1954: A SPY STORY I I 3
friend of Sharett, who later published Panikar's book Asia and Western Dominance in Hebrew. (When Sharett was compelled by Ben-Gurion to resign his post as Foreign Minister in 1956, on the eve of the Sinai campaign, he became the head of the Histadruth publishing house.) As Panikar himself later told me, Abd-el-Nasser asked him to arrange for a discreet meeting with Sharett. Negotiations about this dragged on, until the events in the beginning of 1955 made a meeting impossible.
Other well-meaning people devoted themselves to the same cause. The Maltese socialist leader (and later Prime Minister) Dom Mintoff, started to act as a mediator between Abd-el-Nasser and Sharett, but was disappointed by the Israeli attitude, as he later told Israeli journalists. An even more resolute attempt was made by a Socialist member of the British Parliament, Maurice Orbach, who made several trips between Abd-el-Nasser and Sharett, trying to arrange for a meeting. Once he brought Sharett a personal letter from Abd-el-Nasser, starting with the Arabic words, "My brother Sharett." (Arabs use the word "brother" rather more loosely than Europeans.) Orbach told this later to an Israeli Ambassador, Nathan Peled, who published the fact.
A mysterious, but seemingly high-ranking Egyptian functionary appeared in Paris to contact Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the Zionist Organization, one of the few Zionist leaders who believed in peace between Israel and the Arab countries and was prepared to pay a price for it. Goldmann was asked to arrange a personal secret meeting between Abd-el-Nasser and Sharett.
It is difficult to assess whether these Egyptian peace feelers were serious or not. They may have been mere political expediency, an attempt to neutralize Israel's stand against British evacuation and American aid to Egypt. One wonders about Sharett's attitude toward them. When these facts were later published by me and others, Sharett denied them violently. Even when such evidence