MIDDLE EAST: Pressures

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Pressures Across 5,600 miles, the world's most powerful nation and one of the smallest engaged in a testing of pressure. The contest was more equal than any comparative statistics of wealth or population would suggest; even the outcome of the contest for world favor, between a nation that had committed aggression and one that was asking it to desist, was not foregone conclusion.

Having six times defied U.N. orders to get out of Egypt, the tiny (pop. 1.8 million), nine-year-old republic of Israel heard the fateful warning of the President of the U.S.: comply or face the pressure that every headline named as sanctions. "Don't surrender," cried voices in the crowd as white-haired old (70) Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, looking grim and tight-lipped after a hectic day of Cabinet huddles, made his way into Israel's Parliament.

Stronger Compulsion. "Any attempt to compel us to accept a miscarriage of justice and a system of discrimination," rasped Israel's shock-haired lawgiver, "will meet with our unflinching opposition." President Eisenhower's first message, said B-G, "placed me under great moral pressure, for I was keenly conscious of the personality and the standing of the writer. And if I was compelled to reply as I did, I did so only under a still stronger compulsion: the pressure of my conscience as a man and a Jew, the pressure of the justice for which my people were fighting . . . the crushing historic responsibility that rests on the representatives of this small nation in its hard and bitter struggle for survival against the many who seek to destroy it."

Ben-Gurion's speech was a no to President Eisenhower, but not a final no.

Israel's government, Ben-Gurion said, welcomed Washington's willingness to dispatch U.S. ships through the Gulf of Aqaba to establish the right of "innocent passage," but did not consider this sufficient protection against subsequent Egyptian interference with Israel's ships—"as she openly proclaims her intention to do." For this reason, Israel would withdraw from Aqaba only if replaced by U.N. Emergency Force troops that would remain along the Gulf's shores until "peace is concluded with Egypt or until some other reliable and effective arrangement is made to this end." As for the Gaza Strip, Ben-Gurion, in an otherwise unyielding speech, appeared to have dropped his demand that Israel administer Gaza; Israel's main concern was that the Egyptians should not be allowed back "directly or indirectly."

The Threats. Behind Ben-Gurion's defiant position stood the will of a tough and self-righteous people. They knew that they might suffer further economic distress by their defiance. It came as no surprise to them when next day, on behalf of six Asian-African nations, Lebanon's Charles Malik introduced the long-delayed U.N. resolution calling on all states "to deny all military, economic or financial assistance" to Israel. Yet for all the Arab hostility to Israel, and all the influence the U.S. can bring to bear, few in the U.N. really wanted to see the resolution come to a vote.