Plain Talk

The Eisenhower Administration has proclaimed a policy of "impartial friendship" in the bitter, and sometimes bloody, quarrel between Israel and her Arab neighbors. Just how impartial that policy is, and how frank a friend can be, could be measured last week by a little-reported but significant statement of official U.S. attitudes. The statement came from Henry A. Byroade, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern, South Asian and African Affairs, and it had the prior approval of John Foster Dulles. Speaking in Ohio, before members of the Dayton World Affairs Council, West Pointer Byroade had some plain-spoken advice on the Middle East for both sides:

"To the Israelis I say that you should come to truly look upon yourselves as a Middle Eastern state, and see your own future in that context rather than as a headquarters--or nucleus so to speak--of worldwide groupings of peoples of a particular religious faith who must have special rights within and obligations to the Israeli state. You should drop the attitude of the conqueror and the conviction that force and a policy of retaliatory killings is the only policy that your neighbors will understand. You should make your deeds correspond to your frequent utterance of the desire for peace.

"To the Arabs I say you .should accept this state of Israel as an accomplished fact. I say further that you are deliberately attempting to maintain a state of affairs delicately suspended between peace and war, while at present desiring neither. This is a most dangerous policy, and one which world opinion will increasingly condemn, if you continue to resist any move to obtain at least a less dangerous modus vivendi with your neighbor."

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