Levi Eshkol Appoints Moshe Dayan as Defense Minister
As tensions with Egypt escalate, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol appoints Moshe Dayan as Defense Minister, leading to Israel’s first national unity government.
As tensions with Egypt escalate, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol appoints Moshe Dayan as Defense Minister, leading to Israel’s first national unity government.
In a Knesset address, Minister of Foreign Affairs Moshe Dayan recounts the events that transpired between Israel, the US, and Egypt in the past two years, including the Camp David Accords.
Moshe Dayan, Israel’s iconic military and political leader, passes away from a heart attack in a Tel Aviv hospital at the age of 66.
On the final day of the Camp David negotiations, President Carter tells Foreign Minister Dayan that “Sadat’s compassion for Jerusalem is very strong; he is willing to be flexible about the settlements if Israel will be flexible with regard to Jerusalem.” Dayan responds, “We are here in Camp David in the midst of negotiations and […]
During the penultimate day of the Camp David negotiations, Israel’s prospects for peace and security with Egypt are at hand. Begin praises Carter for his “work for peace” and acknowledges that several issues are not yet resolved, including Israeli settlements in the Sinai Peninsula. Begin agrees to submit the question of Sinai settlements to a […]
Six weeks before Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s historic trip to Jerusalem, Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan clearly identifies substantive and procedural differences between the Begin government and Carter administration. The Israelis are opposed to four items favored by the Carter administration: a Palestinian state, PLO participation in negotiations, removal of settlements, and application of any […]
In this meeting, the contents of which have not been released by the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) but are available from the Israel State Archives (ISA), Begin clearly committed that “perhaps one military settlement” in the Jordan Valley would be established during the three months of the treaty negotiations. The extraordinarily contentious public dispute on the settlements would mar the diplomatic success of the Camp David Accords and add tension to the already fraught Carter-Begin relationship.
Common to both the Labor Party and to Begin’s government was a fear that the US would pressure Israel into unwanted concessions and deny Israel its right to sovereign decision-making. It was a concern that Dayan expressed in this October 1977 meeting, and one that he would articulate on several occasions during the Camp David negotiations.
Known famously for his left eye-patch, Dayan was a military leader and politician. Spanning a military career of nearly 40 years, he presided over almost every major battle from Israel’s Statehood in 1948 until the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In his last post as Foreign Minister, he negotiated the peace treaty with Egypt from 1977-1979.
Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan conducts secret talks with Egyptian Deputy Prime Minister Hassan Tuhami in Morocco.
Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan conducts secret talks with Egyptian Deputy Prime Minister Hassan Tuhami, he (and other high ranking Egyptians) hold talks with Israeli officials on at least three occasions in 1977 (with help from Moroccan and Romanian intermediaries), which allow the two sides to appraise each others’ intentions and willingness to seriously negotiate. The […]
If you want to binge on the economies of the Middle East, consider reading Dr. Paul Rivlin’s monthly columns. They are published at the Moshe Dayan Center of Tel Aviv University. Two decades ago in the search to hire another of our annual visiting Israeli scholars to teach courses at Emory College and in the Business School, fortuity struck. Through a close colleague I identified Paul Rivlin from Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center.