Israel Ambassador Eliahu Elath tonight welcomed the British Government’s offer of its good offices to improve the Middle East situation, but pointedly noted that the Western Powers have left Israel isolated among its hostile neighbors while at the same time concluding treaties with these neighbors and supplying them with arms.
Speaking at a dinner of the Anglo-Israel Association at which British Defense Minister Harold MacMillan was present, Ambassador Elath pointed out that Israel’s anxieties over the current situation could not be dismissed as “unfounded or even exaggerated” because the “balance of power in the Middle East is being tilted against us.”
Israel does not doubt the good faith of the signatories of the Tripartite Declaration of 1950, the Ambassador said, but he stressed:
“Let us not for one moment forget that the Declaration gives no assurance, direct or indirect, of automatic support of Israel if she is attacked. All it actually provides for is ‘consultations’ and unfortunately our experiences in 1948 taught us that consultations of this kind often mean that action, if it comes at all, comes ‘too little and too late.
“Some of the Arab states have guarantees incorporated into their treaties with this country and all of them are bound to one another by a mutual defense pact… Israel is thus alone in a highly bellicose environment–entirely isolated and left to its own devices, “the Ambassador declared.
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