American Christian Conference Discusses Arab-israel Problem

A mutual defense pact for the Near East patterned after the NATO treaty was proposed today at the American Christian Palestine Committee national conference by a prominent Protestant church authority on foreign affairs, Dr. Walter Van Kirk. He is executive director of the National Council of Churches’ department of International justice and goodwill.

The U.S. should “persist in its efforts to achieve” such a pact guaranteeing Jews and Arabs against attack by either and both against Soviet aggression, he told the 300 participants in the conference. He warned against the extension of arms aid to either side by America.

President Eisenhower’s policy is one of sympathetic and friendly attitude toward these countries, he stated. Our aid policy should therefore be economic, technical and diplomatic and proffered as much as possible under the aegis of the United Nations, he recommended. This would be in harmony with Eisenhower’s announced policy, he said.

The United States and the United Nations, backed by the Christian community can do something to relieve tensions in the Middle East, he said. “There is not enough money in our national treasury to buy security in the Middle East,” he added, but economic aid should be allocated on a regional basis and in relation to established needs. The U.S. should strive to set up in the Middle East a healthy and viable economy that will enrich the lives of all without regard to national boundaries.

He regretted the fact that Jerusalem is “a city divided by barbed wire.” His organization’s position on the status of that city, he said, is the same as that expressed by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles: “Some form of political arrangement respecting Jerusalem should be set up, giving precedence to the claims of the world religious community to the city over the political claims of any particular nation.”

ARAB-ISRAEL CONFLICT CAN BE RESOLVED, LEADER SAYS

Rev. Karl Baehr, executive director of the ACPC, said the conflict between Israelis and Arabs “is unfortunate but understandable, and above all, capable of resolution.” Rev. Baehr added that besides bringing death and destruction and creating thousands of refugees, both Arab and Jewish, the conflict has precipitated a propaganda struggle in America.”

Americans who have over the years opposed the “idea of a re-established Israel on the sands and waste places of Palestine” take the attitude that to be a friend of the Israelis is to be an enemy of the Arabs and vice versa, he said. The same people and groups in the U.S. “continue to question or even to denounce Israel’s right to exist as a nation,” he added, despite League of Nations and United Nations decisions accepting the principle of self-determination for the Jews as well as the Arabs in the Near East.

“It is this hostile attitude on the part of certain American groups which most forcefully stimulates the morbid hopes of Arab leaders that Israel can be wiped off the map if they but hold out,” Rev. Baehr stated. “Those unfriendly to Israel, apparently, are convinced that a propaganda campaign against the new nation and particularly against Zionists will cause the American people to forget the idealism of the past decades and to seek the destruction of Israel as eagerly as they were once challenged by the right and the necessity of its creation.”

Pointing out that the Arab states are more interested in war against Israel than in solving a pressing human problem, Rev. Baehr said: “Indeed, they consider the refugees their best weapon against Israel. There seems little hope, therefore, for the Arab refugees until the Arab leaders come to appreciate the untold economic assets that could come to them and their countries from great resettlement programs.”