Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, Arab-Israeli Dispute, 1957, Volume XVII

195. Memorandum by the Representative at the United Nations (Lodge)¹

New York, March 7, 1957.

NOTES ON STATEMENTS MADE BY SECRETARY DULLES TO AMBASSADOR LODGE, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 1957²

There was an understanding that if the situation deteriorated, Israel would excercise its rights. No agreement was reached as to what the rights were. It seems self-evident that any nation has a right to exercise its rights. That is all that we have understood to be the case.

It is inevitable that Egypt would come into the Gaza Strip in some way in a token capacity and we always made it clear that such was our belief. Mrs. Meir’s speech is not the same as what you report her as having said yesterday to the Secretary General. The Secretary General should ignore what Mrs. Meir said yesterday. He should go right ahead. No private statement can alter the public record.

The United States would never have agreed to what was said in Mrs. Meir’s statement to the Secretary General yesterday. The United States specifically refused to accept the Israeli contention concerning the Egyptian status in Gaza.

As far as Mrs. Meir’s statement yesterday is concerned the Secretary General should forget about it.

He should go to work to get the Israeli troops out and the UN troops in.

He should bring out just as effectively as he can the necessity of stationing the UNEF on both sides of the demarcation line. In this case Israel is very much in the wrong. The Secretary General should make clear Israel’s refusal to agree to this. He should press this point hard in public and make it clear to all the world.

The President did not underwrite everything Mrs. Meir said. See what I said in my press conference yesterday.³

Please give my best wishes to the Secretary General.

1. Source: Department of State, Wilcox Files: Lot 60 D 113, Middle East. Confidential. Lodge dictated the memorandum over the telephone to the Department of State at 11:45 a.m. on March 7. An inscription on the source text in an unidentified hand reads: “Lodge sent reply to Sec.” (See Document 197.)
2. Presumably Dulles made the statements to Lodge over the telephone during the morning of March 6. No record of the conversation has been found.
3. For excerpts from the transcript of Dulles’ press conference of March 5, see United States Policy in the Middle East, September 1956–June 1957, pp. 333–342. The complete transcript is printed in Department of State Bulletin, March 25, 1957, pp. 482–489.