Moshe Dayan gab in den Jahren 1976-1977 eine Serie von Interviews. Diese
wurden von Rami Tal durchgefuehrt und am 27.April 1997 in der
israelischen Tageszeitung Yediot Ahronot veroeffentlicht.
Mit Erlaubnis des
Uebersetzers erhielten wir diesen Text vom America-Israel Council for
Israeli-Palestinian Peace. Anmerkungen des Uebersetzers in Klammern.
Leider können wir Ihnen keine deutsche Uebersetzung anbieten, wir hoffen
aber, dass auch der englische Text Ihr Interesse finden wird. |
M. Dayan |
Repentance from the Grave:
The Dayan Memoirs
Interviews of Moshe Dayan
by Rami Tal
Translated by Reuven Kaminer
[In 1976 Israel's famous general and
political figure, Moshe Dayan, was in the political wilderness. His status
had been severely tarnished by the blunders in the preparation for the
October 1973 Yom Kippur War. Dayan did hope for some sort of a political
comeback and therefore expressly forbade the journalist and personal friend,
Rami Tal, from printing the results of a long series of interviews that Tal
held with Dayan.
Tal recently received permission from Dayan's daughter, MK Yael Dayan, to
publish the material.]
Fatal Mistakes
[The interviews cover many central
events in Dayan's career, all of which are of some interest to observers
of the Israeli scene. However, Dayan's confessions regarding two central
cornerstones of Israeli policy are utterly astounding. The information and
the analysis contained therein are sufficient to completely demolish the
foundations of declared Israeli policy regarding these vital current
issues, i.e. the Golan Heights and the Jewish settlement in
Hebron. We would certainly like to translate the entire document which
was published in Yediot Ahronot on April 27, 1997, but are simply unable
to do so. Here are the two most significant sections:]
Greed, Simple Greed!
[The first interview took place on
November 22, 1976.]
DAYAN: ...But what I wanted to say
was that in two cases I did not fulfill my duties as the Minister of
Defence, in that I did not prevent things that I was certain had to be
stopped. The first case was on the fourth day of the Six-Day War, when a
delegation from the kibbutzim met with Eshkol in order to convince him to
begin a war against Syria. Dado [General David Elazar] had sent them; he
was the commander of the northern district and feared that he was going to
be left out of the war, so he sent the kibbutzim members. The kibbutz
members came and put on a big show for Eshkol: "What is this, you are
abandoning us, and how are the Syrians going to get away clean, and all
this kind of rubbish."
TAL: And you say this was
superfluous?
DAYAN: It was more than superfluous.
You see, you can talk in terms of the Syrians are scoundrels, they should
be screwed, and it's the right time, and other such talk, but this is not
policy. You don't screw the enemy because he's a scoundrel, but because he
threatens you. And the Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a
threat to us.
TAL: But they were sitting on the
Golan Heights and...
DAYAN: Leave off. I know how at least
80% of the incidents began there. In my opinion, more than 80%, but let's
talk about 80%. It would happen like this: We would send a tractor to plow
someplace of no value, in the demilitarized zone, knowing ahead of time
that the Syrians would begin to shoot. If they did not start shooting, we
would tell the tractor to keep going forward, until the Syrians in the end
would get nervous and start shooting. And then we would start firing
artillery, and later also the airforce, and this was the way it was. I did
this, and Laskov and Tzur [two previous commanders-in-chief] did it.
Yitzhak Rabin did it when he was there (as commander of the northern
district at the beginning of the sixties), but it seems to me that it was
Dado, more than anyone else, who enjoyed these games.
TAL: I'm pretty astounded at what you
say. What was it all for?
[Dayan prefaces his answer with an
analysis of the armistice agreements and adds:]
DAYAN: What do I want to say by this? We thought then, and this continued
for quite a long time, that we could change the lines of the armistice
agreements by military actions that were less than war. That is, to grab
some territory and to hang on to it until the enemy despairs and gives it
to us. It can be said absolutely that this was sort of naive on our part,
but you should remember that we did not have the experience of a state...
TAL: So all that the kibbutzim wanted
was the land?
DAYAN: I am not saying this.
Certainly they wanted the Syrians to disappear. They suffered a lot
because of the Syrians. Look, as I said before, they lived in the
kibbutzim, they farmed, raised children, lived and wanted to live there.
The Syrians opposite them were soldiers who shot at them and they
certainly did not like this. But I can tell you in absolute certainly: the
delegation that came to convince Eshkol to attack the Heights did not
think about these things. It thought about the land on the Heights.
Listen, I am also a farmer. I'm from Nahalal, not from Tel-Aviv, and I
recognize this. I saw them, and I talked to them. They did not even try to
hide their greed for that soil. That's what guided them.
[Dayan discontinues this part of
the interview by pointing out to Tal that he doesn't want to publish any
of this, since he may somehow return to the political arena. And indeed
Dayan joined the newly formed Begin government in the summer of 1977.]
The Beginning of the Hebron Disaster
[In an interview that took place
on January 1, 1977:]
TAL: Moshe, the last time that we
talked you said that there were two things regarding which you did not
fulfill your duty as Defence Minister. The first was that you did not
prevent the conquest of the Golan Heights in the Six-Day War. What was the
second?
DAYAN: The second, and in my opinion
even more severe, and with even more dangerous implications for the
future, is the affair of the illegal settlement in Hebron. I am talking
about Park Hotel, Levinger, Passover, do you remember? [Moshe Levinger and
a group of cohorts came to Hebron ostensibly to celebrate the Passover
holiday and then wheedled governmental approval to settle in the area.
Levinger is, of course, the representative, par excellence, of the drive
for Jewish settlement in the Hebron region. RK] I think that I should have
threatened resignation, and in my opinion if I would have done so the
government would have approved my opinion. But I did not do so, and for
this I am really sorry.
[There ensues a discussion in
which Dayan explains the problems involved in the resignation technique
and explains the despicable role played in the affair by Yigal Alon. Dayan
explains his reasons for his low regard for Alon.]
TAL: Lets go back to Yigal Alon and
the Hebron affair.
DAYAN: Yes, what I started to say was
that you have to see the whole affair in Yigal Alon's perspective, because
he is responsible that Levinger is still there, and this is very bad, this
is really a catastrophe. In my opinion, Yigal knows this today, and if he
would have taken the trouble to think about it in the past, he would have
understood it back then, because it is not hard to understand that
Levinger is a catastrophe, but Alon did not care about Levinger but about
Moshe Dayan, and that I was against this wild settlement was enough for
him to do everything so that his people would stay there.
[Dayan launches into an
explanation of relations with the Arab countries as distinct from the
Palestinians.]
...But our problem with the
Palestinians is totally different. Israel's conflict with the Palestinians
cannot be solved by our dividing the country. That is, in the end we will
have to somehow divide the country, but that is only part of the solution.
Rabin once said, if I'm not mistaken, that he is willing to travel to Gush
Etzion with a visa. But this is a very simplistic way to approach such a
complex problem. Because the question is not the visa.
TAL: Then what is the question?
DAYAN: The question is of living
together with the Palestinians, and this is very complicated. [Dayan
goes on to talk about the size of the Palestinian population and
Palestinian perceptions of Israel.]
...Here I return to Levinger. Levinger understands this and his solution
is very simple: to repeat what we did in the War of Independence, but on
an even greater scale, according to plan.... [Dayan goes on to explain
why Levinger disguises his real position by claiming that he supports
coexistence.]
...But I tell you that the coexistence that he talks about in Hebron is
impossible. Because it is like establishing an Arab neighborhood right
here in the area around this house. Look, there are lots of empty lots all
of which belonged at one time to Arabs. An Arab can come and show a deed
for the area. In fact, he can buy the land and announce that he going to
establish an Arab neighborhood. What's wrong? Coexistence! Will they let
him do this? Forget it! Look, in Upper Nazareth Arabs bought apartments,
and there is an awful lot of dissatisfaction, and this causes trouble, and
I think it's not healthy. And in Hebron?!
TAL: But Levinger says that it is
impossible that there be a place in Eretz Yisrael where Jews will not be
able to live.
DAYAN: Yes, but that's a slogan. In
the legal sense it is of course unacceptable to issue a law to prevent
Jews from settling in any place, and this is true also regarding Arabs.
But leave this to the lawyers. In practice it doesn't work. Maybe after a
hundred, a hundred and fifty years of tense peace it will be possible, but
not today. By the way, Levinger understands this perfectly. I repeat and
stress that he did not want coexistence, he wanted expulsion. He wanted to
make provocations that will bring the State of Israel with the force of
the IDF to support him in his objectives...But I want to return to
Levinger. What I began to say, at the very beginning of the interview, was
that I did not fulfill my duty as Minister of Defence in that I did not
prevent his pirate settlement in Hebron. I understood its significance,
that it was a catastrophe and that I should have threatened resignation...
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