In any settlement of the Suez Canal crisis, the Western Powers “must not forget the right of Israel and Israeli shipping,” Hugh Gaitskell, leader of the British Labor Party in Parliament, today urged in an address to the opening session of the annual Labor Party conference at Blackpool.
Aside from the blockade, Mr. Gaitskell said, Egyptian President Nasser and the other Arab leaders had “made it quite plain” that their aim was the “extermination of a neighboring state; Israel.” Mr. Gaitskell recalled that last year’s Labor Party meeting and unanimously favored an Anglo-Israel alliance and that the Labor Party was in the government when Britain signed the Tripartite Declaration of 1950.
Cecil Genese, a representative of the Poale Zion and a candidate for Parliament, made a powerful plea for defensive arms for Israel and for a guarantee of free passage of the Suez Canal for Israel shipping. Party chairman Edwin Gooch and James Callaghan and Sir Leslie Plummer, both MP’s, spoke in a pro-Israel vein.
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