 It's time for the Lawn Jean Chronoscope, a television journal of the important issues of the hour, 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? CBS News Correspondents, Larry Lasser and Winston Bredev. Our distinguished guest for this evening is the Honorable Abba Iban, ambassador from Israel to the United States. As you know, no formal peace treaty has ever been signed in the Middle East. Intentions have been rising for months between Israel and Egypt. It finally climaxed in a skirmish between the rival armies and rioting by refugees in the vicinity of Gaza. The matter is now before the United Nations Security Council. Ambassador Iban, no one knows the Israeli version of these incidents better than you do. How dangerous is this whole situation to the rest of the free world? Well, the absence of any peace between Israel and the Arab States is certainly one of the most dangerous tensions in the modern world. This is the only instance throughout the whole of the free world, where a dispute is not even submitted to the processes of negotiation and settlement. The Arab States refuse even to meet with us in an attempt to adjust our relationship. This is a unique and a dangerous episode in the modern international situation. Well, nevertheless, Mr. Ambassador, the matter is before the United Nations Security Council. Once again, can the United Nations do anything about it? Well, the United Nations, in our view, could be most effective in this matter. If, apart from dealing with episodes in the conflict, it were to attempt to remove the causes of the conflict. The underlying situation of which these various complaints are merely the consequences. What I mean is that the primary duty of the United Nations should surely be to create the conditions of a free negotiation between Israel and the Arab States for the purpose of establishing the kind of relationships which ought to prevail between members of the international community. Well, sir, are there any practical steps that could be taken on the recommendation of the United Nations or otherwise to patrol Israel's borders more closely and to prevent these incidents and armistice violations? Well, failing a peace settlement, I think a great deal could be done to maintain the security within the framework of the armistice agreement. But here again, the armistice can only work if its purpose is genuinely carried out. But that is to say, if it is regarded as a transition towards peace, if belligerency and blockade and boycotts and frontier incursions are suspended by the other side, I can give a solemn assurance that if Egypt will let us alone, not a single hair of their head will ever be touched. Ambassador Ibn, I suppose that the United Nations Security Council can order nations to do anything, even to enter negotiations to end a problem. What are the obstacles against the United Nations Security Council ordering Egypt to enter negotiations with Israel? Well, I don't think the word order is perhaps the correct one. But we do feel very strongly that if international opinion, world opinion were mobilized on this simple, essential theme that members of the United Nations have a primary duty to establish normal, peaceful relations amongst each other. If that opinion were with impressive volume brought to expression, I think that it would have a very good effect upon the position in the Middle East and would do much to diminish the danger of these periodic eruptions. Ambassador Ibn, aside from this episode in the Gaza area, the Gaza Strip as it's called, I believe, in which I think there were more than 70 Egyptian casualties. Haven't there been events outside of this Gaza area which have continued the hostility between Egypt and Israel? Well, firstly, if I may correct a figure, I think the casualty list was indeed very grave, but not as much as you've said. I believe that there were over 40 Egyptian casualties and some eight Israeli casualties. Before I leave that question, I would like to describe it comparatively. To understand it, you have to imagine that you are sitting in New York and the headquarters of an army of a hostile power is established about 15 miles away or less. And from that headquarters, there come incursions, armed incursions, blowing up the water system of New York killing civilians, sending people deep into your country for the purpose of murder and sabotage. I wonder for how long, for how long you would restrain yourselves from some attempt to eliminate the source of these intolerable provocations. It is not sufficiently realized that before the Gaza incident, the Egyptians were condemned 27 times in six months by the Mixed Armistice Commission for acts of aggression against Israel. In addition to these condemnations for armistice violations, they seized our ships in this U.S. canal waterway. They defied the ruling of the Security Council to abolish the blockade. They provocatively hanged two innocent people, Jews in Cairo, on the fabricated charge of espionage. In other words, there is definitely a policy by Egypt of hostility and belligerence towards Israel. That is the basic cause of this situation. Well, sir, isn't one main source of trouble between Israel and the Arab states. The problem of the Arab refugees who lost their homes in Palestine during the war there and wouldn't peace be restored to a considerable degree if that problem were settled? Yes, I would certainly agree, Mr. Burdett, that the refugee problem is the most tragic consequence of the Arab invasion of Israel in 1948 and that its solution is the most urgent of all the specific problems in the Middle East. But I think all balance, authority of opinion, now believes that the solution of that problem is only possible if the governments of the Middle East, which have large surplus areas of population and of land, I mean the Arab governments, governments which could accommodate a large Arab population with an increase of their security and with no threat to their security, if they, in the name of their kinship with these Arab refugees, would facilitate their settlement, we ourselves should certainly make a contribution by the payment of compensation for abandoned lands and the United Nations could give much assistance, but to overcome the refusal of Arab states to work for a solution, that is the primary objective which international opinion faces in the refugee question. We are deliberately accusing the Arab states of keeping the refugees out of their countries in order to keep the whole situation alive. They're not kept out of their countries, they are living in camps in the Arab countries, the host countries as they're called, but it is a fact established not by me but by the United Nations Works and Relief Agency that the Arab governments on the whole obstruct the integration of these refugees into their host countries, keep them in encampments, debar them from citizenship, from free labor opportunity and prevent any spontaneous merging of these refugee populations into the economy, the society and the culture of their host countries. United Nations reports have drawn regretful attention to this, to the policy of deliberately perpetuating their refugee status. Keeping them as refugees? Yes. Is there any chance of any large scale repatriation of them inside of Israel? The answer I'm afraid is no, because it is not possible for Israel surrounded by hostile Arab states to admit into its midst hundreds of thousands or even thousands or hundreds of people whose loyalties and sentiments and allegiance quite frankly belong not to the state of Israel, but to its neighbors and to its hostile neighbors. I doubt whether any country upon the face of the earth would be well advised to admit into its midst people who are loyal not to its flag and its statehood, but to the flag and to the statehood of hostile neighbors. It would not be merciful to the refugees themselves to bring them into such a situation. And that's even one of the reasons why the whole situation has been brought before the attention of the world is that the refugees in the so-called Gaza Strip did incite themselves against the United Nations headquarters there and their flag in an effort to try to impress the United Nations that something should be done. Yes, the plight of these refugees is genuinely tragic. Let there be no mistake at all about that. And to them and to their future, every sympathy belongs. But anybody who has a genuine constructive sympathy in his heart will surely work to bring about a resettlement in the Middle East, which does possess sufficient land and water and conditions in which a new Arab population can be integrated. There are Arab countries which suffer from a lack of population. If only the will to solve this problem, which they created, if only the will to solve it existed. I think Arab governments would not find it objectively impossible to find a solution. If the state of Israel, with its very small territory, found homes and work and shelter and citizenship for 750,000 people, half of them from Arab countries, how much more easily could the vast Arab domain integrate an equivalent number of its own kinsmen, if only the will existed? Ambassador Ivan, we remember that in 1939, when the Soviet Union signed a pact of non-aggression with the Nazi Germany, the only thing that Molotov asked at the time was freedom of access to the Persian Gulf, the oil-rich Persian Gulf. Now, do you find any incident of Russian interest or incitement in the Middle East now? I don't believe that that issue, the conflict between the Soviet world and the democratic world is the main source of tension in the Middle East. Of course, this conflict hovers over our area as it hovers over the rest of the world. But there is here a conflict between local nationalisms, between the nationalism of Israel and the nationalism of Arab states, which claim freedom for themselves and deny it to us. And I believe that that conflict has its existence independently of the international tension, although the international tension makes it, of course, more dangerous. Well, Ambassador Ivan, are you satisfied with the approach of the Western powers towards the Middle East now? We've just, I think, helped sign a treaty between Iraq and Turkey. At least we've favored it. Do you approve of that sort of thing? And no, we have a very profound criticism of this policy of certain powers in the West of extending security guarantees and arms agreements to our hostile neighbors and of doing so unilaterally. One after another of the Western powers is entering into security guarantees and arms agreements with one and another of the Arab states. Now, the latest one between Iraq and Turkey, to which you have referred, states this position of exclusion, I'm afraid, very blatantly. Article five of the Turkish-Iraq Treaty. And I find this isn't sufficiently known. Article five of that treaty says explicitly that the treaty is open for adherence by all Arab countries and by all other countries interested in the Middle East, except Israel, which is not recognized by Iraq. Well, I'm sorry, our time is up. Here's the doctrine of segregation in international affairs. But no world community then exists in the Middle East. But thank you very much for telling us about it anyway. Thank you very much. The opinions expressed on the launch in Chronoscope were those of the speakers. The editorial board for this edition of the launch in Chronoscope was Larry LeSir and Winston Burdett. Our distinguished guest was the Honorable Abba Ibn, ambassador from Israel to the United States. A launch in watch makes the most perfect gift. It has beauty, elegance and enduring quality, a universal reputation as just about the finest of the world's watches. 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