Extract from a confidential report from Frederick H. Boland
to Seán Murphy (Dublin)
(Confidential)

[matter omitted]

It is generally assumed here now that the Israeli troops will be withdrawn behind the Armistice demarcation line and that the withdrawal will take place fairly quickly. It remains to be seen what the attitude of Egypt will be when that stage has been accomplished. Although the fact has not yet been published, I gather that, as soon as the withdrawal has taken place, the Secretary General will go to Cairo with the idea of trying to negotiate some agreement with President Nasser about the ‘Assumptions’. Cardinal Spellman² told me on the 2nd March that the Secretary General will see the Holy Father on his way. He asked for private audience and it was granted at once. I gather that the Secretary General’s purpose in seeing the Holy Father is to discuss with him the present position of the United Nations in the light of what the Pope said on the subject in his Christmas message.

At first glance, it looks as if the Secretary General will have a difficult task persuading President Nasser to accept the ‘Assumptions and Expectations’ on the basis of which Israel is withdrawing. He won’t even be able to claim that these have the endorsement of Assembly resolutions. On the other hand, there is a fairly strong impression here that President Nasser is looking for a way out of the diplomatic impasse into which recent events have brought him and, therefore, the Secretary General may not find him so hard to deal with as might be thought. Egypt is in a very serious position economically. She has felt acutely the snubs she has recently suffered at the hands of the United States and she is uncertain how far she can be sure of the Arab League’s maintaining its solidarity in the face of United States blandishments. She can no longer profitably count on playing the Soviet card as a means of forcing concessions from the West, because any further rapprochement between Egypt and Soviet Russia is apt to expose the solidarity of the Arab League to a further, and perhaps intolerable, strain. The rumour here is that Egypt, having found the United States unresponsive (they being still intent on the idea of leaving Nasser to ‘wither on the vine’) and being unwilling, under any circumstances, to deal with the French on account of Algeria, has recently been making more friendly signs in the direction of the British. The opinion here is that Egypt will not take any too rigid attitude about the Gaza Strip or the Gulf of Aqaba in advance, but will follow the tactic of tying up the discussion of these two matters with other questions arising out of the recent invasion, particularly the payment of compensation for loss of life and damaged property and the future régime of the Suez Canal. It is not unlikely, therefore, that the Secretary General’s forthcoming visit will prepare the way for a conference of wider scope. If it does not, and the Secretary General finds that he cannot make any headway on the questions of the Gaza Strip and the Gulf of Aqaba on the basis of existing Assembly resolutions, he will report back to the Assembly and a further session will be held.

In the meantime, of course, all Israel has secured by her undertaking to withdraw are certain very general moral commitments undertaken on her behalf by the United States, France, Britain and other countries. There may be secret undertakings but this seems to me unlikely. So far as the United States is concerned the position rests on her aide-mémoire to Israel of 11th February, President Eisenhower’s speech of the 20th February, Ambassador Lodge’s speech in the Assembly last Friday and General Eisenhower’s letter to Premier Ben-Gurion published on the 2nd March. Although the commitments given to Israel are vague and general and not in treaty form their inevitable consequence is that Western powers have now become – morally if not legally – more deeply involved in the Middle Eastern situation, particularly in the Arab-Israel dispute, than they were before. Moreover, they have accepted this position at a time when the evidence of a Soviet-assisted military buildup in Syria is becoming clearer and stronger every day. Whatever one may say, therefore, about the final success of the efforts to get Israel to withdraw from Egypt, the danger of a major clash in the Middle East is certainly by no means over.