Israel Official Declares Oil Firms Yielded to Arab Threats

An Israel Government official charged today that the British Petroleum Corporation and the Shell Oil Company, which recently announced plans to halt sales operations in Israel, had “surrendered to economic aggression,” and that the British Government was a party to the action.

Moshe Bartur, director of the economic division of the Israel Foreign Ministry, told the Israel-British Chamber of Commerce “the Israel Government believes that whoever surrenders to economic aggression associates himself willingly or unwillingly with aggressors and aggression.”

He declared that just as no government would permit its citizens to carry out a hostile act against a friendly nation, no government should allow acts of economic aggression to take place within its own territory. He said this was particularly true when such acts involved prevention of regular trade and shipment of legitimate supplies, especially when so vital a commodity as fuel was involved.

Declaring that the action of the two oil firms was partly in response to Arab boycott demands, Mr. Bartur asserted that the British Government could not “wash its hands” of the matter. He noted that the British Government was a majority stockholder in British Petroleum.

Such actions by the British, he said, might endanger and even cost England her position in the Middle East which “can best be protected by Israel.” He added that he believed Britain would eventually discontinue its “policy of appeasement” of Arab “blackmail.”

Mr. Bartur predicted that Israel would emerge unhurt from the oil firm withdrawal, adding that except for a “small number of successes,” the Arab boycott has failed. Israel, he said, was continuously increasing her foreign trade but “cannot and will not remain silent in view of such actions as were taken by the British companies.”