An American journalist reported from Cairo today that the fall of Egyptian President Nasser was considered a virtual certainty and that it would take only a heavy Israeli military blow to bring it about.
According to Scripps-Howard correspondent Richard Starnes, Americans and Europeans in Cairo have concluded that “there is little question whether Mr. Nasser will go–only when and by whom pushed.” Mr. Starnes said, in a dispatch to the Washington Daily News, that one Cairo source forecast that Israel would take Port Said if guerrilla harassment continues and “when they do it will be the end of Nasser.”
But, Mr. Starnes continued, there are “some thoughtful people in Cairo who are beginning to question a basic assumption that Nasser’s downfall is a prime objective of Israeli policy.” The Israelis are concerned that an alternative to Nasser, backed by the Egyptian Army, might be tougher and might carry on the war even more vigorously than Nasser. Mr. Starnes wrote.
There is a belief in Cairo that President Nasser yielded reluctantly to Army pressure to permit limited artillery duels across the Suez Canal and that Israel “is happy to reply in the same limited coin.” Mr. Starnes quoted an American resident of Cairo as saying that the Israelis were careful “to do just enough damage to Nasser’s Suez refineries to close it down without doing any really irreparable harm.”
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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.
