The call for Arab-Israeli peace negotiations, issued by Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba, was “a breakthrough, through the walls of hatred” surrounding Israel, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol declared last night. He spoke at a May First rally, as Israel celebrated the international Socialist holiday. Some of the events were being held today, due to the fact that May 1 this year was on the Sabbath.
Mr. Eshkol spoke at a rally at Petach Tikvah, where he declared that Israel’s real solution to the dangers facing her lies not in proposals coming from outside but in doubling the country’s population and rehabilitation of the country’s wastelands with scores of new settlements. He called on the labor parties and their settlement movements to make utmost efforts to help achieve such solutions. He also expressed the hope that Mapai’s alignment with Achdut Avodah would “soon become genuine unification.”
Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin, in a May Day article in the military organ, Bamachneh, stated today that Israel has the power to upset any time-table for conflict by the Arab states in general, and by Egypt’s Nasser in particular. He said that Israeli military action to prevent Arab water diversion schemes would not necessarily entail war with the Arabs.
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