yet we maintain an efficient society and economy without bureaucracy and without corruption...
...the parties are permitted to have their own views regarding what the status of the territories will be after five years...
...it's not too late...
...And some of them do make that decision, but most of them do not...
...In Hebrew, the term that is most often used is "echut hachayim"— the quality of life...
...And maybe, even though the electorate seemed to approve our policies, they just got tired of us...
...I don't mean that they have bad ideas...
...We became a supermarket of ideas, without the clear vision that a Social Democratic party must have...
...That means all kinds of work...
...And I also think that when we make our argument for territorial adjustments on the basis of security needs, the rest of the world will be more sympathetic than when we approach the problem with a mystical concept of territory that ignores completely the obvious historical fact of a large and deeply rooted Arab community that now lives in those places...
...M: Where does the current proposal for autonomy lead...
...A: I am sure that it will, but that is the way it is...
...If, heaven forbid, there should be a war, at least we shall provide our boys with a better opportunity to win, and to win with less casualties...
...Then there were too many rivals, competitors for power at the top of Labor...
...And we accomplished it even though the Holocaust destroyed the vast natural reserves we had for the kibbutz movement...
...Even more painful, of course, is the phenomenon of Israelis leaving Israel to join the diaspora...
...What are the economic consequences...
...And that is because I truly believe that peace is in the basic interest of both countries...
...It was a terrible mistake not to use the opportunity when all the leaders were there to clear up all the side issues between the U.S...
...And yet we have grown...
...We were to be, as Berl Katznelson used to say, am oved—a working people, a people of labor...
...If the Jewish people lost a third of its numbers during the Holocaust, the kibbutz movement lost even more...
...I don't like that term...
...There is even a new phenomenon these days...
...It was a paralyzed government...
...But there are some things that disturb me...
...It depends on whether we in the Labor party will be able to provide the movement and the country with an inspiring leadership...
...They stayed with us for a year of training...
...That's a wonderful development...
...The decision-making process in the present government is, quite frankly, appalling...
...This is an axiom in political history, and since we cannot manage such a balance through numbers, the territorial infrastructure is very, very important...
...He was talking as one friend to another, intimately...
...And that means that the moral requirement for a solution to the Palestinian Arab question has grown, not diminished...
...A: Yes, there was such a decision...
...Do we really want a Bantustan solution...
...I'm not saying that we have to hark back to the romantic view of heavy work...
...After all, the kibbutz is not just another public organization...
...The other one is a moral consideration that has security implications...
...you also have to convince the world...
...But then he said, "If you push for a cabinet vote, even though I support it, the cabinet will turn it down...
...Let's start with the kibbutz...
...We are, after all, highly mechanized, very modern in our means of production...
...All this is accomplished without material incentive...
...Esh-kol, who was the Prime Minister, announced that we were ready to withdraw from the Sinai and the Golan in return for peace...
...And if we don't stop that, and reverse the trend, we'll be ruined...
...People used to say "we can't play chess with ourselves...
...It is a fact that the kibbutz holds the best record in the world for agricultural productivity, and within Israel it is the kibbutz that holds the record for industrial productivity...
...And their meeting was at the Johnson ranch...
...A: Yes, if we compare our dreams and our realities, we have areas of great pride and areas of great disappointment...
...A: Yes, it can, if we stop trying to imitate the way of life of the United States...
...Instead, within days after the agreements were signed, the Americans began to express their views that Israel should retreat from all other territories, that Jerusalem should be repartitioned, and so on and so forth...
...At that time, President Johnson asked Eshkol, "What kind of an Israel do you want...
...I'll give you one specific—and important—example...
...M: Can we talk, for a change, about something other than "the current situation...
...It was a straightforward offer, with no demand by us for special security arrangements or anything like that...
...It's ironic, since this was supposed to be a strong government, yet it falls to pieces when it comes to governing...
...First, because we were too busy in our ministerial duties, and we simply didn't manage to absorb the newcomers and most of the youth ideologically...
...And I have to say that for me as an individual, I am the happiest man on earth that I had the wisdom to abandon my father's farm, to which I was deeply connected, and to join the young kibbutz that established Ginosar...
...M: Can it be reversed...
...I am fully attached to every acre of the land of Israel...
...So here was a wonderful diplomatic opportunity, a president who was really a great friend of Israel, who felt real affection for the prime minister of this small country, and who was his host...
...It's still possible...
...M: In the course of reshaping the party, you're bound to ask yourself in what ways Israel has developed according to the dreams of its founding fathers, who were virtually all Labor leaders, and in what ways the country has fallen short...
...M: What other aspects of the dream strike you as most important, either in their realization or in their failure...
...And I believe that defensible borders add credibility to a peace treaty, because a peace treaty requires a backing in reality, in a balance of strength...
...And his answer was, "I accept what you've said, and to show you that I mean that, I will appoint you as chairman of the land settlement committee...
...It would have been better to come up with a constructive solution that addresses both questions at once—the Palestinian question and the defensible border question, and not to adopt an all-or-nothing position...
...But maybe that would have won over the Americans...
...I don't think the Arab governments would have behaved any differently if we had, because they were simply refusing to talk with us about anything...
...A: Obviously, we've had important successes in developing the country, in making it more viable, in absorbing aliyah...
...M: Wasn't there, in fact, a decision not to decide, not to develop a comprehensive peace policy...
...No, that would be far too high a price to pay for a "complete" Israel...
...Now topography hasn't changed since the days of Abraham the patriarch...
...we have to change...
...I don't know whether the Arabs would have accepted the plan if we had announced it as our policy, but we did the right things...
...And they'll also be reinforced by Nachal graduates, the very best we have...
...I'm talking about the administrative aspect of the government...
...This is not a capricious plan...
...But to do Labor justice, I would say that at least so far as land settlement policy was concerned, we knew what we were doing...
...The first is that the concept of the dignity of labor and the status of the worker have been diminishing...
...They hardly talk to each other, they rarely consult each other, there are no solid professional teams studying the materials for the leaders before they decide...
...Begin's policy...
...Now we even have waiting lists, including many young couples with one or two children who are very well off in the cities but who are sick and tired of the urban way of life...
...It seemed to me that everything was done on the spur of the moment, that there wasn't enough planning, enough thought...
...Unfortunately, because of his obsession, his plan does not draw a distinction between the inhabited areas of the West Bank and the uninhabited border zones, which happen to be very important strategically...
...And he was wrong...
...There are, of course, some good people here and there, but the basic fact is that this is a government that doesn't govern...
...m m f\ ftfl^fe t^^i MK1- :s <^^# pi Iti pti Ej...
...And the world kept quiet, and we heard from very many people, leading politicians and statesmen, that they understood and accepted what we were doing...
...So I think we did miss some opportunities...
...We must struggle for it...
...If we made any mistake, it is that we didn't establish and implement the autonomy plan back in 1967 or 1968...
Vol. 4 • January 1979 • No. 3
