Fulbright Launches Strongest Attack on U.S. Policy Toward Israel

Sen. J.William Fulbright (D.Ark) today charged that U.S. policy is to give Israel “unlimited support for unlimited expansion” and “maintenance of the results of the 1967 war.”

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in what was perhaps his strongest public attack yet on U.S. policy towards Israel, urged U.S. cooperation with the oil producing countries and reiterated his advocacy of the Rogers Plan which the Nixon Administration and its author, Secretary of State William P. Rogers had set aside more than two years ago. Essentially the plan called for Israel’s withdrawal from virtually all territory it had occupied in the Six-Day War without a negotiated agreement that would give her secure borders.

Fulbright expressed these views towards the close of the first session this morning of two-day hearings he initiated on the energy situation. He encountered direct and indirect opposition. Midway through the questioning of three experience on oil, Sen. Jacob K. Javits (R.NY) apparently sensing the direction the hearings were to take, declared that their purpose is to find out how much oil there is” and it is “particularly important not to fuzz up” the oil situation by putting the blame on hostility between Israel and the Arab states. There are a lot more reasons than that” for the energy problem, he declared.

S. David Freeman, director of the Ford Foundation’s Energy Policy Project who resigned Sept. 1, 1971, as an executive in the President’s Office of Science and Technology, provided the basis for most of Fulbright’s at tack on U.S. policy. In his prepared statement, nearly all of which was devoted to the energy situation. Freeman had pointed out that Venezuela, Indonesia and Iran “are suggesting that oil revenues can be a means for improving the life of people in other nations around the Persian Gulf and in the Middle East.”

PROBE ALTERNATIVES TO OIL

In responding to questions from Fulbright, he added that while he conceded it “sounds naive” to cooperate “in making our technology available to bring these people into the twentieth century” he urged “a college try.” The State Department, he added, has no plans to make “the brains of industry” available to the Arab countries. “This seems to be the road to peace in the Middle East,” he said.

Both Fulbright and Sen, Hubert H. Humphrey (D.Minn) commended Freeman for his extemporaneous exposition on improving the living conditions of the Arab peoples, the former Vice President saying that he was “right on target” because of the “need for long term building.” Fulbright told Freeman that the Rogers Plan is consistent with what you suggest–a different approach.” He said that “We have used twenty five years of military means–direct or indirect” in the area.

Fulbright asked Freeman and the two other witnesses, Joel Darmstadter and Milton F. Searl, of the Resources for the Future Inc., which the Ford Foundation had established in 1952, whether “there is an alternative to going to the Middle East” for the next five or ten years for U.S. oil requirements. Freeman and Darmstadter agreed there was none, but Searl said “maybe five years–after that we can get it here if we want it.”

ISRAEL SUPPORTERS SHAPE U.S. POLICY

Fulbright said that it was in the interest of the Middle East and the U.S. that the development of the energy problem focus attention on the area because “out of it something constructive may come about.” He charged “tremendous prejudice has grown up in the United States” in the past 25 years against the Arabs “especially those in the Middle East,” U.S. policy, he said, has been shaped by “supporters of Israel” who are “especially powerful” and which he could not “for a moment challenge.” It was in Israel’s interest, he said, that the war settlement receive “highest priority.”

Freeman commented that he felt the Arabs should have “something to live for,” but he emphasized that there was nothing in U.S. government policy towards the Middle East that he would change “one lota.”

Darmstadter, who was born in Germany in 1928, and is now engaged in research dealing with energy conservation possibilities in the New York metropolitan area, told Fulbright that “The point is” that oil producers like Saudi Arabia show “no disposition” towards responsibility to give preferential treatment to less endowed areas. Taking issue with Fulbright’s view, he said, “The problem can be isolated from the Israel-Arab dispute,” and from the U.S. balance of payments situation.