Israel Premier Seeks U.S. Arms

Associated Press, Tel Aviv

Transcribed from the clipping

“TEL AVIV (AP) — Israeli Premier Levi Eshkol left for the United States today to ask President Johnson for U.S. arms to offset the ‘tremendous Soviet arms supplies to countries in the region’… In Beirut, meanwhile, the new head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Yahya Hammouda, was quoted as saying there was nothing to prevent Arabs from sharing a common future with Jews ‘who have given up Zionism and racism.’ ‘We must face facts and not ask for the impossible,’ Hammouda said in an interview with the newspaper Al Nahar. ‘It is stupid for us to ask the Israelis to return to their countries of origin.’ ‘We ask the Jews—all the Jews, even those who came to Palestine after 1948—do you really want peace and coexistence? Then git rid of zionism as a political and racist ideology and agree to live with the Arabs in an Arab-Jewish Palestinian state where each can have his share,’ Al Nahar quoted him as saying. It was the first time Hammouda had aired his views on the Arab-Israeli crisis since he replaced the firebrand Ahmed Shukairy as head of PLO last month. Hammouda was interviewed in Aamman, Jordan. If the Israelis refuse to give up Zionist principles, Hammouda said, then Palestinian Arabs should be allowed to return to parts of Palestine they inhabited before 1948, when Israel was created from that territory. ‘Otherwise it will be a constant struggle. The battle will be very harsh and long. We may lose it, but the Israelis will not win it.’”

Context added by this archive

The same wire story the News ran that morning, with five more paragraphs on the end. Here the phrase arrives attached to what it was attached to: an offer of one state shared by both peoples, an explicit refusal to demand that Israelis leave, and a warning. One American paper printed the accusation. This one printed the proposal. The paper’s own spellings, git and Aamman, and its lower-case zionism, are kept.

Cite this item

"Israel Premier Seeks U.S. Arms," Telegram & Gazette, 4 January 1968. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1968-003. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1968-003

Elsewhere in the archive

Palestinian Arabs Clash With PoliceTelegram & Gazette · 26 February 1957 · the same newspaper
No Travel Permits to U.N. ConferenceTelegram & Gazette · 10 July 1985 · the same newspaper
More than wordsTelegram & Gazette · 3 October 2010 · the same newspaper
Eshkol Flies to U.S. With Arms RequestThe News · 4 January 1968 · the same year
Genocide For Some Isn't For Some OthersIndianapolis Star · 22 February 1968 · the same year

This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American and Anglophone newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1812 to 2022. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.

The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the wire service that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary.

Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-1968-003.

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