Allon (Paicovitch), Yigal

(1918–80)

   Israel military commander and political leader. Allon, like Dayan, was one of the new sabra breed of Israel leaders that emerged out of the agricultural settlements and the Haganah. He was born in Kfar Tavor, a small farm village in eastern Galilee. His father, a founder of the settlement, had been one of the young Zionist pioneers to arrive from Russia in 1882. Yigal was trained at the Kadoorie Agricultural School. In 1937 he was a member of the group of chalutzim that established the new kibbutz of Ginnosar at the northern end of the Sea of Galilee. Throughout his career he remained a member of the kibbutz.

   Allon was drawn into the Haganah at an early age. He was a member of WINGATE’S Night Squads during the Arab rebellion of the late 1930s. Early in 1941, a Haganah mobile striking force was created known as Palmach, short for Plugot ha-Machatz (assault platoons). Its first commander was Yitzhak SADEH; Allon was his deputy and succeeded him in 1945. Its members, about three thousand strong, were the best-educated and most idealistic in the Haganah, united by a camaraderie without formal ranks or strict discipline. In the War of Independence, Allon emerged as the most dashing and effective Israel field commander. During the first truce, he was brought down from the Galilee with his Palmach brigade, and put in charge of the vital central front, between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. In the ten days of fighting that followed, his forces took the offensive and captured Lydda, Ramle and the Arab villages in the area, though they failed to break the hold of the Arab Legion on Latrun, blocking the pass to Jerusalem. In October Allon, now a brigadier-general, was put in command of ‘Operation Ten Plagues’ against the Egyptians in the Negev, with a force of fifteen thousand men. Beersheba was taken and the northern Negev cleared, except for an enclave known as ‘the Falujah pocket’ (one of the Egyptian officers cut off in it was Nasser). In December the fighting was resumed. Allon’s troops finally smashed the Egyptian lines, and pursued them across the border to the outskirts of El-Arish on the Sinai coast. At this point, to Allon’s great chagrin, BENGURION ordered him to halt his advance into Sinai and withdraw to the border. The reason was the threat of British military intervention on the Egyptian side.

   When the Palmach was dissolved into the new Israel Defence Force, Allon left the army and devoted himself to part-time study and to political activity as one of the leaders of the Achdut Avodah (Unity of Labour) faction. In 1954 he was elected to the Knesset. Five years later he resigned his seat to spend a year studying at Oxford University as a research fellow. On his return he was reelected to the Knesset and from 1961 to 1968 served as minister of labour in coalition governments headed first by Ben-Gurion and then by Levi ESHKOL. Before the end of that period Achdut Avodah had rejoined the main labour party, Mapai. As labour minister, he carried out useful reforms in manpower productivity, labour relations and social insurance.

   In a 1968 Cabinet reshuffle, Allon left the Labour Ministry and was appointed deputy prime minister. He kept his position in Mrs Meir’s Cabinet after Eshkol’s death the following year, and in addition was appointed minister of education and culture. After the Six-Day War, he put forward a personal proposal for a territorial settlement with Jordan that attracted international attention. By the Allon plan, the populated parts of the West Bank would be restored to Jordan, but a strip of Israel territory would run along nearly the whole of the Jordan valley, forming a ‘security frontier’.

   Allon published Palmach Campaigns (1966) and Curtain of Sand (1968).