While the official attitude of the Israel Government toward the United States announcement of an agreement to supply jet aircraft to Jordan has stressed the Government’s determination to continue its efforts to maintain an arms balance in the Middle East region, nongovernmental sources here are more outspoken. They warn that a new element of tension has been created in the area.
Reflecting this sentiment, the Jerusalem Post stated in a front-page editorial that tensions were due to grow “even if the planes are not yet due for delivery and their numbers are not very large; even if Jordan has no known, immediate plans for attaching Israel, and Israel has aerial defenses; and, as the Government emphasized, Israel will make sure that any imbalance that may be created will be rectified by a parallel stepping up of our own armaments. ” The editorial stressed that “any strengthening of any Arab war machine may become an additional incentive for an attack on Israel. “
“Even though Egypt, whose openly expressed threats against Jordan have not lessened lately, may already be crammed with Soviet war materiel, Jordanian pilots trained in the U. S. to use Starfighter planes could prove a very considerable increase of attacking strength in the event of an assault by Egypt. They would be the more dangerous as Jordan shares our longest border with us, its airfields are only a few minutes’ flight away from Tel Aviv, and there is no such cordon sanitaire between us and them as we possess in the empty Sinai desert which separates us from Egypt, ” the editorial pointed out.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
