The return of Egypt to the Gaza Strip is “definitely a serious threat to peace,” said Israel’s Foreign Minister Golda Meir in a BBC radio interview for British listeners this weekend. She placed responsibility for this development on “those at the United Nations who were to implement policies–and that happens to be Mr. Hammarskjold.” Mrs. Meir expressed the opinion that UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold and United States Secretary of State John Foster Dulles “may be in agreement on the legal side of the question of Egypt’s rights in Gaza” but differ on “what Egypt’s de facto status in Gaza should be.”
The Israel Foreign Minister criticized Britain’s Foreign Minister Selwyn Lloyd for suggesting a “frontier compromise” to Israel. “There is no reason in the world,” she declared, “why Israel should give up one little piece of our sand in the Negev or one rock in Galilee. We don’t think it is just, we have no intention whatever to compromise on our area– we haven’t too much to give away.”
As for stationing the United Nations Emergency Force on Israel’s side of the frontier, she affirmed that her country will never agree to such a move. “As long as Egypt claims ‘rights of belligerence’,” she declared, “the same things, the same attacks would go on happening as they did when UN observers were on the border.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
