Israel Parliament Hits U.s., Britain for Supplying Arms to Arabs

The Israel Parliament, winding up a foreign policy debate which extended over three days, expressed today its “deep concern” over the American and British policies of supplying arms to the Arab states while the latter persisted in their threats to Israel’s very existence.

In a resolution offered by the coalition government, and adopted 54 to nine with seven abstentions, the Parliament asserted that Israel would not be reconciled to such a policy. The Parliament stressed its support of government measures designed to prevent the Western Powers from giving the Arabs arms supplies which would upset the existing balance of power in the Middle East, and lead to the undermining of regional security. The resolution also reaffirmed Israel’s trust that the Jews throughout the world will stand by Israel in the struggle which is being forced on it, and that the Jewish people will help supply Israel with the means to bolster its defenses.

Concluding the debate, Premier and Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett warned that neither seucrity nor peace were possible in the Middle East without Israel, or at Israel’s expense. He told the Western Powers that any structure which they set up in the Middle East without Israel’s participation, a structure which must by its very nature serve as a base for aggression against Israel, cannot endure.

Mr. Sharett refused to listen to leftist critics of the government, who had urged Israel to abandon its Western orientation. Israel, he said, is interested in friendship with the Soviet Union, but friendship must be mutual. As long as the USSR does not choose to extend this friendship and maintains a restrained policy toward Israel – millions of Soviet Jews are unable to maintain ties with their co-religionists-Israel’s policy will remain as restrained, the Premier noted.

Noting that Egyptian Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser had asked the United States not to condition its aid to Egypt on the latter’s attitude toward Israel, and that Egypt would solve that problem itself, Mr. Sharett said that if, by a solution, Col. Nasser meant a “new adventure against us by renewed aggression, then we are prepared to meet it; if this means by a direct settlement with us and peace, then we are prepared to meet her.” He warned the Arab states not to let any new arms supplies go to their heads, and to remember their “recent misadventure” before they again turn to aggression.

(Reports in Washington today revealed that formal negotiations on American economic aid to Egypt had opened in Cairo last night. The same dispatches said that the informal talks between U.S. and Egypt on American military assistance to the Arab state were continuing, but had run into Egyptian objections.)