Yigal Allon

Yigal Allon

Born a child of pioneer settlers in the

Allon entered politics after a forced relief from command by then-Premier David Ben-Gurion. During his political career, he served as foreign and education minister, deputy prime minister, and briefly as acting prime minister. He was one of the architects of the creation of the Labor party, advocating for the merge of Ahdut HaAvoda with Mapai.

In 1967, he devised the eponymous Allon Plan, which proposed next steps for Israel after the 1967 Arab–Israeli War. While the plan was not officially adopted, it served as a guideline for the next decade of Israeli settlement.^[2][3] He also took part in the Sinai Interim Agreement in 1975.

In 1980, Allon died unexpectedly due to cardiac arrest while campaigning for the leadership of the Labor party.

Early years (1918–1931)

Yigal Peikowitz (later Allon) was born on 10 October 1918 in Kfar Tavor, then a part of the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration. His father, Reuven, immigrated to Palestine in 1890 along with his father and elder brother from Belarus, then a part of the Russian Empire.^[4] His mother, Haia Shortz-Peikowitz, came from a Jewish family of Safed. Her father was a founding member of Rosh Pinna.

Allon's father initially wanted to name him "Yigael", meaning "he will be redeemed", but decided it was too passive, and instead decided on "Yigal", meaning "he will redeem".^[5]

When Allon was five years old, his mother died and his older brothers left home. Allon, the youngest child, remained with his father. The area of Kfar Tavor was isolated and dealt with regular raids and thefts by neighboring Arab and Bedouin communities. After his bar mitzvah at age 13, Allon was given a gun by his father to protect the family crops from thieves.

In 1934, 16-year-old Allon began attending the Kadoorie Agricultural High School. Here, he became aware that his home education was poor compared to his classmates from urban areas. His teachers encouraged him to expand his horizons and close gaps in his education. In his autobiography, Allon praised the school director and claimed that he taught Allon important social values.

During school, Allon adopted Labor Zionism. After graduating in 1937, Allon and a group of Labor Zionists founded the Kibbutz Ginosar on Palestine Jewish Colonization Association land leased to the settlement of Migdal.^[4] In Ginosar, Allon made an impression as a local leader and became friends with Berl Katznelson.

Military career (1931–1950)

Allon joined Haganah in 1931 and went on to command a field unit and then a mobile patrol in northern Palestine during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine.^[6] During the revolt, while working on the fields and farms of the kibbutz, Allon was summoned to take a position of command in the Haganah by Yitzhak Sadeh. After completing a squad command course, Allon was appointed to the command of the Mobile Guards. He took part in the expulsion of Arabs who immigrated with their flocks to the Jewish fields. He also became known for the ambushes he planned for gangs that infiltrated the settlements.

During this period, Allon participated in several operations of the Special Night Squads (SNS), under the command of Orde Charles Wingate and Bala Bredin. In 1941, he became one of the founding members of the Palmach. From 1941 to 1942, he was a scout with the British forces of Syria and Lebanon.^[7]

In 1945, he became Commander in Chief of the Palmach.

On 18 October 1949, while he was in an official visit in Paris, Allon was told by his French hosts that Ben-Gurion had decided to replace Allon with Moshe Dayan as Operational Commander. Most of Allon's staff officers resigned in protest.^[12] He retired from active service in 1950.^[13]

Political career (1950–1980)

In January 1948, Allon helped form the left-wing Mapam party. However, Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, leader of the rival governing Mapai party, told Allon to dissociate himself from Mapam, as saw it as too left-wing and a threat to state security.^[14] In December 1948, Mapam co-leader Meir Ya'ari criticized Allon's use of tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees to achieve strategic goals.^[15]

From 1950 to 1952, he studied philosophy and history at St Antony's College, Oxford.^[16]

After ending his military career, Allon embarked on a public political career. He became a prominent leader in Ahdut HaAvoda, which had split from Mapam in 1954, and was first elected to the Knesset in 1955, where he served until his death. He was a member of the Economic Affairs Committee, Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, Education and Culture Committee, Joint Committee on the Motion for the Agenda Regarding Sports in Israel, and the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

Allon served as the

Allon was the architect of the Allon Plan, a proposal to end Israeli occupation of parts of the West Bank with a negotiated partition of territories.^[20] The plan was presented to the cabinet in July 1967, right after the Six-Day War. The plan was never formally adopted, but influenced Israeli settlement for the next decade.

According to the plan, Israel would retain one-third of the West Bank and protect itself from invasion from the east by a strip of settlements and military installations along the

Allon died of heart failure in Afula on 29 February 1980.^[22][23] He was buried in the cemetery of Kibbutz Ginosar in the Northern District on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.^[24] The funeral was attended by tens of thousands of mourners, with condolences extended by many world leaders, including Egyptian president Anwar Sadat.^[25]

Legacy

Explaining the growing admiration for Yigal Allon three decades after his death, Oren Dagan of the Society for the Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites said, "people wish to live in the kind of state Yigal Allon dreamed of, for example on the Arab-Jewish issue. This isn't a post-Zionist approach, neither hesitant nor apologetic. It's an approach of safety and security that says, 'Our place is here,' but still emphasizes the importance of dialogue, and never through condescension or arrogance. Allon extended a hand in peace, and that's the approach we want leaders to adopt today."^[26]

Personal life

Allon was married to Ruth, who

In 1948, after the proclamation of the state of Israel, Allon changed his surname from "Peikowitz" to "Allon" (Hebrew: אלון), meaning "oak tree".^[29]

In the 1950s, the Allon couple helped their neighbors adopt a child, Tziona Heiman, from a Jerusalem hospital. This became associated with the wider Yemenite Children Affair of the time, in which thousands of Jewish babies, mainly from Yemen, appeared as candidates for adoption in Israel. Heiman said she was treated well and lovingly by her adoptive parents and by Allon.^[30] In an interview, Allon's wife stated they had no knowledge of Heiman's origin.^[31] As of 2016, Heiman's origins remained unclear.^[30]

Published works

• Allon, Yigal (1970). Shield of David. New York: Random House.
  ISBN 0-297-00133-7
  .
• Allon, Yigal (1970). The Making of Israel's Army. London: Vallentine, Mitchell.
  ISBN 0-853-03027-8
  .
• Allon, Yigal (1975). My Father's House. New York: W. W. Norton. Archived from the original on 16 February 2013.

References