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The U.S.'s Henry Cabot Lodge followed immediately with a general endorsement of Israel's decision. But on the future of the Gaza Strip he limited the U.S. commitment to upholding Hammarskjold's view that it must be worked out "within the framework of the armistice agreement" of 1949. France's Guillaume Georges-Picot, speaking later, explicitly endorsed the Israeli "assumptions" as "legitimate and reasonable."
By Radio & Press. At 8:30 next morning Ben-Gurion snapped on his bedside portable transistor radio and glumly listened to the news of the U.N. session. He was startled by the Lodge declaration: under those terms, the Egyptians could conceivably return to Gaza practically as soon as the Israelis pulled out.
As the word of withdrawal spread through Israel, settlers in the exposed Negev settlements stirred in anger. With Israel's army in Gaza, they had slept easier of late. In Ben-Gurion's old community of Sde Boker wooden watchtowers had been left unmanned, and herders had lost the habit of taking guns when they traipsed out with their flocks. Was this all to be undone?
The right-wing opposition party (Herut) called for nationwide demonstrations in protest against withdrawal, and its leader, Menahem Beigin, asked for immediate elections. Two restive coalition parties threatened open revolt. Ben-Gurion himself, after announcing laconically that the government supported Mrs. Meir's U.N. announcement, ordered Army Chief Dayan to postpone his scheduled conference with UNEF Commander Eedson L. M. Burns, and cabled Washington for "further explanation" of Lodge's U.N. statement.
Next day, as Eban paid a rush call to Dulles' home (and was assured that the U.S. was not proposing to go back to the way things were before November in Gaza), Ben-Gurion read in the newspaper a letter to him from President Eisenhower expressing the President's faith that "Israel will have no cause to regret" its decision to withdraw. On this basis Ben-Gurion was prepared to ask the Knesset for a vote of confidence this week. Said an Israeli: "An unyielding stand means a U.N. crisis. Yielding means a Knesset crisis. For Ben-Gurion it is always crisis."
"Hold Tight." Throughout this whole drama of public proclamations and private exchanges, the official U.S. attitude had been curiously complicated. At times the U.S. had seemed to be reminding Israel with oversolicitous friendliness of the sentiment for sanctions building up in the U.N. Assembly. Yet, when it came right down to it, practically everybody except the Arabs disliked the idea of sanctions, and the feeling began to develop in Israel that perhaps the U.S. Administration felt more strongly about applying "pressure" (its word for sanctions) to its Israeli friends than anybody else. In fact, early in the week Golda Meir had come right out with it: "I don't think there will be any sanctions. I don't think anybody does. Nobody wants them." But the U.S. had a timetable for its new Middle East moves, and there was no getting on to the next phase until the Israelis had been somehow shoehorned out of Arab territory that they had illegally occupied.