If infiltrators attack Israel again “we will hit back,” Gen. Yaacov Dori, first Chief of Staff of Israel’s Army and its commander during the War of Liberation, declared here today. Gen. Dori, who is now president of the Israel Institute of Technology at Haifa, is currently in Britain to raise 200,000 pounds for a program of graduate education at the Technion of nuclear scientists.
Gen. Dori told a press conference that he was speaking strictly as a private person. The danger of war, he continued, is a permanent concern to the Israelis. Israel is a victim of guerrilla warfare, he stressed.
People outside the country could speak lightly of “border incidents.” Gen. Dori noted, but for the Israelis it was a matter of nightly terror by organized and systematically dispatched gangs. Nobody could expect Israel to live under such continual moral and physical stain, he said, and the so called reprisal actions were the only methods of self-defense open to Israel.
This was the only method open to Israel short of peace, he said. He added that it was his belief that the United Nations, supported by the great powers, could bring peace to the area.
Turning to Israel’s power needs, he said that the energy which atomic fuel could give Israel was extremely important because Israel’s natural resources were limited. He estimated that within ten years Israel would be using power derived from atomic sources.
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