Members of Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion’s “inner cabinet” held a three-hour conference this weekend with heads of Israel’s armed forces, discussing the implications of the Syrian coup d’etat, coming on the heels of a turnover in the Iraqi government at Baghdad a month ago, according to a Tel Aviv dispatch to the Sunday Observer here today.
Israel, the dispatch stated, believes Jordan may be next on the list of Arab governmental turn-overs, and fears that an expansion of the Damascus-Baghdad bloc in the East may combine with an Egyptian drive from the West to revive the anti-Israel “siege mentality. ” The newspaper’s Beirut correspondent cabled today that Israel may now be “confronted by a more closely knit Arab world. ” The Sunday Observer’s Cairo correspondent reported that Al Gumhoria, a newspaper close to the Nasser regime, has declared: “The Syrian revolution has completed a circle to blockade reactionary bases in Jordan and Saudi Arabia and the imperialist base in Israel.”
Egypt’s dictator president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, has already recognized the new Syrian Government which is headed by Salah Bitar as Premier. The latter is reported having said he is more worried about Israel and Western policies in the Arab world than about Communism. Bitar is considered pro-Nasser.
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