Maj. Gen. Haim Laskov, Chief of Staff of the Israeli defense forces, said today in a newspaper interview that if the task of opening the Suez Canal to Israeli shipping were given to the Army, “it would be capable of dealing with it.”
The Israeli commander stressed, however, that the question was “a purely political issue.” He termed recent threats against Israel by President Nasser and War Minister Amer of the United Arab Republic as signs of weakness and fear. No Egyptian Army officer, he said, would have repeated those arrogant threats and he voiced certainty that Nasser himself did not believe them.
Dealing with Israel’s security situation. Maj. Gen. Laskov said that the Air Force had been strengthened and the new operational set-up of the armored corps had been completed. Infiltrators along Israel’s borders had been largely deterred, he said, by the effectiveness of the new “silent service”–a trained and alerted nucleus in every border settlement, ready for action within minutes of an alarm.
The Syrian border had been relatively quiet since last October, Gen Laskov asserted, after Israel had made it clear that the Syrians would be blasted out of their positions if there were further serious incidents.
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