674.84A/6–2353
No. 629
The Ambassador in Egypt (Caffery) to the Director
of the Office of Near Eastern Affairs (Hart)
official-informal
Dear Pete: I have read with interest your note of June 15 regarding the letter which Gamal Abd Al Nasir is supposed to have written to an Israeli addressee.
We have known for some time that Nasir has a friend in Israel, dating from Palestine War days. I therefore have had one of the Embassy officers ask him frankly but informally if there is anything to the story which you cited.
Abd Al Nasir’s reply was: “I have writtten no letters since July 23” (1952). The inference is that he may very well have written such a letter at some time in the past but, if he did, it was in a purely personal capacity.
I continue to believe that there is little prospect at this juncture of the Arabs agreeing to an over-all peace settlement except on terms which Israel is clearly unprepared to accept. Furthermore the other Arab states, in return for their support of Egypt’s stand on the Canal Zone issue, have obviously extracted in return the assurance that Egypt will not break the united Arab front against Israel. The hopes which we once held that Egypt might be induced [Page 1246] to move unilaterally on this issue are therefore considerably dimmed. I need hardly add, however, that a settlement of the Anglo-Egyptian dispute would afford new possibilities for an attack on the Palestine problem.
With regard to the Sinai refugee project, this was included among the projects approved by the National Production Council last January (Embassy despatch 1546, February 3, 1953).1 We are under the impression that the primary motivation has been economic rather than political. The project may produce food for Egypt over and above the needs of refugees at no cost to the Egyptian Government except for the water that is provided.
With good wishes,
Sincerely yours,
- Not printed.↩