Annotations for Speaker: Eban

Well, at present, Nasser's policy is one of acquiescence towards us, and there has been a relative tranquility on our frontier with him. Perhaps the memories of the Sinai expedition have had a salutory effect in causing him to avoid his previous belligerent provocations, but basically we have not changed our views on Nasser and Nasserism.

He claims freedom for Egypt; he denies freedom for his neighbor Israel. In his relations with Middle Eastern states, his policy is one of hegemony, he's not content to look after Egypt's troubles and complex, affairs, he seeks to impose his domination over other states in the area. All over the Middle East, you will find governments just as worried by his pretensions to hegemony as ourselves, and he has brought the great power conflict into the Middle East in order to maneuver between the power blocks...

We find that the governments of Arab countries still articulate the aim of our extermination, but er... I think it is beyond their powers to achieve it and, of course, in any international system which respects law and morality, there must be resistance to any such policy.

I think a great degree of vigilance is called for, so long as Arab policy continues to be devoted, if only verbally, to the vision of Israel's destruction. On the other hand, if this lull, as you call it, this tranquility can be preserved, if passions are calmed, if Israel gives an ever increasing demonstration of her permanence and stability, I don't exclude the possibility that the present lull might merge into a climate more conducive to peace.

Well, Mr. Wallace, the last ten years have not only been years of violence. They have been incomparable years of joyous creation, of sovereignty restored, of the people gathered in, of a land revived, of democracy established, but there has also been violence imposed by the hostility of our neighbors. For our second decade, we devoutly hope for a period of peaceful consolidation.

We hope that there will be no recurrence of the violent conflicts which marked our first decade, but that we and our kindred neighboring people will devote all our efforts to the development of our respective countries and of our common region.

Well, about Professor Toynbee's statement I can only repeat what I've written, that it is a monstrous blasphemy. Here he takes the massacre of millions of our men, women and children, and he compares it to the plight of Arab refugees alive, on their kindred soil, suffering certain anguish, but of course possessed of the supreme gift of life. This equation between massacre and temporary suffering which can easily be alleviated is, I think, a distortion of any historic perspective.

Well, Mr. Wallace, I have so many pressing duties that I don't follow the wisdom of this gentleman perhaps as closely as I should. I will only say this, that we ask no allegiance, we seek no loyalty from anyone who is not a citizen of Israel. There is a kinship of spirit, of emotion, of historic memory between us and those who share our faith throughout the world. If American Jews wish to express that kinship, it is for them so to do; if not, then that also is their decision.

We wish well to our brethren outside our frontiers, but we do believe that there is a special historic and spiritual quality in the life of a free Jewish citizen in Israel reborn.

We, as a free nation speaking to a free nation, set forth the reasons why we believe they will find it infinitely rewarding to draw upon our common heritage and to sustain us in our great historic enterprise, but it is their decision and we impose nothing on them at all.

But the refugee problem, Mr. Wallace, isn't the cause of tension. The refugee problem is the result of an Arab policy. An Arab policy which created the problem by the invasion of Israel, which perpetuates it by refusing to accommodate them into their expanding labor market, and which refuses to solve the problem which they have the full capacity to solve.

Thank you very much.

There is, I think, a basic immorality in this attitude of Arab governments to their own kinsmen whose plight they could relieve immediately, once the will to relieve it existed. All world opinion admits that the problem can only be solved on a regional basis by opening the vast resources of the Arab world to this Arab refugee population, and if there were such an effort on their part to approach a regional settlement, Israel would make its due and just contribution.

I think not, Mr. Wallace. I'm sure that the Prime Minister was speaking in these terms of historic sympathy, we do evoke a certain affection, certain impulses of responsibility but the clear division of political allegiance is I think fully understood on both sides. We impose nothing upon them; we seek, as I've said, no allegiance from them. There is a kinship of history which both, they and we, seek voluntarily to express and for which there are so many examples, both in our own tradition and in yours.

Well, I think this gentleman need not to lose any sleep at night worrying about whether the State of Israel is too big. Really there is nothing more grotesque or eccentric in the international life of our times, than the doctrine that little Israel, eight thousand square miles in area, should become even smaller in order that the vast Arab Empire should still further expand.

Well, we are dealing here with subjective terms, "more of a Jew", or "less of a Jew". I think it is for Jews outside of Israel to determine the exact degree and measure of their intimacy with us. We believe that Israel's emergence is the greatest collective event in the history of the Jewish people, and that there is no pride and no dignity for a Jew such as those to be found in giving aid and sustenance to Israel in the great hour of her resurgence.

There are really two aspects, Mr. Wallace, to every territorial problem: The legal aspect, and the moral aspect. The law is clear, the present territorial frontiers rest on agreements between Israel and the Arab States, which cannot be changed except by consent. The Arab States have signed those agreements which give them and us a veto power against any territorial change to which we do not agree, so that there is no legal abuse in the present situation. But...

I think that's for him to decide... I wouldn't say

Oh, we have...

In my own personal interpretation, I would say that a man who opposed the State of Israel and the great movement which brought it about, would be in revolt against the most constructive and creative events in the life of the Jewish people, and it's a fact that the great majority of our kinsmen everywhere, are exalted and uplifted by these events.

Oh yes, we have. The present agreements between Israel and the Arab States delimit the precise territory which we hold now. Israel does not possess a single inch of territory beyond the valid agreements which she has signed and which United Nations has ratified, and...

It is a religion, and it is a peoplehood, and it is a civilization, and it is a faith, and it is a memory; it is a world of thought and of spirit and of action and it cannot be restrictively defined.

Yes... yes, but in that final settlement, as it is written in the agreements, no changes can be accepted without the consent of both parties. So we are within our rights and they are within their rights in accepting or refusing any change, so there is nothing whatever illegal about any aspect of the present territorial question; but the moral issue is the most important here.

I believe that religion has been the field in which the genius of our people has been most profoundly stirred. But... but being Jewish goes beyond this vital domain, and covers a whole complex of spiritual and other emotions, and that to live within the fullness of Jewish history is a deeply satisfying experience.

Yes, I'm glad to say that I hope that whenever countries wage a war of aggression, as the Arab States did, that they should be the losers by waging that war of aggression.

Well, to be quite frank, Mr. Wallace, we think highly of our country. We believe that we have achieved a reunion of the conditions of its greatness. This was the people, this was the land, and this was the language. Out of whose previous reunion, great events flowed for us and for mankind, and we believe that the perfection of our destiny in the world can only be found through this great act of restoration which has happened in our lifetime.

Mr. Wallace, I am not going into the history of other countries, and I am not going to analyze how the frontiers of countries which I have seen or in which I have served were achieved; but we have certainly achieved our territorial settlement as a result of agreements, not as a result of violence. It was they who decreed the method by which the present frontiers were achieved. They rejected the 1947 recommendation.

We said, "Let us have boundaries by international agreement"; they said, "Let us fix our boundaries by war," and they made the war. But following the war, we reached agreements and these agreements define our boundaries, and we... and they have agreed that they may not be changed except by mutual consent.

But much more important even than history and law, is this basic moral question: Here we, are eight thousand square miles, perhaps the smallest state in the international community; here they are, eleven sovereign states, three million square miles, four hundred times our area, and we have the fantastic doctrine --

I will admit it isn't sponsored by any serious government but one does hear it -- the doctrine that this vast, sated, fat, huge, lavish Arab Empire should expand at the expense of tiny Israel. Nobody in the world need lie awake at night worrying about whether Israel is too big.

Yes, I am speaking, Mr. Wallace, purely in territorial terms. They really have no reason to envy us our eight thousand square miles.

Well I don't like the word "further" Mr. Wallace, because, as I have said, our present boundaries rest upon agreements beyond which we have not encroached, but we certainly do not desire to expand our frontiers. I doubt the reality of this issue. We are prepared to accept a guaranteed settlement with the Arab States on the present frontiers.

Are they so prepared? I wonder whether the issue isn't one of Arab expansion. Here sit I, the accredited representative of Israel, and I declare that Israel will sign a peace treaty with the Arab States on the present frontier. Now you get an Arab Ambassador sitting here to say that he will have a settlement with Israel on the present frontier, and you will really have a story.

Yes, but when you said, Mr. Wallace, that they have fifteen members dedicated to expansion, you are really saying, in other words, that there are one hundred and fifteen members not dedicated to expansion. In other words, eighty-five percent of the Israeli electorate has put its trust in parties which do not advocate territorial expansion; therefore, I think one can say that within our democratic process, the concept of territorial expansion has been rejected.

Well, I'm deeply touched by this gentleman's concern. But I will say with definiteness which may surprise you, that there is no reason whatever for any skepticism about Israel's economic future.

Let me just say what the main facts are, which build up into a certainty of success. Take seven years, 1951 to 1957. During that period our population has increased by 4 percent per year, in other words by some thirty percent in seven years, a population increase of thirty percent. What has happened to our national product in those seven years? It has increased by seventy-five percent.

What has happened to our export trade? It has increased by two hundred and fifty percent from a figure of 75 million dollars a year export earnings in 1951 to 203 million dollars export earnings now. In other words, all the trends, all the lines are converging towards success, and we think that our difficulties are transient. These are impressive basic facts!

Oh, yes, there is a very imposing er... deficit in the balance of payments. It becomes less imposing if you analyze it.

It includes, if I may just...

refer to this, all the machinery that we're importing, all the capital goods, all the tractors, the machines, the irrigation pipes, to make our productive... our economy productive. These are all included on the deficit side. We are like a man...

We are like a man who's furnishing a workshop. While he's building the furniture and the equipment, of course his expenditures are heavy, but he's incurring those expenditures in the cause of ultimate fruition.

Well we do depend, for this transitional period in which our economy is being built, upon external aid and of course if we were cut off from that aid we would suffer. But we would not be alone in that.

Our economic future depends on very clear guiding posts. Agriculture: we can become independent of all agricultural imports except a few staple products. Minerals: To give you an example, we're earning one or two million dollars a year from our potash resources. This could become 15 million dollars for that single item.

Industry: Where we are opening new markets in Asia and Africa; and Science: Where we look to the new fuels and the new forces of nature to compensate for our relative scarcity in conventional fuels.

I think, Mr. Wallace, that your country's only course, if I might suggest it, in response to your invitation, is to follow a policy of constructive friendship for Israel and for the Arab States. America has sponsored and stimulated the independence of many Arab States; you would have been false to your own traditions of justice and equality if you'd enabled them to become independent in eleven countries and not enabled our people, at the climax of its agony, to achieve its modern domain of independence.

I think that if your policy makes it clear that you seek the friendship of Israel and of her neighbors not at the expense of each other, and that you regard these friendships as reconcilable within your policy, I believe that that would be respected by us and by them.

I think not, Mr. Wallace. Many countries manage, as your own country does, to reconcile these two elements in its policy.