THE PRESIDENCY: What I'm Going To Do

• Share

THE PRESIDENCY 'What I'm Going to Do' Into the vortex of the Israel crisis flew the President of the U.S., his forehead deeply furrowed, his mood somber as he alighted from an Air Force Constellation at Washington National Airport in a cold and soaking rain. "This is some weather," he growled to his military and naval aides, hankering back to the vacation he had just cut short in sunny Thomasville, Ga. As he sped off downtown to the White House, Ike huddled down into his tan raincoat, reached often into his left coat pocket for a handkerchief, breaking out every now and then into a hacking cough.

The Middle East situation, explained an Administration spokesman, was "very serious." Around Ike as he got down to talks with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Ambassador to the United Nations Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. the pressures of Israel v. the Arabs were piling up menacingly. On Israel's behalf, public pressures were spreading through Congress all the way up through Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson and Minority Leader William Fife Knowland to the White House door. Ike had come back from Georgia to press his step-by-step program. His next move: talk it out with top Senators and Representatives in secret session beginning the next day at 8:30 a.m.

Fears of Guerrillas. Around the polished brown mahogany table in the White House Cabinet room the congressional leaders gathered—Senators seated up front with Ike, Dulles. Lodge and Nixon, Representatives seated against the walls. A Filipino mess steward served coffee. (Ike drank Sanka.) Through the long French windows a light snow could be seen covering the rose garden as the President began to speak: "Here is the situation and what I'm going to do about it."

The situation was that Israel was refusing to get out of the last of its conquered territory (the Gaza Strip, the Gulf of Aqaba shore) without specific guarantees, and that the Arab-Asians were demanding U.N. sanctions.*If Israel did not withdraw, said Ike, there would almost surely be a new guerrilla war that might stoke up a general war, in which the Russians might once more be tempted to intervene. If the Israelis did not withdraw and the U.N. did not act, the U.N. would be more or less through. As for the Arabs, Ike pointed out that they could scarcely be expected to negotiate with the Israelis while Israel has "a foot in their face." As for himself, he added that it was impossible to negotiate or compromise "with a country while it has its troops in the territory of another." ' Hopes for Unanimity. If the U.S. did not take a firm stand for principle, the U.S. would lose its friends and its ability to influence events in the Middle East, Ike said, and he intended to take just such a stand. Then, his voice rasped by his brief speech, Ike waved toward Dulles: "You take over, Foster."

Secretary Dulles, occasionally badgered and prodded by Lyndon Johnson and others, tried to explain away congressional and public concern that the U.S. had not talked sanctions when the Russians defied the U.N. in Hungary. It had long been implied, he said, that if sanctions were ever applied either to the U.S. or Russia the U.N. probably would break up and there might be war. Anyway, the U.S. already was applying a kind of sanction to Russia by limiting trade with Communist nations.