Allon Plan

The **Allon Plan** (Hebrew: תָּכְנִית אַלּוֹן) was a political proposition that outlined potential next steps for the State of Israel following the Third Arab–Israeli conflict called Six-Day War.

Yigal Allon, former Prime Minister of Israel, drafted this plan, known as the Allon Plan after the Israeli military forces occupied the territories of Egypt (Sinai Peninsula), Palestine (Jordanian-occupied West Bank and Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip) and Syria.

He sought to partition the Palestinian territories, creation of a Druze state in Syria, and returning most of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt.

Broader aims of the Allon Plan in partitioning the West Bank were to enable Israel to annex East Jerusalem, the Etzion Bloc, and most of the Jordan Valley (from the Jordan River to the eastern slopes of the hill ridge).

The remaining parts of the the Occupied Palestinian territories, which contains the majority of Palestinian populations would be turned to Jordanian rule but Jordanian king Hussein didn't accept this plan.

Allon died in 1980 and his proposition wasn't implemented, though the Sinai Peninsula had been returned as part of the Egypt–Israel peace treaty in 1979.

In 1981, the Israeli government passed the Golan Heights Law, effectively annexing the territory captured from Syria.

## Territorial implications

The Allon Plan was based on the doctrine that Israel should enforce sovereignty over the territories that it occupied after the Six-Day War was necessary for Israel's defense.

On the other hand, Allon wanted the State of Israel to keep the Arab populations of the West Bank and Sinai Peninsula to Arab control, to progress towards a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The plan was designed to include as few Arabs or Palestinians as possible in the areas claimed for Israel.

Israeli leaders ruled out integration of Arab communities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip fearing that it would dramatically changed the state's Jewish demographic orientation.

Yigal Allon presented the plan when he served as Minister of Labor under Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol.

Allon proposed in this plan that the Israeli millitary would annex most of the Jordan Valley, from the river to the eastern slopes of the West Bank hill ridge, East Jerusalem, and the Etzion bloc.

At the same time, the present-day Area A and Area B was offered to Jordan, connected to it via Jericho.

### Jordanian sovereignty or Palestinian autonomy

After the Six-Day War, Israeli leaders considered two possibilities to end the occupation: either the _"Jordanian option"_, holding the transfer of control for most of the territory of the West Bank to the Jordanian monarch, or alternatively the _"Palestinian option"_, under Israel would grant the Palestinians autonomy.

The majority of the Government, including Yigal Allon, favored the Palestinian option.

In June 1967, according to journalist Reuven Pedatzur, writing in 2007 in an article in _Haaretz_, Allon expressed caution over the Jordanian option.

In July 1967, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol stated that there was no choice in order to ensure Israel's security needs but to continue to control the entire area as far as the Jordan River, militarily. But in order to avoid turning Israel into a bi-national state, the Arab citizens of the West Bank should be granted a special status.

A quasi-independent autonomous region was the first option.

## Basis for Israel's settlement policy

During the first decade of the occupation, the Israeli settlement policy was largely based on the Allon Plan. As the Plan propagated a security doctrine, the Jordan River marked the strategic border of Israel, serving as a buffer zone between Israel and the "Eastern Front".

Israeli Jewish settlements built in the Jordan Valley were designed as permanent advance-position lookouts in the 15 kilometers-wide strip along the Jordan Valley and Judean Desert to be annexed by Israel.

Jewish settlements in the Jordan Valley, many of which are typically agricultural are primarily located along two major north-south bypass roads: the Allon Road in the western and Route 90 in the eastern Jordan Valley.

The Palestinians see the Jordan Valley, the most fertile part of the West Bank with important water resources, as breadbasket for the future Palestinian State.

In June 1967, Israel _de facto_ annexed East Jerusalem and surrounding parts of the West Bank by incorporating the areas into the Jerusalem Municipality.

In the following years, extensive construction of settlements took place in the Greater Jerusalem area, which contributed to a ring of Israeli settlements that separate Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank.

## Israeli political opinions

On 18 May 1973, the American Embassy in Israel sent a diplomatic cable to the Secretary of State in Washington DC on the subject of then-Defence Minister "Dayan's Thinking on Possible Peace Arrangements with Jordan and Egypt".

The cable contained accounts of discussions with Dayan's close political ally, Deputy Transportation Minister Gad Yaacobi, that Dayan was preparing to expand the autonomy of Arab municipalities in the former West Bank of Jordan, which Israel had captured from Jordan in the Six-Day War. According to Yaacobi, Dayan was "preparing" for a greater "degree of autonomy for West Bank municipalities", while Dayan envisaged the "rest of the West Bank population, living under Israeli sovereignty as being fullfledged Jordanian citizens"

Yaacobi further stated that the media had misrepresented Dayan as being prepared to return most, if not all, of the West Bank to Jordan; he was not. Dayan felt it was important for Israelis to settle outside the lines of the Allon Plan, though not within Arab municipalities.

He preferred the inclusion of Ramallah, Bethlehem and Bethel into the State of Israel and granting Israeli citizenship to the Arab inhabitants.

Dayan envisaged a metropolitan Nablus-Jenin complex under the sovereignty of "the Arab nation east of the Jordan", an enclave smaller than the one outlined in the Allon Plan.