Over the course of the first year following the Six Day War, the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee discussed current affairs and strategic questions both in the committee forum itself, as well as with guest speakers, including government ministers and top military and police officials.
Part 3: Transcripts of May-June 1968 sessions.
This session, like those before it, focused on updates from the diplomatic arena, and a discussion around what diplomatic moves Israel should make. The foreign affairs minister informed the committee that dynamics toward negotiations were intensifying and confronted it with the need to make a decision on Israel’s positions ahead of the anticipated meeting with Jordan, and perhaps Egypt as well. Members of the committee were divided between those supporting a decision, which would also probably mean the dispersal of the government, and those who objected to any sort of withdrawal from the OPT, and hence any discussion of it, even at the cost of Israel’s isolation on the international scene and sanctions.
In the first part of this session, Israel’s ambassador to the USA, Yitzhak Rabin, reported about the general sentiments toward Israel and its requests among the US leadership. Rabin spoke of mounting American pressure to reach an outline for an agreement in the Middle East, which would include significant Israeli withdrawal in the West Bank. During the session, the problem of Israeli control over the Palestinian population was stressed as distinct from territorial control. Rabin also said that sentiments in the US tended to disfavor Israel also as a result of the growth of the anti-Vietnam War movement. He hinted that Israeli obstinance on peace may push America’s Jewish community into conflict between support for Israel and its position on US policy and on military aggression in general.
In the second part of the session, committee members discussed the diplomatic situation as presented to them by the foreign affairs minister in the previous session. Speakers who opposed any Israeli withdrawal in the West Bank believed negotiations should be stalled or tripped up. Others, who supported withdrawal as part of a peace agreement, sought a pertinent decision on the issue. Eban made it clear to the Committee that, to his understanding, Israeli evasiveness vis-à-vis an invitation to negotiate would result in it being blamed for sabotaging the process.
The first part of this session was devoted to discussing the request made by representatives of the families of the Dakar seamen to continue the search for the submarine and their loved ones. Later into the session, Maj. Gen. Ezer Weizman, then head of the IDF’s operations branch, reported on various incidents in the West Bank, and particularly East Jerusalem. According to Weizman, the IDF did occasionally beat protestors to disperse them, and there were hardly any cases in which a protest was dispersed by firing into the crowd during the first year of the occupation.
This document begins on page 10 of the session transcript. The session focused on Israeli public diplomacy, or hasbara, (as requested by Committee members in the end of the previous session [link to Transcript 123]). The foreign affairs minister gave a briefing on this mater. In the public section of the transcript, Committee members address the deterioration of Israel’s status and image in international public opinion, and suggest reasons for it.
During this session, the Committee heard another briefing from Minister of Foreign Affairs Abba Eban on the diplomatic front, and in particular, Envoy Jarring’s actions. Eban reported on the stalemate, and Jarring’s near desperation regarding the chances of advancing toward negotiations. After the briefing, the Committee returned to discuss Israel’s public diplomacy efforts, an issue discussed during the previous session as well. A discussion of possible advocacy lines led Committee members into an argument over which fundamental position on the occupied territories is preferable and should be advocated on the international scene: continued, further entrenched, Israeli hold on the territories, or possible withdrawal as part of a peace agreement.
During the first part of this session, the prime minister reported on his meetings with Romania’s foreign minister, during which he insisted on the need for negotiations prior to any sort of withdrawal, and spoke of the Jews’ special historical connection to Israel and the West Bank.
Later, Eshkol spoke about contacts between Israel and Jordan and between Israel and Palestinian leaders in the OPT regarding negotiations and arrangements for the West Bank. The main message that emerges from his statements is that the Palestinians “say they want peace, and quickly”. During a discussion about the Palestinians who were leaving the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, Eshkol noted that if their numbers could be increased by budgeting more money to pay drivers or Jordanian military personnel at the border crossing, he would support such a move.
The final part of the session was devoted to a briefing and discussion around Israel’s settlement activity in the OPT. Speakers referred to settlement concentrations in East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, the Jordan Valley, Gush Etzion and Hebron. Following the same pattern as previous Committee discussions, some favored a decision on the ultimate policy with respect to the OPT, which would dictate the preferable borders for settlement activity; others favored avoiding any policy decisions, and suggested focusing on putting facts on the ground, rooted in a conception of long-term Israeli rule in the OPT.
