Pressures

Pressures Across 5,600 miles, the world's most powerful nation and one of the smallest engaged in a testing of pressure. The contest was more equal than any comparative statistics of wealth or population would suggest; even the outcome of the contest for world favor, between a nation that had committed aggression and one that was asking it to desist, was not foregone conclusion.

Having six times defied U.N. orders to get out of Egypt, the tiny (pop. 1.8 million), nine-year-old republic of Israel heard the fateful warning of the President of the U.S.: comply or face the pressure that every headline named as sanctions. "Don't surrender," cried voices in the crowd as white-haired old (70) Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, looking grim and tight-lipped after a hectic day of Cabinet huddles, made his way into Israel's Parliament.

Stronger Compulsion. "Any attempt to compel us to accept a miscarriage of justice and a system of discrimination," rasped Israel's shock-haired lawgiver, "will meet with our unflinching opposition." President Eisenhower's first message, said B-G, "placed me under great moral pressure, for I was keenly conscious of the personality and the standing of the writer. And if I was compelled to reply as I did, I did so only under a still stronger compulsion: the pressure of my conscience as a man and a Jew, the pressure of the justice for which my people were fighting . . . the crushing historic responsibility that rests on the representatives of this small nation in its hard and bitter struggle for survival against the many who seek to destroy it."

Ben-Gurion's speech was a no to President Eisenhower, but not a final no.

Israel's government, Ben-Gurion said, welcomed Washington's willingness to dispatch U.S. ships through the Gulf of Aqaba to establish the right of "innocent passage," but did not consider this sufficient protection against subsequent Egyptian interference with Israel's ships--"as she openly proclaims her intention to do." For this reason, Israel would withdraw from Aqaba only if replaced by U.N. Emergency Force troops that would remain along the Gulf's shores until "peace is concluded with Egypt or until some other reliable and effective arrangement is made to this end." As for the Gaza Strip, Ben-Gurion, in an otherwise unyielding speech, appeared to have dropped his demand that Israel administer Gaza; Israel's main concern was that the Egyptians should not be allowed back "directly or indirectly."

The Threats. Behind Ben-Gurion's defiant position stood the will of a tough and self-righteous people. They knew that they might suffer further economic distress by their defiance. It came as no surprise to them when next day, on behalf of six Asian-African nations, Lebanon's Charles Malik introduced the long-delayed U.N. resolution calling on all states "to deny all military, economic or financial assistance" to Israel. Yet for all the Arab hostility to Israel, and all the influence the U.S. can bring to bear, few in the U.N. really wanted to see the resolution come to a vote.

The British and French, late partners with Israel in armed assault on Egypt, shared Israel's hatred of Nasser. France's Guy Mollet pledged to Israel "all possible aid." Many European, Commonwealth, Asian and Latin American countries, who usually side with the U.S., did not like the idea of sanctions.

Even the Soviet bloc, for all its desire to gather Moslems while it may, prudently opposed applying sanctions through any other body than the Security Council, where their veto applies. Yet the Israelis also understood that the really effective economic pressure against them might come from the U.S. alone, by the tax and embargo restrictions that the U.S. could impose. Knowing the risks involved, Israelis still seemed completely unified in their willingness to undergo further economic hardships if need be. Israeli government officials instinctively felt that the U.S. might seek to penalize their country, but in the end would not consent to destroy it.

By week's end the contest had become a conflict between two moral appeals. Eisenhower's was the simple proposition that aggression must not be rewarded: Israel must first retreat, and then the merits of its case would be considered. Israel argued that its aggression was under provocation, and could not be treated in isolation from the whole recent history of the Middle East. And though Eisenhower might say that two wrongs do not make a right, Israel gained much sympathy abroad (and in the U.S.) by its claim that these days only small aggressors were punished, while Russia got off scot-free in Hungary, and India in Kashmir.

Beneath this contest of emotions, economics and moral appeals lay a practical argument that might be decisive. Israel, as well as the Arab states, accuses the U.S. of past neglect, indifference or equivocations, and on this ground tends to ask too-literal pledges from the U.S. But Eisenhower has now committed the U.S. to Middle East solutions, and the fact of Eisenhower's broadcast, more than its specific words, marked a deeper U.S. involvement than before. America's new friends among the Arabs, such as King Saud, are waiting to see how the U.S. handles the Israeli aggression first, but implicit in U.S. pressure on Israel is the assumption that the U.S. will next exact from Nasser assurances that he too will no longer distress the area by fedayeen raids on Israel, or by playing politics with the Suez Canal. The real question that Israel must face is whether its continuing defiance is worthwhile if it prevents the U.S. from developing genuine solutions in the Middle East and succeeds only in absolving the Arabs from any responsibility for future misbehavior.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.