Dayan's conduct as Minister of Defense, only twenty per cent preferred him as Prime Minister, with an equal percentage of the public voting for Abba Eban.
If Israel emerges from the present phase as a chauvinistic, extremist country, convinced that future wars with the Arabs are inevitable, Dayan might well become Prime Minister by 1969. If, on the contrary, a more moderate mood prevails, Dayan might find himself the leader of an activist minority, bypassed by history.
Dayan has been vocal but self-contradictory on the central question of what to do with the occupied territories. During the first two months after the war, he made half a dozen statements on this subject, each canceling the other. He has advocated, alternately, the setting up of an autonomous Palestinian state, a federation between Israel and Jordan, and the annexation of Gaza and the West Bank of the Jordan.
In his great speech at the opening of the last Rafi conference in December 1967, he proposed a six-point program of singular ambiguity. The points were:
1) "to safeguard the Jewish character of the State of Israel, in its composition and population'';
2) "to secure the recognition of Israel as a sovereign Jewish state by its neighbors";
3) "to achieve international equality of rights in the region, including freedom of navigation in all international waterways";
4) "to design new frontiers, which will safeguard the territorial integrity and the sovereignty of the state";
5) "to create frontiers which will express the bond of the Jewish people to its historical homeland";
6) "to strive for peace-agreements with the Arab states, in the context of which the Arab refugee question will also be settled."
If this sounds rather obscure to the reader of English, so it sounded to the Hebrew listener. The points could well mean outright annexation of all conquered territories.