Real US Presidents Stand Up to Israel 2

How typical (of Israel that is) that Ike should find it more difficult to deal with than the British and the French:

"It was Eisenhower who stopped the war and it was Eisenhower who made the victors disgorge in the conviction that unless war, like crime, could be shown not to pay, the UN would be gravely weakened and man would move closer to destruction by his own terrible new devices. 'We not only had a little difficulty in getting Britain and France to come out,' Eisenhower told me in an interview on Suez, 'but later we had much more difficulty in getting the Israelis to come out. Finally we had to be very tough with them, really, but finally they agreed.'" (Suez: The Twice-Fought War, Kennett Love, 1969, p 635)

But then, how could he have known what spiralling madness he was up against?:

"Gaza and Aqaba were the areas to which [Israeli Prime Minister David] Ben-Gurion was most stubbornly attached. He resigned himself fairly early to relinquishing the Sinai but Gaza, part of the inheritance of the tribe of Judah, and Tiran, where Jews of old maintained the tiny state of Yotvat, were more clearly associated with Israel's stated war aims, which included the elimination of the [Palestinian] Fedayeen and the opening of the Gulf of Aqaba. If Ben-Gurion could have fulfilled his dream of restoring Yotvat to the Third Israeli Empire it would have brought the straits [of Tiran] within Israel's territorial waters and freed Israel's shipping there from dependence on the presence of the UN Emergency Force (UNEF)." (ibid, p 663)

What sheer bloody-mindedness?:

"On 3 December, the day [British Foreign Secretary Selwyn] Lloyd announced the Anglo-French withdrawal, Israel drew back 30 miles from the Canal. By 7 January she had withdrawn from half the Sinai, systematically destroying telephone and telegraph lines and breaking up the railroad and asphalted roads behind her with an ingenious giant plow-like device. In despite of protests by [UN Secretary-General Dag] Hammarskjold that this devastation violated Israel's promise to help UNEF maintain the peace, the Israelis destroyed the many military buildings in al-Arish and razed to the ground every single building in the hapless villages of Qussaima and Abu Aoueigila. It took Egypt and the UNEF several years to restore the roads. By 22 January Israel had withdrawn to the frontier except before Rafah and along the coast of the Gulf of Aqaba. Ben-Gurion then set his heels to resist further withdrawal." (ibid, p 664)

What depth of adolescent defiance:

"On 2 February the General Assembly passed its sixth resolution demanding Israel's immediate withdrawal and another resolution calling for restoration of the Armistice and the stationing of UNEF troops on the armistice line. Despite a cable from Eisenhower warning that continued defiance of the UN 'could seriously disturb the relations between Israel and other member nations including the United States,' Ben-Gurion and his Cabinet rejected the Assembly's demands the next day." (ibid, p 665)

But Ike was no Obama. He wasn't one to blink first:

"By now Eisenhower and Dulles were being forced toward taking a stand on sanctions whether they wanted to or not. Majority sentiment for sanctions to compel Israel to withdraw was developing in the UN with the support of the Arabs and the rest of the Afro-Asian Bloc together with the Communist Bloc. If it came to a vote the US would have to make the public choice of whether or not to join the majority or stand out against it as the special champion of Israel right or wrong." (ibid, p 667)

Nor was Ben-Gurion the only problem for Eisenhower. Even at this time Congress was Israeli-occupied territory:

"'It became obvious that the Congressional leaders were too conscious of the unpopularity of the stand that the President was being forced to take against Israel to be willing to share with him the responsibility for it,' [Eisenhower aide Sherman] Adams wrote." (ibid, p 668)

Unfazed, Ike, pulling but one punch - substituting the word 'pressure' for 'sanctions' - addressed the American people directly:

"The Government of Israel has not yet accepted, as adequate assurance of its own safety after withdrawal, the far-reaching United States Resolution of February 2 plus the important declaration of United States policy made by our Secretary of State on February 11. Israel seeks something more. It insists on firm guarantees as a condition to withdrawing its forces of invasion. This raises a basic question of principle. Should a nation which attacks and occupies foreign territory in the face of United Nations disapproval be allowed to impose conditions on its own withdrawal? If we agreed that armed attack can properly achieve the purposes of the assailant, then I fear we will have turned back the clock of international order. We will, in effect, have countenanced the use of force as a means of settling international differences and through this gaining national advantages. I do not, myself, see how this could be reconciled with the Charter of the United Nations. The basic pledge of all the members of the United Nations is that they will settle their international disputes by peaceful means, and will not use force against the territorial integrity of another state. If the United Nations once admits that international disputes can be settled by using force, then we will have destroyed the very foundation of the Organization, and our best hope of establishing world order. That would be a disaster for us all. I would, I feel, be untrue to the standards of the high office to which you have chosen me, if I were to lend the influence of the United States to the proposition that a nation which invades another should be permitted to exact conditions for withdrawal... The United Nations must not fail. I believe that - in the interests of peace - the United Nations has no choice but to exert pressure upon Israel to comply with the withdrawal resolutions." (Eisenhower's radio & television address to the American people on the situation in the Middle East, February 20, 1957 (excerpt), jewishvirtuallibrary.org)

And, guess what, Ben-Gurion blinked!:

"With the threat of sanctions becoming ever harder, Ben-Gurion gave in in time to prevent the sanctions resolution from being brought to a vote. He ordered Golda Meir to announce in the UN on 1 March Israel's 'plans for full and prompt withdrawal from the Sharm al-Sheikh area and the Gaza Strip.'... Israeli troops moved out of the Gaza Strip and UNEF moved in on the night of 6 March... The Israelis were gone by 6 am on & March except for a rear guard at Rafah, which departed with its vehicles later in the day... The last Israeli soldiers to leave Egypt were men who had struggled back up the coast with vehicles from Sharm al-Sheikh. They crossed the frontier back into Israel at Ras al-Naqb on 16 March." (Kennett Love, pp 669-671)