Javits: Pending Senate Resolution Aid to Negotiated Mideast Peace

Sen. Jacob K. Javits (R., N.Y.) declared today that the resolution pending in the Senate which calls on the American government to supply Israel with Phantom planes it has requested will help the Nixon administration’s policy for a negotiated peace in the Middle East. The resolution, which was introduced in the Senate last Friday by 78 Senators, “will help to make it clear that there can be no dreams of a quick or easy military thrust against Israel as a substitute for good faith negotiations.” Javits stated.

In a speech at the Fordham Law Forum of the Fordham Law School, the New York Republican observed that “if Israel is assured of the military assistance it needs to maintain its deterrent strength, and feels secure against the Arab-Soviet threat. Israel is more likely to be in a position a mood to negotiate with flexibility.” Javits interpreted last Thursday’s comment by Secretary of State William P. Rogers that it was now necessary to review carefully the military situation in the Middle East as meaning that he is now “thinking along the same lines as we are in the Senate.” Javits said that this is most significant and heartening.

Javits, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee where the resolution is presently awaiting approval, praised the “active diplomatic policy of negotiations” that President Nixon and Rogers are “pursuing.” But he cautioned that this policy “cannot succeed if the Soviet leaders come to believe that the US will retire from the field and leave an open path for Soviet adventurism in the Middle East. In such circumstances” he added, “the only diplomacy which could succeed would be a diplomacy of appeasement in the Mideast such as occurred in Munich in 1938. There is a determination in the Senate and in the nation that this should not happen,” he said.