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Eisenhower’s Pastor Urges Israeli-arab “cooling-off” Period

August 13, 1957
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President Eisenhower’s pastor, Dr. Edward L. R. Elson, who just returned from a six-week visit to Middle East countries, yesterday recommended the introduction of a “cooling-off” and settling period” between the Arab states and Israel. He said that such a “cooling-off” period would be “antiseptic.”

Rey. Elson voiced this recommendation in a sermon at the National Presbyterian Church here. He told Mr. Eisenhower and others in the congregation that “in the light of recent events it is probably more important for a while to keep the Arabs and Israeli apart than to try to bring them together in direct negotiations.”

But by next year, he suggested the time might be ripe for the United Nations to make “a new study of boundaries, waterways, resources and other factors” in the Arab-Israel relations. “There is some promise in the Promised Land, ” Dr. Elson told his congregation, “even though its main problem is that the land has been promised to too many different people,” Dr. Elson is chairman of the National Council of the American Friends of the Middle East.

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