Ahmed Ben Bella, the Algerian provisional Vice-Premier, declared last night in Cairo that the FLN, the former Algerian underground rebel movement, was ready to send 100,000 of its soldiers into battle for “the liberation of Palestine.”
Ben Bella, who was released from a French prison last month as part of the peace agreement reached between the Algerian nationalists and French at Evian, made the statement to the Middle East News Agency. He said “the Palestinian people” should be organized in a front of national liberation similar to the one created in Algeria.
“It is equally necessary,” he said, “that a Palestinian liberation army should be formed to serve as an avant-garde for the Arab liberation of Palestine. The Arab revolution in Algeria, which has learned the significance of fighting for the dignity of one country and one people, is ready to engage 100,000 of its soldiers in the battle for the liberation of Palestine.”
He added: “I would like to tell my Arab brothers that we in Algeria do not consider our revolution to be over as long as the liberation of Palestine is not achieved. I will be happy if I am given a chance to be one of those Arab soldiers who will effectively participate in the liberation of Palestine.”
He then proceeded to discuss the “dangers” of Zionism with which “we have met during our long years of struggle. We had to suffer from the acts of Zionism which have conspired with imperialists against our people.” He said that by Zionists he meant not only the Zionists in Israel but also those in France and Algeria, adding that the Zionists constituted one of the “main forces which are now behind the fascism OAS,” the secret European under-ground army in Algeria.
HIS SHARP ANTI-ISRAEL STATEMENT PROVOKES ANXIETY IN PARIS
The Ben Bella statement evoked anxiety among both Jewish and non-Jewish groups in France. The French paper L’Aurore declared that “to settle the Palestinian issue, Ben Bella now proposes to send 100,000 soldiers. For him, the Jews whether in Algeria or elsewhere are the enemy.”
The newspaper commented that, according to the FLN leader, the Algerians “have learned from the revolutionary experience of the United Arab Republic and it can only be hoped that the Algerians will also learn from the experience of the Egyptians that Israel is prepared to defend itself and that it will not be easy to conquer the Jewish State.”
French political sources suggested that the Ben Bella statement was a personal bid to regain some of the limelight and prestige he might have lost during his detention. They called his declaration that “of an opposition member” and not that of a vice-premier of the Algerian provisional government.
These sources said that the FLN, confronted with immediate and major problems in the shift of Algeria to independence, would be unable to give anything more than verbal assistance to the Middle East Arab states. While it was believed that an independent Algeria would join the Arab League eventually, the possibility of an FLN combination with Egypt against Israel was dismissed by all French experts on North Africa.
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