Letters to the Editor
The Canal and Mr. Connell H. Pinner Too Big Leopold Kohr John Vickers Gerald Gardiner, QC The BBC's Russian Service Charles Dimont
W. Mykula
The Theatre Stakes Sir Stephen King-Hall Evans and Christie Peter Baker Puffs Direct Sir Gerald Barry Hong Kong Meredith Whittaker Nuclear Horror Tom Wallace Cheese-paring Leonard Woolf Civil Liberties Miss Elizabeth A. Allen Tranquillisers R. 1. Hayhurst Cigarettes and Cancer Beaumont Alexander Breaking Down the Fences A. D. C. Peterson THE CANAL AND MR. CONNELL THE CANAL AND MR. CONNELL Sin,—Lord Altrincham, in reviewing John Connell's The Most Important Country, is less than fair to Israel when he speaks of her as being equally re- 8Ponsible with the Arab States for the present ten- sion in the Middle East.
The Jewish raid on Gaza in February, 1955, may have been 'one of the most fateful dates in Middle East history,' but it is quite wrong to suggest that it Was an unprovoked attack on Egypt which until that date 'had been rather less active against Israel than other Arab countries.' The record shows that Egypt had been condemned by the Israeli-Egypt Mixed Armistice Commission for twenty-six violations of the Armistice Agreement between September, 1954, and mid-January, 1955. 1:bese violations ranged from illegal border cross- ings cases of sabotage and murder. Warnings to r,gyptian authorities to put a halt to such acts of Etgajession had no effect. Between August and the end of December, 1954, Israel-EgYPt six.h-en Israelis were killed or wounded in the border area. Between August, 1954, and January, 1955, there were eight cases of sabotage; twenty-6
attempted armed clashes; at least forty thefts and nited thefts; and twenty-four illegal crossings of the border. EgYptian intelligence officers were training and
sendin to spy marauders th ers from e Gaza Strip into Israel territoryand commit sabotage. At the end Of Septeinber, 1954, a group sent to commit sabotage was caught after it had sniped on farmers and blown bP houses in a border settlement. Early in Decem- 41.riitair7,4, four youths were caught trying to gather information in Israel; they admitted having been trained and sent by Egyptian officers in Gaza. te LgYPtian armed gangs began operating on Israel BtritarY, and on February 23 penetrated into the ,acteriological Institute in Rehovot. On February 2
_ ° an infiltrator was killed and intelligence docu- ments were found on his body.
I_EgYpte further provoked Israel by hanging two f'vt's in Cairo for 'spying,' despite pleas for clemency xtr°,111 all over the world. She also detained the Israel ..1!? Bat Galim and refused to obey a Security Council `v .91ution ordering her release.
he still to say, Egypt claimed then, as indeed h,," still does, that a state of war existed between "self and Israel.—Yours faithfully,
Previous page
