ig54: a spy story i i 5 first Foreign Minister, he never set up a serious department for Arabic affairs in his ministry, which was responsible for them.
Sharett's part in the events that follow is not quite clear. Yet like the other Israeli leaders, he automatically discounted the possibility of an alliance with the Egyptian regime aimed at getting the British out of the Middle East. More than anyone else, as Foreign Minister and as Prime Minister, he believed in the absolute necessity of Israel's alliance with the West-even if this meant the loss of another historic opportunity to integrate Israel into the general pattern of Middle Eastern nationalism.
Sharett must have agreed that something must be done to sabotage the burgeoning Arab-American rapprochement.
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In the beginning of July, 1954, a man in a Cairo hotel turned on his radio and listened to a soft voice coming from Israel. What he heard was a code word ordering him to set in motion the plan he had brought with him to Egypt.
It concerned a small group of young Jewish Egyptians, recruited some time before by an Israeli intelligence officer who called himself John Darling. It was an efficient spy ring, well trained, one of the many which operate in all Middle Eastern countries and form an integral part of the omnipresent military preparedness.
What the group was now ordered to do was something quite unlike ordinary espionage. The idea was to plant bombs in American and British offices throughout Egypt, thereby creating tension between Egypt and the two Western countries. This tension was supposed to enable the Suez rebels in the British Parliament to prevent an agreement providing for the evacuation of the Suez bases, and also provide ammunition for those parts of American public opinion that opposed arming Egypt. It would also create a general state of confusion and disprove the thesis