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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1995, Pages 36-38

Middle East History—It Happened In January

Israel Seeks "Neutrality" Between U.S., Soviet Union

By Donald Neff

It was 46 years ago, on Jan. 13, 1949, that The New York Times reported Israel sought to steer a neutral course between the United States and the Soviet Union. Correspondent Anne O'Hare McCormick reported from Jerusalem that "It is true that Israel cherishes the ideal of remaining 'neutral' between the United States and the Soviet Union, constantly referred to as 'our two powerful friends...'" 1

The policy's name in Hebrew was ee-hizdahut, "non-identification." Although the Cold War was in full force at the time, Israel hoped to remain friendly with both superpowers because both had assets that Israel needed—money, people and weapons. Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett said: "Israel will in no case become identified with one of the great blocs of the world as against the other."2

This was not good news for the U.S. and its allies. Although Israel by itself was not a significant military factor in the Cold War, its willingness to equate the Soviet Union as the moral equivalent of the United States was a disturbing message to Western Cold Warriors. Their primary concern at the time was to keep the Soviet Union out of the Middle East, which had been a Western preserve since World War I.

Yet Israel had compelling reasons to embrace the Eastern bloc, as David Ben- Gurion made clear when he formed his first government on March 10, 1949. He informed Israel's legislature that his government would pursue "a foreign policy aimed at achieving friendship and cooperation with the United States and the Soviet Union."3 He added that the Soviet Union was a "great and growing world power, controlling a number of states not hostile to us...and in it and its satellites lives the second part of the Jewish people."4

That was one of the cores of the matter for Israel—some two million Jews living in the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe. In the first three years after World War II the Soviet Union allowed 200,000 Jews who had fled Poland for safety in the Soviet Union to emigrate to the West and Palestine.5

Israel's interests in the United States were similarly compelling. The United States had the wealth and a generous Jewish community to help finance the fledgling state. Israel's total exports in 1949 were only $40 million, whereas contributions from Jewish Americans accounted for $100 million.6

But of more immediate importance were weapons. And it was here that the Soviet Union played a paramount role at this time. Moscow had allowed Czechoslovakia to become Israel's major arms supplier in 1948. In that capacity, Czechoslovakia had provided Israel with all the Messerschmitts and Spitfires that formed its new air force, as well as other weapons and the training of 5,000 of its military personnel by the fall of 1948. And it remained Israel's major arms supplier in 1949.7

The significance of the Czech connection to Israel rested on the fact that the U.S. had imposed an arms embargo on the area in 1947. Despite unrelenting pressure from Israel's supporters, the Truman administration continued to observe the embargo in 1949, as did subsequent administrations for more than a decade.

Keeping Russia out of the Middle East was one of Washington's major goals.

The steadfastness of the Truman administration on the arms issue had less to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict than with the Soviet Union. Keeping Russia out of the Middle East was one of Washington's major goals. Before the Palestine problem grew acute after the end of World War II, the Middle East had been "virtually clean" of Soviet influence, in the words of one British general. But since then it had made some modest gains in Israel because of Moscow's support of partition, its quick recognition of the Jewish state, its decision to allow Jews to emigrate to Israel and its secret supply to Israel of weapons via Czechoslovakia during the fighting.8

A mid-1948 report to Secretary of State George C. Marshall from Ambassador to the United Nations Philip C. Jessup observed: "...it is not apparent that communism has any substantial following among the [Arab] masses. On the other hand, there are apparently a substantial number of Communists in the Irgun, the Stern Gang and other dissident [Jewish terrorist] groups. Beyond that, the Soviet Union, through its support of partition and prompt recognition of Israel, must be considered as having a substantial influence with the PGI [Provisional Government of Israel]. The communist influence is, of course, capable of substantial expansion through whatever diplomatic and other missions the Soviet Government may establish in Israel."9

Forced to Choose Sides

In the end, the pressures of the Cold War and the eruption of fighting in Korea forced Israel to choose sides in the early 1950s, a decision that was facilitated by France's decision to replace the Soviet Union as Israel's secret supplier of weapons.10 Although France had joined with Britain and the United States on May 5, 1950 in the Tripartite Declaration expressing "their opposition to the development of an arms race between the Arab states and Israel" and thereby imposing an arms embargo on the region, France quickly broke the pact.

The reason was that France saw Israel as a natural ally against Arab nationalists opposed to its Algerian policy. By the beginning of 1955, shortly after the Algerian rebellion erupted into open warfare, French arms sales to Israel increased dramatically and included such major items as jet warplanes, battle tanks and heavy artillery.11

Israel employed its new strength against Egypt in a series of raids starting on Feb. 28, 1955 in the Gaza Strip against an Egyptian military outpost. Thirty-six Egyptian soldiers and two civilians were killed, making it the largest incident between Egypt and Israel since the 1948 war. The high death toll sent such a shock through Egypt that Gamal Abdul Nasser, the young colonel who had taken power in 1952, was forced into a desperate search for an arms source of his own.12

With America, Britain and France officially pledged to an arms embargo and other European nations refusing to deal with Egypt, Nasser had only one source to go to. On Sept. 27, 1955, he announced to a stunned world that Czechoslovakia had agreed to provide Egypt with major weapons systems, including bombers, jet warplanes, tanks and artillery. Instantly, Nasser became a hero throughout the Arab world—and so too did the Soviet Union, the nation everybody knew was behind the deal.

The sudden success of the Soviet Union in gaining entrance into the region caused Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to complain that "we are in the present jam because the past Administration had always dealt with the area from a political standpoint and had tried to meet the wishes of the Zionists in this country and that had created a basic antagonism with the Arabs. That was what the Russians were now capitalizing on."13

Despite nearly a decade of effort by Washington and London to keep Moscow out of the region, the Czech arms deal marked the Soviet Union's emergence as a full-blown major player. Henceforth Cold War rivalry would pit Washington and Moscow on opposite sides, confusing what at heart remained the Palestinian-Israeli conflict with what increasingly came to be perceived as the Arab-Israeli conflict.

For Israel, the Czech arms deal marked the moment it decided to provoke a war with Egypt, which it successfully did the next year in secret collusion with Britain and France.14

Aside from contributing to Israel's decision to go to war, the Czech arms deal made a Cold War-motivated arms race inevitable in the region.

Nonetheless, with Israel secretly receiving weapons from France, the United States continued over the next seven years its embargo on arms sales. As late as Feb. 17, 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower declared that the U.S. had no intention of becoming a major arms supplier to the Middle East, saying: "The United States, as a matter of policy, has never been a major supplier of arms for Israel and doesn't intend to be, nor to any other country in the area."15

Two years later, President John F. Kennedy breached this traditional policy for the first time since Israel's existence and opened the floodgates to what eventually became the greatest transfer of weapons in history by the U.S.S.R. and the United States. It began on Sept. 26, 1962, with the State Department announcing the sale of an unspecified number of Hawk antiaircraft missiles to Israel. Considerable emphasis was placed on the fact that these were defensive weapons.16

The fact was this was Israel's greatest achievement in its relations with the United States up to this time. It had finally convinced Washington to sell it American weapons, the most advanced in the world. There was little doubt that the dam, once breached, would unleash more weapons. Indeed, before the decade was out Israel had received the latest in American warplanes and other offensive weapons. From that point on, Israel, with increasing success, sought to define the conflict in Cold War terms: Israel and the United States against the Arabs and the Soviet Union. Long forgotten was Israel's early efforts to be friends to both sides of the Cold War.

The evolution of U.S. arms policy reached a culmination in 1982 when President Reagan declared on Feb. 22 that his administration would maintain Israel's "qualitative edge" over the military power of all other countries in the Middle East.17 The commitment has been repeated by every president since then, and echoed in national political platforms. From Truman to Reagan, the trajectory of U.S. policy had gone from one of neutrality to commitment to assure Israel's military dominance of the region, a position President Clinton has strongly endorsed.

RECOMMENDED READING:

Ben-Gurion, David, Israel: A Personal History, New York, Funk & Wagnalls, Inc., 1971.

Bialer, Uri, Between East and West, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Brecher, Michael, Decisions in Israel's Foreign Policy, London, Oxford University Press, 1974.

Burns, Lt. Gen. E. L. M., Between Arab and Israeli, New York, Ivan Obolensky, 1962.

*Cockburn, Andrew and Leslie, Dangerous Liaison: The Inside Story of the U.S.-Israeli Covert Relationship, New York, Harper Collins Publishers, 1991.

Lilienthal, Alfred M., The Zionist Connection: What Price Peace?, New York, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1978.

Louis, William Roger, The British Empire in the Middle East 1945-1951, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1988.

Morris, Benny, The Birth of the Palestine Refugee Problem, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1987.

—————, Israel's Border Wars: 1949-1956, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993.

*Neff, Donald, Warriors at Suez: Eisenhower Takes America into the Middle East, Brattleboro, VT, Amana Books, 1988.

O'Brien, Conor Cruise, The Siege: The Saga of Israel and Zionism, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1986.

*Raviv, Dan and Yossi Melman, Every Spy a Prince: The Complete History of Israel's Intelligence Community, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990.

Schiff, Ze'ev, A History of the Israeli Army (1870-1974), San Francisco, Straight Arrow Books, 1974.

U.S. Department of State, American Foreign Policy, 1950-1955: Basic Documents (vol. 2), Washington, DC, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1957.

———————, American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1960, Washington, DC, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964.

———————, Foreign Relations of the United States 1948 (vol. V), The Near East, South Asia, and Africa, Washington, DC, U.S. Printing Office, 1975.

———————, Foreign Relations of the United States 1955-1957 (vol. XIV), Arab-Israeli Dispute 1955, Washington, DC, U.S. Printing Office, 1989.

NOTES:

1 Anne O'Hare McCormick, New York Times, 1/14/49. Also see Ben-Gurion, Israel, p. 339; Bialer, Between East and West, p. 213; Brecher, Decisions in Israel's Foreign Policy, p. 166; Cockburn, Dangerous Liaison, p. 21; O'Brien, The Siege, pp. 370-71.

2 O'Brien, The Siege , p. 370.

3 Ben-Gurion, Israel, p. 33.

4 Bialer, Between East and West, p. 15.

5 Cockburn, Dangerous Liaison, p. 22.

6 Ibid., pp. 29-30.

7 Ibid., p. 21.

8 FRUS 1948, "The Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Douglas) to the Acting Secretary of State," Top Secret, London, Oct. 29, 1948, 7 p.m., p. 1531.

9 FRUS 1948, "The Acting United States Representative at the United Nations (Jessup) to the Secretary of State," Top Secret, Priority, New York, July 1, 1948, 4:16 p.m., p. 1182.

10 Brecher, Decisions in Israel's Foreign Policy, p. 166; O'Brien, The Siege, p. 371. The actual breakthrough was reported to have come in May 1951 with a secret agreement between the intelligence services of the two countries, the Mossad and CIA; see Cockburn, Dangerous Liaison, p. 49; Raviv and Melman, Every Spy a Prince, p. 76.

11 Neff, Warriors at Suez, pp. 162-63.

12 Burns, Between Arab and Israeli, pp. 18, 99-101.

13 FRUS 1955-1957, "Memorandum of Conversation with the Secretary of State," Washington, Oct. 18, 1955, p. 612.

14 Morris, Israel's Border Wars, p. 364.

15 U.S. State Department, American Foreign Policy 1960, "Reply Made by the President (Eisenhower) to a Question Asked at a News Conference, Feb. 17, 1960 (Excerpt)," p. 497.

16 Max Frankel, New York Times, Sept. 27, 1962; Schiff, A History of the Israeli Army (1970-1974), pp. 257-59.

17 Weekly Compilation of Presidential Decuments, Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, Feb. 22, 1982.

*Available through the AET Book Club.

Donald Neff is author of the Warriors trilogy on U.S.-Middle East relations and of the unpublished Middle East Handbook, a chronological data bank of significant events affecting U.S. policy and the Middle East on which this article is based. His books are available through the AET Book Club.