The U.S. Government has no intention of giving Israel arms at this time, or of asking Congress for stand by power in case of a Middle East war, George V. Allen, Assistant Secretary of State, today told the House Foreign Affairs Committee during a hearing on the Middle East aid program.
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles said today that America’s attitude toward resumption of work by Israel on the Bnot Yaacov water project at the Syrian frontier, was still juridically the same as when the work was interrupted by the United Nations as a truce violation on the recommendation of former truce chief Vagn Bennike.
(The Syrian Government announced today after a conference between UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold and Premier Said Ghazzi that Syria had agreed to a ceasefire, but only if Israel pledged to respect Security Council resolutions. This apparently referred to the Council’s call to Israel not to proceed with its plan to divert the waters of the Jordan River for irrigation projects.)
Commenting on the Soviet policy statement last week, Mr. Lulles said, he had read the “fine print” and that his impression was about the same as he expressed last week. He said the statement seemed to fit in with President Eisenhower’s call for UN members to support the Hammarskjold mission and the handling of the Arab-Israel issue through the United Nations. He expressed hope that the Soviet would cooperate on this with the UN and avoid abuse of its veto power in the Security Council. That, he said, would represent a step in the right direction.
State Department circles are questioning claims by Israel that it cannot buy defensive arms from other Western nations until the United States agrees to sell such arms. These circles hinted today that Israel may have obtained a significant quantity of jet planes, tanks, and artillery of various types from “Western sources” since the flow of Russian arms to Egypt began. The State Department is checking through its embassies abroad to determine exactly what arms are being sold to Israel.
Diplomatic sources predict that Israel will continue and even intensify its attempts to buy arms in view of a possible UN move to freeze Middle East arms at present levels. Such a freeze would leave Egypt far ahead, especially in jet airpower.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
