Russia Does Not Seek Change in Israelis Borders, U.S. Communists Say

The “Daily Worker,” official organ of the American Communist Party, this week-end sought to debunk Arab allegations that Moscow is supporting the Arabs in an attempt to force Israel back to its 1947 United Nations partition boundaries “As of this moment, the only great powers that have proposed rolling back Israel’s borders are the U. S. and Britain, ” the paper wrote.

The Communist newspaper said it was “understand able that certain Arab governments would want Israel’s frontiers shrunk back to the lines fixed in that 1947 UN resolution which at the time they opposed with arms. But are they ready to accept the whole resolution or only part of it? Is Jordan willing to give up the territory it has annexed, and is Egypt willing to surrender the Gaza Strip in order to make possible a new Arab state, independent, democratic and joined economically to Israel.”

Declaring that the Arabs ” cannot have their cake and eat it too, ” the article stated “The reactionary war launched by the Arab governments against Israel forced that country to fight for its independence–a struggle in which it had the active support of the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. The war against Israel failed. But the Arab invasion did succeed in preventing an independent, democratic Arab state from being set up in the rest of Palestine.”

The territory presently occupied by Israel was “occupied in the course of its war of self-defense, ” said the Daily Worker. The newspaper charged that the first proposal to reduce Israel’s territory was written by representatives of the U. S. State Department and British Foreign Office and put forth by the late Count Folke Bernadotte.

According to the Daily Worker, Secretary of State Dulles on August 26, 1955, said the Israeli boundaries were not designed to be permanent in every respect.” The newspaper said Mr. Dulles by saying in that 1955 speech that even territory which is barren has acquired a sentimental significance” had hinted Israel’s Negev area was expendable

Reference was made also to former British Prime Minister Anthony Eden’s 1955 proposal to reduce Israel’s territory. “Thus, ” said the Daily Worker, “as of this moment the only great powers that have proposed rolling back Israel’s borders are the U. S. and Britain.

The newspaper columnist Joseph Alsop was ridiculed for claiming to have learned “from the camel’s mouth” that the Soviet Union has secretly pledged to support the Arab governments in their demand that the State of Israel be rolled back to the borders fixed in the United Nations Palestine decision in 1947.