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Some Arab complaints against the occupation are obviously exaggerated. The Israelis, for instance, have provided far more classrooms and hospital facilities than the Arabs will admit. Some of the charges—notably, the extent of torture carried out under interrogation in Israeli prisons—cannot be proved. Individual Arabs have given vivid testimony of maltreatment. "I can assure you we don't have torture," answers Brigadier General David Hagoel, the West Bank military governor. "I am against torture completely." Hagoel admitted to TIME Correspondent Don Neff that occupation forces sometimes surreptitiously bury bodies of Palestinian terrorists. "Funerals can cause great demonstrations that go on for days," he said.
Likud leaders insist that the occupation under a new government will not become as anti-Arab as West Bankers fear. Ezer Weizman, who as Likud's probable choice for Defense Minister would become the new overseer, may even withdraw the army occupation force and replace it with border police. Says Weizman: "I think we should start changing our Arab and military government policies. If I discover misuse of power, humiliation on purpose, or mishandling of the civilian population, heads will be chopped off."
The shape of Likud's occupation policies—and the shape of the new government itself—awaits the lengthy consultations that will start this week when Begin formally accepts President Ephraim Katzir's invitation to form a new government. Begin picked up more political support last week: retired Major General Ariel Sharon, a hard-line nationalist, announced that the two Knesset members of his Shlomzion party would support the new government.
Solution Wanted. But Begin is more interested in wooing Archaeologist-General Yigael Yadin's Democratic Movement for Change, which won 15 seats at the expense of the Labor alignment. Yadin, who wants the Foreign Minister's portfolio that Begin offered to Moshe Dayan (TIME, June 6), last week stressed that serious ideological differences still separate the D.M.C. and Likud: "They say there should be Israeli sovereignty between the sea and the River Jordan, and we say there should be territorial compromise for peace. The question is: What will happen within the next year or two?" On the West Bank, Arabs are wondering the same thing. "We want a solution, either by peace or war," says Mayor Mohammed Mousa Ammer of tiny Dura, near Hebron. "Extremism will only hasten war."