Premier Golda Meir suggested today that the world could solve its energy crisis by the use of fuels other than oil, particularly coal, which she said was available in almost unlimited reserves. Mrs. Meir addressed the meeting of the Zionist General Council (Actions Committee) here.
Speaking as the leader of a have-not nation with respect to oil, Mrs. Meir said "I hope and believe that the powers and large states will not joyfully bring upon themselves the dictatorship of oil. The problems can be solved differently without knuckling under to the Arab oil states," she said. Half jestingly, Mrs. Meir observed that most of the world’s oil was "in the wrong places." She said that "Moses led the Israelites through the desert for 40 years and ended in the one place in the Middle East with no oil."
FIGURES FOR WESTERN ALIYA ‘DREADFUL’
Premier Meir said, in reply to questions, that she agreed with Defense Minister Moshe Dayan’s statement that Jews should have the right to settle anywhere in the administered Arab territories. However, she added, this did not mean that Israel would never withdraw from some of the areas. She said that as far as she knew, that was Dayan’s view as well. She noted that her government "wisely refrained" from drawing maps.
Asked by a Herut member whether a massive wave of immigration would not serve to balance the large Arab minority and thereby enable Israel to retain the administered territories without fear of being swamped by the higher Arab birth rate, Mrs. Meir said she agreed in principle. But she added that current immigration figures held out no prospect of massive aliya, especially from the West. Mrs. Meir called the figures for Western aliya "dreadful" and said that if Israel were not in a state of war the government would send several thousand of its finest youth to the "aliya front" abroad to persuade Jewish youth to settle in Israel.
Mrs. Meir made an impassioned plea for more Jewish education abroad. She said she was deeply concerned over the fact that during the period of the Jewish State’s existence, the size of the Jewish people was diminishing through assimilation and inter-marriage.
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