Talk With
Israeli PM Golda Meir
(December 22, 1962)
This is a memorandum from Robert W. Komer of the National Security
Council Staff to President
Kennedy transmitting briefing papers for the
President's talk with Golda Meir and recommending a tougher line during the discussion.
Here are the papers bearing on Golda Meir talk
at 10 a.m. on 27 December. This talk could
be critical in setting the future tone of US-Israeli
(and to a great extent Arab-Israeli) relations,
which will pose recurrent knotty problems
throughout your Administration.
Therefore, I'm sending the papers down early in the hope that you can
look at them beforehand. As State's powerful memo (Tab A) brings out,
our policy to date toward Israel has been one of all give and no get.
We need in our own interest to bring more balance into this relationship,
and now (just after the 1962 elections and the Hawk offer) is the time
when we can exert the maximum leverage on Israel at minimum political
cost.
There will be some cost, however, and the key point on which you must
base your decision is whether there is sufficient to be gained from
pressuring the Israelis to justify even this. For example, there are
so many ways in which a refugee initiative could come unstuck even if
we gained Israeli acquiescence in a modified Johnson-type approach that
I'd still give it only a 50/50 chance of success at best.
Nonetheless, I see two strong arguments for a tougher line toward Israel.
First, movement toward Arab-Israeli settlement would be so much to our
interest (and Israel's) as to justify the effort. Second, even such
movement will be interspersed with yet further flare-ups in which our
restraining influence will depend largely upon both Arabs and Israelis
regarding us as tough as well as fair-minded. Only if we can convince
the Israelis we mean business will we be able to restrain them when
necessary; only this in turn will give us the necessary leverage to
do the same with the Arabs (at Tab B is a longish memo developing this
argument in detail).
State may have too big a menu for you to take up with Golda. The meeting
would be a success if you got across that in return for our aid we expect:
(1) greater reciprocity on Israel's part; (2) Israeli collaboration
in a refugee effort involving some repatriation, and standing some chance
of Arab acceptance; and (3) greater Israeli cooperation with UN peacekeeping
machinery.
At Mac Bundy's urging, Phil Talbot and I will come down to Palm Beach
for the talk. I hope you could spare a half hour Wednesday afternoon
so Phil and I could join Mike Feldman in airing these issues in advance.
R.W. Komer
Sources: Foreign
Relations of the United States, 1961-1963: Near East, 1962-1963,
V. XVIII. DC: GPO,
2000. |