104. Memorandum of a Telephone Conversation Between the Secretary of State and Senator William F. Knowland, Washington, February 16, 1957, 6:40 p.m.1
TELEPHONE CALL FROM SENATOR Knowland
Senator Knowland called and asked if any progress had been made on the Middle East situation, to which the Secretary replied he was afraid not. The Secretary asked if the Senator was familiar with the aide-mémoire (ours) and the Senator said Bob Hill had shown it to him. The Secretary said they came back with a pretty negative reaction and a multiplicity of conditions which would involve us in very detailed negotiations with them. The procedure was not at all workable which they had suggested.
[Page 188]The Secretary said that Eban would call again tomorrow at three o’clock. The Sec. said he believed that Eban seemed anxious personally to accept this arrangement but it was Mrs. Meir who was pretty adamant and that Ben Gurion was behind her. Eban has not yet heard from Tel Aviv.
The Secretary said if we could not get the Israelis out of Egypt the Russians would get them out and in the process we would lose the whole of the Middle East.
The Senator asked about sanctions. The Secretary said he did not believe this would come up before Monday but that if things remained in their present state he thought probably we would go along with them, to which Knowland replied he would be very sorry to see that. The Secretary said he would too but some way we would have to get the Israelis out. The Sec. did not think we could have all our policies made in Jerusalem. The Senator agreed but he said that the matter of sanctions was pretty serious when we applied it to one country and not to another. The Secretary said there was a little glimmer of hope left.
The Senator asked when the bridge would be crossed finally on sanctions. The Sec. said he thought it was crossed now in the sense that unless the Israelis go we would probably go along with sanctions. This was the conclusion the President came to today. The Senator said he would like to know the timing. He had gone along as far as he could and this would mean the parting of the ways. He would want to send in his resignation before the delegation voted on sanctions.2 The Secretary asked the Senator to weigh this. The Sec. thought it the right thing and reiterated we stood to lose the entire Middle East. He did not see how we could have any influence with the Arab countries if we could not get the Israelis out of Egypt. If we could not get the Israelis out the Russians would and that [would] mean the loss of the Middle East and probable general war.3 We have tried everything short of sanctions.
Knowland said he hoped it worked out in some way. He would like to know in advance the outcome. The Secretary concluded we would probably not have to make a final decision until the middle of next week.
- Source: Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, General Telephone Conversations. Dulles was at his home in Northwest Washington. Transcribed by Asbjornson.↩
- Knowland had been serving as a representative on the U.S. Delegation to the 11th Session of the U.N. General Assembly.↩
- This sentence appears in the source text as a handwritten insertion by Dulles.↩