Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume XVII, Near East, 1961–1962

299. Memorandum From the Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs (Grant) to Secretary of State Rusk⁰

Washington, June 17, 1962.

SUBJECT

• Your Memorandum of June 10 to Mr. Talbot on Hawk Missiles for Israel¹

In your memorandum of June 10 (Tab A) you stated you still were not satisfied that the materials submitted by NEA (Tab B)² came to a well supported position on the Hawk missiles and posed the question:

Does Egypt have an important air strike capability against Israel and, if so, does Israel have a sufficiently credible defense against such air strikes as to provide reasonable security.

With respect to the first part of the question, Egypt may now have, and is certainly expected to have in the near future, an important air strike capability against Israel. Egypt has some 8 TU–16 mid-range jet bombers and 46 Ilyushin-28 light jet bombers, with a considerable increase scheduled for the coming year.

The second part of the question is far more difficult to answer, in large part because of the widely different factors that enter into the equation for determining whether there is a sufficiently credible defense as to provide reasonable security. In a strictly air defense sense, Israel does have considerable vulnerability to air attack. The recent Arab-Israel Situation Report of June 7 (Tab C)³ states that the Israel air defense system has several major weaknesses (page 18) since “capability to provide an effective defense against a night or bad weather attack is poor because of a shortage of all weather fighters. The radar network is vulnerable to jamming tactics and also has difficulty detecting low-level penetrations.”

The report notes that the Israelis are taking measures, construction of partially underground revetments, etc., to assist in meeting this problem. We do not have a comprehensive Defense Department analysis of the full extent to which Israel is vulnerable to air attack, nor do we have a careful study of how far provision of Hawks would go in meeting this problem or how it would shift the balance of military power between Israel and its neighbors. We are asking for such an analysis.⁴

A credible defense posture, of course, turns on much more than air defense. Israel has a superior fighter air force and a substantially superior army. There also are major deterrents to UAR attack other than the military ones: fear of Western intervention, the deep divisions among the Arabs and the loss for an indefinite period of large scale United States and Western aid.

We have now received a cable summary (Tab D),⁵ which I commend for your reading, of the consensus developed in extensive discussions during the NE Ambassadors meeting in Athens on the subject of the maintenance of peace in the Near East and, in this context, of the security of Israel. The issue of providing Hawks to Israel was a major part of their discussion.

The main problem as the conference saw it was the danger that if a serious imbalance of vulnerability should develop it would create a real temptation to pre-emptive attack. This, rather than whether there was a defense “gap” on either side of the Arab-Israel quarrel, was seen as the central problem.

The recommendations of the conference were:

(a) avoidance of establishing military ties with Israel;

(b) provision to Israel and certain of the Arab countries at an appropriate time of unpublicized security assurances in the context of the Tripartite Declaration of 1950;

(c) major arms limitation effort in the Near East to avoid a new arms race; and

(d) delaying for the present the sale of the Hawk missile to Israel.

With your memorandum of June 10, you returned the proposed note to Israel on the subject of Jordan Waters.⁶ I would hope you might approve our proceeding with handing this note to the Israeli Ambassador as suggested in Mr. Talbot’s memorandum to you of May 25 (Tab E).⁷

0. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 784A.5612/6–1762. Secret. Drafted by Grant. A June 20 memorandum from Grant to Hilsman indicates that this memorandum was not shown to Secretary Rusk before he left for the NATO Ministerial meeting in Paris on June 19. (Ibid., 684A.86B/6–2062)
1. Document 291.
2. Not attached but printed as Document 290.
3. Not attached.
4. In a June 20 memorandum to Hilsman (INR), Grant requested that the Bureau of Intelligence and Research obtain by June 28 “an estimate which would provide us with a somewhat more refined analysis of Israel’s vulnerability to air attack, the extent to which provision of Hawk missiles to Israel would meet this problem, and how their availability to Israel might be expected to shift the balance of military power between Israel and its neighbors.” (Department of State, Central Files, 684A.86/6–2062) On June 25, in a letter to William Bundy (DOD/ISA), Grant asked the Department of Defense to provide a “more refined analysis of Israel’s vulnerability to air attack. Particularly we would like to have an appraisal of the extent to which provision of Hawk missiles to Israel would meet this problem and whether their availability to Israel might be expected to shift the balance of military power between Israel and its neighbors.” (Ibid.,NEA/NE Files: Lot 65 D 5, Israel, 1962. U.S. Milit. Asst.—Gen. 2-As)
5. Not attached but printed as Document 296.
6. Reference is presumably to the proposed note to Israel attached to Tab A of Document 283.
7. Not attached but printed as Tab A to Document 283.