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Rep. Ottinger Warns Administration’s Mideast Policy Encourages Arab Attack on Israel

February 24, 1970
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The Nixon Administration’s new Middle East policy would impose a settlement “that settles nothing except the Arabs’ right to attack Israel with impunity,” Rep. Richard L. Ottinger, New York Democrat charged here. Speaking at Congregation Agudas Achim, Rep. Ottinger also described that policy as one of seeking to avert a Soviet “monopoly of influence” among the Arab states which possess “most of the material resources that we and other great nations have always coveted in backward areas.” Rep. Ottinger declared that such a goal could be achieved only at the price of “the destruction of Israel and the extermination of its 2,500,000 Jewish citizens.” He also warned that “If Israel is forced once again, as in 1957, to surrender the fruits of a dearly-won victory, the Arabs will once again put off real peace negotiations, secure in the knowledge they have everything to gain and nothing to lose.”

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