The suggestion that a long-range program for bringing about an Arab-Israel peace should be evolved, based on agreement between the Western Powers and the Soviet Union, was made here yesterday by Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Zionist Organization and of the Jewish Agency, at a luncheon given in his honor by the Foreign Press Association.
Speaking on “The Western Powers, Israel and the Arabs,” Dr. Goldmann pointed out that the Suez crisis proved dramatically what had been obvious to all observers for some time–that the Middle East was both the most explosive and one of the most important regions of our modern world. He criticized the policies followed by the Western Powers in recent decades.
There should have been a united policy right along, he asserted, instead of various powers in the West maneuvering against each other. The West has been dealing with the problems of the Middle East by improvisation and not by planning with the result that there has been inconsistency instead of policy.
One day, Dr. Goldmann continued, the West would be too harsh and the next too soft, creating confusion and contributing to the deterioration of the overall situation. In his view, Dr. Goldmann said, the one way of approaching a solution of the Middle East problem was to evolve a long-range program based on agreement between East and West.
It is obvious today that Western hopes of keeping the Soviet bloc out of the Middle East have proved to be an illusion, he noted. In the last three years, the Soviet Union has entered the Middle East region on a large scale. While Arab nationalism could maneuver these two blocs, playing East against West and vice versa, the Arab chances of blackmailing everyone would mount.
Only an East-West agreement could curb the explosive character of Arab nationalism, evolving a policy of neutralizing the Middle East and keeping it outside any ideological or power or political blocs and eventually reaching an agreement for neutralization of the tremendous resources to everybody’s benefit, including those of the people of the region, Dr. Goldmann maintained. This would give the people of the region the benefit of aid from East and West in the constructive application of the great gains to be derived from its natural resources.
The simultaneous development of the national movements of both the Jewish and the Arab peoples was the basis of difficulties today, Dr. Goldmann stated. Yet both Zionism and Arab nationalism might one day “be a source of much additional strength for both national movements which are now adversaries.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
