Banker Predicts Western Nations Will Put Severe Pressure on Israel to Surrender Territory

An international banker who once served in the State Department predicted today that Western industrial nations would put severe pressure on Israel to give up most if not all of its conquered Arab territories but would draw the line if Israel’s survival as a nation was at stake.

That view of how important Western interests regard Israel’s struggle to survive against the influence of the Arab oil producers was presented to correspondents here by Nathaniel Samuel, a partner in the New York banking house of Kuhn Loeb & Co. and head of two other corporations engaged in international commerce.

Samuel, who served as Deputy Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs in 1969-72 during tenure of Secretary of State William P. Rogers, admitted to wishful thinking when it came to ultimate Western support for Israel’s survival. Nevertheless, he felt that the “revulsion” should Israel be destroyed, would be too much for the Western nations to take.

Asked what the industrial world would do if the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) says it, will re-impose the oil embargo unless Israel gives up all of the territory in took in 1967, Samuel replied that the industrial nations already are “trying to persuade” Israel “to give up most if not all of the territory.” He said Israel “has come pretty. far” in that direction since a year ago “but not as far as some would like.” He said the “tremendous danger” would be when the survival of Israel as a political entity becomes at stake.

U.S. MILITARY ACTION UNLIKELY

“If that were the issue, they (the United States and Europe) would, stand up for Israel and the (oil) producer countries would have overshot their mark,” Samuel said. He did not “foresee military action” by the U.S. if another Israeli-Arab war broke out. “How that would involve other countries one can’t tell,” he said, adding that “some of the more far-seeing Arabs recognize the difficulty of pushing Israel too far.” The European countries, he observed, are leaving the defense of Israel to the U.S.

Samuel acknowledged that he was volunteering his “subjective thinking” about Israel when he said that “a good part of the Western World would not take the shock of seeing Israel destroyed.” When asked by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency to resolve that belief with the overwhelming Western support of the PLO resolution, in the United Nations General Assembly Monday, Samuel said the vote was “not representative of deep anti-Israel feeling by all who backed it.”

He said that while, for example, France has pursued a pro-Arab policy, “on the question of the viability and perpetuation of Israel as a State it holds a very strong view.” He observed that Israel’s disappearance “is something they don’t think will happen…the revulsion would be too great.”