Israel Will Develop Jordan River Project Despite Nasser’s the Eats

Mrs. Golda Meir, Israel’s Foreign Minister declared today that “no power can prevent our development of water resources or other projects and no factor can dictate what we can do within our country.”

Speaking during the debate in Knesset on the new Cabinet and government program, Mrs. Meir said that development of the country’s resources was an elementary right which Israel would execute “with all means at our disposal.”

Citing Arab opposition to Israel plans to divert Jordan River water to irrigate portions of the Negev, Mrs. Meir stressed that” what we are doing within our borders is our business.” She asserted that Israel’s water resources development “cannot depend on the whims of the Cairo dictator,” President Nasser of the United Arab Republic, who has declared the UAR will fight to prevent the irrigation project.

In what apparently was a warning to Western nations about renewed efforts to win President Nasser’s friendship, Mrs. Meir said that Israel welcomed “any steps toward peace but appeasement of aggressors is not a step toward peace.” She added that appeasement never paid and that it always ultimately hurt the appeaser.

Replying to critics of the government’s policies on the Arab refugees, Mrs. Meir insisted that “there is only one solution–settlement in the Arab countries.”

Asserting that the Arab refugee problem represented one of the simplest of all refugee problems to solve, she cited the similarity of language, customs and culture of the Palestinian Arabs with that of the neighboring Arab countries. She said “there is nothing to prevent the solution of the problem except the attitude of the Arab rulers who are indifferent to the fate of the refugees.”