Arab Says Blacklist of Jewish-owned, Controlled Banks Will Continue

It’s up to the market to cope with the Arab blacklist, a top Arab banker declared here today. Dr. Mohammed Mahmoud Abushadi, president of the Union of French and Arab Banks (UFAB), said at a press conference held this morning in Paris that the boycotting would continue and the matter should be left open for the market to settle. Dr. Abushadi said UFAB banks would continue their refusal to manage or otherwise participate in bonds managed or co-managed by Jewish banks.

However, he said, it was possible for Arab and Jewish banks to participate in a bond issue if neither Arab nor Jewish interests were managers. This would avoid all contractual agreements between Arab and Jewish banks. During his press conference, Dr. Abushadi carefully avoided the use of the terms “Jewish” and “Israeli,” referring to the boycott of banks merely as “those which figure on the blacklist.”

If Dr. Abushadi envisaged a sort of peaceful co-existence between Arab and Jewish banks, one of his colleagues made no secret of the objectives he saw in the blacklist. Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian businessman, told the Paris Herald Tribune reporter, “The power of money is now in the hands of the Arab. As time goes on, the Arabs will become stronger and more confident. We will become more cocky as we develop confidence in ourselves.”

The purpose of this policy is to reach a satisfactory peace settlement in the Middle East and to put financial pressure on Israel to help reach this settlement. The economic warfare will get “harder and harder” until a settlement is reached. The Herald Tribune described Khashoggi as a 39-year-old businessman with $400 million of business world-wide, none of it directly related to oil.