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"The Jewish people has had to fight unceasingly to keep itself alive," says Israel's Premier Levi Eshkol. "Hopeful ever of redemption, we labored to return to the land of our fathers and to set foundations for the resurgence of an exiled folk. We made our arduous way to the shores of that land. We fought to open its gates to our brethren. We acted from an instinct to save the soul of a people."
Both the land and the soul of Israel are sorely tried. Last week, 19 years after the Diaspora dream of return to Zion became a reality in the first Jewish state in almost 2,000 years, Levi Eshkol and his people found themselves besieged and threatened as few nations have ever been in their history. Tiny, dagger-shaped Israel, whose 2,700,000 people cling to 7,993 sq. mi. on the shores of the eastern Mediterranean, faced the implacable hostility and cocked guns of 14 Arab nations and their 110 million people. Its borders were ringed with Arab troops on all sides; its important sea access through the Gulf of Aqaba remained blocked by Egyptian mines and patrol boats.
Israel is not exactly a weakling. The Israeli army, with 71,000 regulars and 230,000 reserves, is by far the most efficient fighting force in the Middle East—as it proved by soundly trouncing the Egyptians in the 1956 Sinai campaign. It could hold its own against almost any array of Arab armies, provided that the Arabs did not unite into a single force. What alarms Israel this time is the way in which the Arabs, though continuing to fight and squabble among themselves, have nonetheless joined firm ranks against Israel. Despite its superior military prowess, Israel might be hard pressed indeed to protect itself against any coordinated and sustained Arab attack.
For this reason, many hawks in Israel would give in to the temptation to strike first and fast at the Arabs, knocking them off balance and freeing the Gulf of Aqaba by marching down the Sinai Peninsula to the sea. It is a natural temptation—but it is a measure of Israel's new maturity that it has so far been resisted. Risking national unpopularity and dissension even within his ruling Mapai party, Premier Eshkol, 71, has withheld Israel's sword, counting on diplomacy and the good will of such friends as the U.S. and Britain to work out the problem.
"It takes courage not to make war immediately on being attacked," Eshkol told his nation last week. "That is not a sign of weakness. It is not difficult for the situation to deteriorate into war, but we have to be strong enough to try all other means. We have to do the utmost to avoid bloodshed on either side of the border." Nonetheless, pressured by politicians and anxious that Israel should be ready if diplomacy fails and open war does come, Eshkol last week relinquished the post of Defense Minister that he had kept for himself and turned it over to General Moshe Dayan, 52, the dashing, one-eyed hero of the Sinai campaign and an ally of ex-Premier David Ben-Gurion, now a chief critic of Eshkol.