President Ford was criticized in the Senate today for failing to acknowledge “secure, recognized and defensible” borders for the State of Israel in his State of the World address last week. In the House, the President was urged to “make it clear” that Israel will be effectively supported to defend herself.
Sen. Richard S. Schweiker (R.Pa.) declared “the President’s comments on the Middle East situation didn’t go far enough. We all want peace in the Middle East, but I was disturbed by the President’s failure to reaffirm this nation’s strong support for the Israeli State.” Schweiker added: “As a member of the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, I’m going to make certain there is no ’tilt’ toward the Arabs and the Administration would do well to follow suit.”
Schweiker also said he will oppose attempts to grant most favored nation trade treatment to the Soviet Union until the USSR lifts its emigration restrictions. “The President said detente is a two way street,” Schweiker said. “Well, if it is, the Soviets will have to make some concessions before they enjoy the benefits of free trade with the United States. And a number one concession as far as I’m concerned is the right of Soviet Jews to return to their homeland.”
NO EQUIVOCATION ABOUT ATTITUDE
In the House, Rep. Claude Pepper (D.Fla.) said “the United States must make it clear to the Arabs, the Russians and everybody that we will see to it that Israel is at all time effectively able to defend herself against any attack from her neighbors. Let there be no equivocation about our attitude and our determination to do that.”
Continuing, Pepper said: “If we will do that and continue to cooperate in a Geneva-type conference, I think in time this long conflict will be brought to an end and a new Israel can feel confident, as Prime Minister Rabin said it was determined to do, to live on that old land for another two thousand years.”
Pepper, who recently had a long interview with Rabin in Israel while there with a Congressional committee, said “I strongly entertain that Israel was right in not giving up the critical Sinai passes and oil fields in return for the vague generalizations offered by the Egyptians.”
He also said that Israeli Foreign Minister Yigal Allon, who meets in Washington next Monday with Secretary of State Henry A, Kissinger, emphasized that in the absence of nuclear weapons, defensible positions were never more essential in war than they are today, particularly in the Middle East.
“It is obvious,” Pepper told the House, “that Israel must be able to maintain defensible lines as long as there is a possibility of war and that she can only safely retreat from those lines when there has been an effective, binding, dependable, overall settlement of the dispute and a firm acceptance on the part of the Arab states of the right of Israel to exist as a free, independent and viable state with fairly defensible boundaries.”
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