into the Middle East. Such ideas had been voiced before in Israel-by heretics like me. But coming from an American official they sounded ominously like a pretext to drop the alliance with Israel. When it was learned that Dulles himself had cleared the speech in advance, this assumption seemed reasonable.
That same May 1 an Egyptian minister announced the arrest of Egyptian Communists, and other Egyptian officials hinted that Egypt might well join a Western military alliance after Britain's evacuation of the Suez Canal bases, negotiations for which were renewed and nearing completion.
Just about then, the world press began publishing a rumor about Israeli activist pressure, associated with BenGurion, Lavon and Dayan, for an immediate preventive war against Egypt. The London Times printed this rumor on May 15 and C. L. Sulzberger of The New York Times repeated it on June 7. On May 11, during a debate in the Knesset, moderates and activists clashed publicly. Prime Minister Sharett criticized American policy but warned against an anti-American mood. Lavon, on the other hand, took an extreme position: "We must ration our peace declarations," he said. "The integration of Israel into the Middle East means subjugation; it means a political, territorial, moral and cultural Arabization of Israel." He added, significantly, "May the misunderstandings between us and the great Western democracies be what they are, the link between them and us will never be severed. Any other link can only be transient and utilitarian."
Non-severance of the link was not so obvious to America and Britain. On June 12, the United States threatened Israel with sanctions, officially declaring that it would stop aid to any country that would break the Armistice Agreements in the Middle East. Anyhow, Byroade declared two days later, one cannot expect aid to Israel to go on forever. Later in the month, Churchill met Eisenhower and dis¬