The British Cabinet, at a meeting today, is understood to have explored ways and means of following up a call by Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden last night to Israel and Egypt to “compromise” their positions on the boundary question and arrive at a settlement. At the same time, Sir Anthony offered the services of his government or himself as a mediator to help achieve a peace settlement.
It is further understood that instructions have gone out to the British Ambassadors in Cairo and Tel Aviv to urge restraint upon Israel and Egypt. There is a feeling in British official circles that the present quiet along the Israel-Egyptian frontier is a lull before a fresh storm.
In his speech at the Lord Mayor of London’s dinner in the Guildhall, Sir Anthony noted that the Egyptians insist that any settlement be based on the 1947 United Nations Palestine partition decision while Israel refuses to budge from the boundary lines recognized by the armistice agreement of 1948. He then said that “it is not right that the UN resolutions should be ignored” but agreed that as the resolutions “now stand” they cannot be implemented. At this point, he suggested that the two parties “must make a compromise between these two positions.”
Recalling that Britain had a special responsibility in the Middle East and that it “has a long tradition of friendship with the Middle East,” the Prime Minister urged both parties to re-evaluate the British and American proposals for a settlement. He also urged speedy acceptance of the proposals by UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold for relieving the situation in the Nitzana-EI Auja area.
He warned that the Czech-Egyptian arms deal had injected a “new element of danger” into the Middle East and dismissed as “fantastic” Soviet assertions that this was a purely commercial transaction. He cautioned the Arabs that they might be submerged in the “Communist empire if they fall victims” to the Communist tactics.
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