 It's time for the Lawn Jean Chronoscope, a television journal of the important issues of the hour brought to you every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, a presentation of the Lawn Jean Wittner Watch Company, maker of Lawn Jean, the world's most honored watch, and Wittner, distinguished companion to the world-honored Lawn Jean. Good evening. This is Frank Knight. May I introduce our co-editors for this edition of the Lawn Jean Chronoscope? Edward P. Morgan of the CBS television news staff and Mr. Thomas J. Hamilton, United Nations correspondent for the New York Times. Our distinguished guest for this evening is His Excellency Abba Eban, ambassador from Israel to the United States. Mr. Eban, we know of course that you are leading the Israeli Embassy in Washington, as well as being head of the Israeli delegation to the United Nations, and therefore Mr. Hamilton and I are going to feel free to ask you a lot of bold, broad questions about the Middle East. But it won't do us any good unless we really know what we're talking about, and I suspect that a lot of us have forgotten a lot of salient facts about Israel. The population, for instance, the size of the country, the spirit of the people, the question of immigration. Will you tell us a little bit about that in the beginning and then we can get on to the other big questions? Well, you've asked a very broad question. Some of your queries I can answer very specifically. We're a country of 8,000 square miles an area. That's almost exactly the size of the state of New Jersey in the United States. And we're surrounded by an Arab world which covers a continental expanse almost as great as the whole of the United States. In that area of 8,000 square miles, we now have a population of some 1,700,000. That is an increase of over a million, as against the population of our country at the time when its independence was declared, and the greater part of that increase is due to mass immigration, which took place between the years 1950 to 1952. As for the spirit of the people, that's much less easily measured by statistics, but it's the spirit of the people in the stage of its revolution in the formative years of its fight for independence, a pioneering era such as happens only once in the life of the country. It's the era of our founding fathers, and we have all the hardships, the adversities, and the excitement which belong to a people in that revolutionary period of its national life. Now, what about the Arab refugees, Mr. Eban? I believe that about 800,000 Arabs who formerly lived in the territory now controlled by Israel, who fled abroad to the neighboring Arab countries during the civil war. That's of course coming up in the assembly soon. Can you tell us what's going to happen to them? Yes, that question is perpetually before the general assembly, and it really is the most acute symptom of crisis in the Middle East. In the first place, it should be understood that the Arab refugee problem is a consequence of a war, a war that was launched by the Arab states in an attempt to extinguish Israel's existence by armed force. The effort to overthrow Israel's independence failed, but in the course of that failure, the Arab governments did create this very acute humanitarian condition. With regard to a solution, it is quite clear to us that the Arab governments which caused that problem possessed the full capacity to solve it. That is to say they possessed the land resources, they possessed the water, they possessed the financial means, and they possessed those conditions of cultural kinship and linguistic affinity with the refugee population, such as would enable their swift integration into the Arab lands. I'd like to say that we speak here from some experience that Israel has, as I have said within the space of a few years, absorbed into its midst some 750,000 destitute refugees, 300,000 of them being Jews from Arab countries. Now if our country with its 8,000 square miles and its meager resources of land and water could find homes for 750,000 homeless destitute wandering refugees, how much more easily could the Arab countries with their vast area, their enormous resources and their unlimited expanse find homes for an equal number of their own kinsmen if only the same will existed and the same impulses of kinship asserted themselves. Therefore, I don't think that it's an objectively difficult problem. Mr. Ambassador rightly or wrongly, a lot of people seem to think that a mistake of some kind was made by the Israelis in the Arab refugee problem in demanding that they all leave. Some of them left to their own volition, some of them apparently did not. There were those who were well integrated with the country who had no particular antipathy supposedly to the to the Israeli and that they might other things be equal come back. What would you comment about that, sir? Well as regards the historical part of your question, there was certainly no policy on our part that they should leave. They left as an inevitable result of the war that was forced upon them and upon us caught up in a hopeless torment between their own invading kinsmen and their own Jewish neighbors in that untenable situation amidst the fear and the panic of war they fled into the shelter of Arab countries. But the most important thing as I've said and as you've indicated is not to linger upon past responsibility but to dwell upon the question of future solution. In that respect, there is no doubt at all that the Arab countries possess the capacity of integrating a huge Arab population and that the state of Israel quite noticeably lacks those conditions. We lack the economic conditions. We lack the spiritual conditions because Israel is the only country in the Middle East in which an Arab refugee would not be at home. The only non-Arab country in language, in outlook, in aspiration and in national sentiment. And above all we lack the elementary security conditions for absorbing a large and I'm afraid potentially hostile population into our midst so that anybody who cares for the stability of our area and for the ultimate benefit of the refugees themselves should sponsor a solution for his integration into the kinship and the into the kinship and fraternity of those Arab societies which exists so plentifully in our area and I think that the greater part of international opinion in the western world favors a solution along those lines. But of course the Arabs don't. The Arab, the neighboring Arab states say they will not agree to it. No the neighboring Arab states apparently are more interested in preserving the political pressures inherent in the lack of refugee integration. Which brings up a very delicate point Mr. Ambassador. I think you told us as we came onto the program that the aggregate area of the Arab states was something equivalent to the United States whereas the as you said when we got on the air that the size of Israel was about the size of New Jersey. Now how realistic is the existence of Israel under those conditions? Is it something that can go on and burgeon or is it simply a thorn in the flesh of Middle Eastern politics? Well we are a very small country and our smallness is I think a conclusive answer to those who suggest that we should be made still smaller or that we should acknowledge an obligation to give up territory to countries hundreds of times the size of Israel and hundreds of times as rich as Israel in every attribute of material and territorial strength. On the other hand we don't feel that our smallness forbids us from existing. We are not the smallest nation on earth either in population or in territory. We rely upon an intensive development of our agriculture and upon the institution of industrial expansion in order to provide homes on our soil for a population greater than that which exists in Roman times. The country of Judea was said to have a population of some four million. That was a time before scientific development enabled intensive agriculture to be developed and before the age of the industrial revolution. So then I think we could anticipate a growth to two or three perhaps up to four million people without the pressure of the population taking our economy down. People, pundits and others keep talking about a power vacuum in the Middle East. What is Israel's figure in this? Is that a fair statement? Well I always wonder what pundits mean by the abstruse phraseology which they use. I presume that they mean that the Middle East is what has been called an uncommitted area. That is to say there is no certainty where it would stand in the event of a world conflict. That is of course a true description of the Middle East that has not attached itself to any world cause. As regards Israel we are dedicated almost alone in our region to parliamentary democracy and we would defend our institutions and our territory against any attack and our cause is the cause of those who would resist aggression and who would maintain free institutions against attack or subversion if they should ever come. But the Middle East as a whole has not determined itself spiritually and therefore its course of action in the event of an emergency is very much a matter for concern. Of course there is one parallel event that a lot of people have mentioned in connection with Korea that in Palestine you've been operating under the armistice agreements between Israel and the Arab states for some four years or more and you haven't had a peace treaty. In Korea a lot of people are assuming that there won't be a peace treaty and that we'll have to operate in Korea just on the basis of an armistice. How does it feel to have your affairs with the Arab states controlled solely by an armistice with no peace treaty and with the Arab boycott of Israeli commerce? Can you tell us in a couple of words an answer to a complicated question? It's a complicated question but it's a very interesting parallel. We have lived for five years on the basis of general armistice agreements with our neighboring states. We hoped and we still hope that there would be a swift transition from armistice to peace but since the Arab states refused to negotiate agreements with us we've had to make the best of these provisional armistice agreements. All I can say is that we have proved that it is a possible thing if not a very desirable thing to live in an intermediate stage which is neither complete peace nor complete war and it's at least a better position than living in a state of war. Thank you very much Mr. Ambassador. The opinions you've heard our speakers express tonight have been entirely their own. The editorial board for this edition of the launching chronoscope was Edward P. Morgan of the CBS television news staff and Mr. Thomas J. Hamilton, United Nations correspondent for the New York Times, our distinguished guest was his Excellency Ambassador from Israel to the United States. Jewelers know that a fine watch such as Long Jean actually improves with use. 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Long Jean, the world's most honored watch, the world's most honored gift, premier product of the Long Jean Witner Watch Company, since 1866, maker of watches of the highest character. This is Frank Knight reminding you that Long Jean and Witner watches are sold in service from coast to coast by more than 4,000 leading jewelers who proudly display this emblem, agency for Long Jean Witner watches. Tuesday nights, see it now on the CBS television network.