Allon Plan

Allon advocated a partitioning of the West Bank between Israel and Jordan, the creation of a sovereign state for Druze in the Golan Heights, and the return of most of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt.

The Allon Plan was based on the doctrine that Israeli sovereignty over a large part of the Israeli-occupied territories was necessary for Israel's defense.

[1][2] On the other hand, Allon wanted Israel to return populated territories, and most of the Sinai Peninsula as well, to Arab control, in order to progress towards a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Israeli leaders ruled out the possibility of incorporating the West Bank Palestinian population into a greater Israel because it would have dramatically changed the state's Jewish demographic orientation.

[1] According to the Allon Plan, Israel 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 heavily populated areas of the West Bank hill country, together with a corridor that included Jericho, would be offered to Jordan.

In June 1967, according to journalist Reuven Pedatzur, writing in 2007 in an article in Haaretz, Allon expressed caution over the Jordanian option and declared that "The last thing we must do is to return one inch of the West Bank.

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.

The autonomous region consisted of two large enclaves, separated by the Greater Jerusalem area, from Israel in the west to the Jordan Valley in the east.

Kiryat Arba both marked the western border of the Israeli-claimed territory in the Allon Plan and blocked the Palestinian build-up area of Hebron in the east.

With the creation of a Palestinian-free route between Kiryat Arba and the Shuhada region, the planned strip from the Jordan Valley to Hebron was finished.

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 Greater Jerusalem area should be expanded to include Ramallah and Bethlehem, with Israeli citizenship granted its Arab inhabitants.