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The context is the internal political fight between David Ben-Gurion and Levy Eshkol (see below).
Whether those tanks ever arrived, I do not, as yet, know but I remind you that in 1967, the US joined in on the ban for Israel to have tanks participate in the Independence Day parade, but that's another story.
In any case, America has a long history of internal interference in Israeli elections.
_________
On the Ben-Gurion/Eshkol dispute from May 17, 1965:
The Mapai Party Secretariat, after two days of deliberations, today decided to express full confidence in Prime Minister Eshkol and to back him in his dispute with former Premier David Ben-Gurion which came to a head last week, when Ben-Gurion called Mr. Eshkol “unfit” to lead the party and the country...While superficially, Mapai seemed to be on the verge of a split, party leaders today expressed confidence that no split would develop.
...Mr. Eshkol [had] declared: “If there are members of the Government who think about me the way ‘that man’ does, I suggest they free themselves from their posts.” He added that despite the sharp attack on him, he intended to continue his policies until the end of the Government’s term.
...In addressing the Mapai Secretariat during the weekend, Premier Eshkol took up Ben-Gurion’s charge that he had opposed a renewed investigation of the Lavon Affair on grounds it would open a “Pandora’s Box” of issues involving Israel’s security activities. Ben-Gurion had said that any individual afraid of Pandoras Boxes should not be Premier even if the party’s center elected him...Also attacking Mr. Ben-Gurion, Foreign Minister Golda Meir told the Secretariat that, while there were no actual differences between the majority and the minority on the issue, there was “merciless slander and libel and personal war directed at eliminating certain comrades.”...Education Minister Zalman Aranne deplored the “evil spirit” that was hovering over the party and charged that Ben-Gurion was treating Premier Eshkol the way he treated former Premier Moshe Sharett ten years ago.
Jacob Blaustein
was an industrialist who was drawn into the complex world of diplomatic service. He participated in negotiations on behalf of two United States presidents, peacekeeping missions, and service at the birth of the nation of Israel. As President of the American Jewish Committee, he worked to protect the civil and religious rights of Jews and other minorities and to promote intergroup tolerance. Jacob Blaustein was a lifelong advocate for human rights and helped to promote the idea of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, a position that was established more than twenty years after his death in 1970.
And more relevant to the material below:
In 1950 AJC President Jacob Blaustein reached an agreement with Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion stating that the political allegiance of American Jews was solely to their country of residence. By the Six-Day War of 1967 AJC had become a passionate defender of the Jewish state, shedding old inhibitions to espouse the centrality of Jewish peoplehood...Before the Six-Day War in 1967, AJC was officially "non-Zionist". It had long been ambivalent about Zionism as possibly opening up Jews to the charge of dual loyalty, but it supported the creation of Israel in 1947-48, after the United States backed the partition of Palestine. It was the first American Jewish organization to open a permanent office in Israel.
According to this source, quite anti-Zionist, Blaustein made a speech in February 1948 that illustrated
the "Zionizing" of the otherwise integrated American Jewish community, and the development of inordinate American support for the State of Israel...[the] watershed February 1948 speech by chairman Jacob Blaustein — shows that the American Jewish Committee, then the nation's most influential American Jewish organization, had reluctantly supported partition of Palestine in an effort to stop escalating Jewish nationalist terrorism. In fateful moments in America's relations with Palestine, after David Ben Gurion declared the Jewish nationalist state, the AJC kept silent on the betrayal of its ideal of nonsectarian government for all Palestinians. This decision has reverberated in the American Jewish community since — hostage to Israeli state violence and left helpless to offer an alternative to Jewish domination of Palestine.
In April 1950, he had made another speech which clarifies his new outlook:
...as Jews, we are concerned lest our brethren, having once found a haven in Israel, be slaughtered in another war. In addition, any military defeat of Israel would be serious not only for Israel and the Israelis, but for Jews everywhere.
However, as he explained there, he and the AJCom were not quite pro-Zionism at that time:
...while the American Jewish Committee and the [American] Council [for Judaism] technically have a common point of view concerning world Jewish nationalism and the disastrous consequences that would result if that concept should be successfully indoctrinated among Jews in America and elsewhere, a vast difference of opinion exists as to what, for example, constitutes a 'nationalistic' statement. To us it appears that the Council's definition is so broad as to be but a rationalization of an extreme and sweeping anti-Israel position. Further, it seems we are also apart on what the American scene is like. We frankly do not understand what the Council hopes to gain by its particular kind of publicity in the general press. They can hardly expect to influence the statements and actions of Zionists and the Israeli by such attacks. Nor can it be believed that the favor of our fellowAmericans who are not Jews will be so won. On the contrary, the latter may unfortunately be tempted to conclude: a plague on all the Jewish houses.
Blaustein held to the view that
there can be no interference by the Government of Israel in the internal affairs of American Jewry
With that background and those credentials in place, we now reread a telegram that was sent from the Mission to the United Nations to the Department of State on June 6, 1964 on the subject of the Arab refugees.
At dinner last night, [US Ambassador to the United Nationas Adlai] Stevenson discussed refugee question with PM [Levy] Eshkol of Israel. After emphasizing seriousness of problem for both Israel and US in Near East and in UN, Stevenson asked what plans Israel has for dealing with problem. Eshkol replied that he fully appreciated difficulties question presented for us but that Israel had no new suggestions to advance. After expressing firm opposition to Johnson proposal he said that adding 100,000 Arabs to the 250,000 now in Israel, and assuming the present rate of Jewish immigration continued at about 30 to 35,000 per annum, the higher birth rate of Arabs would “create a Cyprus situation” within 25 years. On this assumption he estimated Arab population would become one quarter of total. Arabs will force refugees back into Palestine by various devices and he was not sure that any open-end formula could even restrict repatriation of 100,000.
While extremely cordial and appreciative of US and UN problem, his position appeared inflexible and he advanced sundry arguments as to why any increase in Arab population was hazardous for Israel, including fact that Arabs do not serve in army. Eshkol referred repeatedly to integration of many of refugees into Arab countries and left no alternative but absorption of balance by Arabs.
After Eshkol leaves, someone else enters the room:
Following his departure, Jacob Blaustein asked Stevenson if he had discussed refugee problem, adding that if formula could be devised which would limit Arab repatriation to 100,000, he felt confident GOI [Government of Israel] could be persuaded to accept it in final settlement of problem. Stevenson concluded that Eshkol's official position at least no more tractable than Ben Gurion's.
Reread this:
he felt confident GOI could be persuaded to accept it in final settlement of problem
Blaustein and the AJCom had ideological and principled opposition to a 'dual loyalty' situation and refused for decades to be identified as Zionists and waged a battle to assure Israel's non-inteference in the life of American Jewry, but when Israel put forward a policy position, an intransigent one even, Blaustein felt that he was worthy enough to suggest that Israel could be "persuaded" to change its mind.
Reflect on that.
^
I, along with others, usually note that the Jews suffered through what were, for all intents and purposes, acts of territorial compromises multiple times but did not achieve through them any peace. Moreover, not only were they basically rejected by the Arab side, but those acts of geographical diminution only spurred the Arabs to increase their violence, their terror, their pressuring of governments supportive of Zionism and so forth.
I counted three, basically.
The first was the truncation of the Jewish National Home as a territory on both banks of the Jordan River, as originally agreed upon during the Versailles Peace Conference in January 1919 although the Zionist claim to extend the northern border to the Litani was not finalized.
That resulted in the postponement of the terms of the Mandate in the territories east of the Jordan River which became permanent illegally and facilitated the establishment of an Arab state in Palestine: the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan:
ART. 25.
In the territories lying
between the Jordan and the eastern boundary of Palestine as ultimately
determined, the Mandatory shall be entitled, with the consent of the
Council of the League of Nations, to postpone or withhold application of
such provisions of this mandate as he may consider inapplicable to the
existing local conditions, and to make such provision for the
administration of the territories as he may consider suitable to those
conditions, provided that no action shall be taken which is inconsistent
with the provisions of Articles 15, 16 and 18.
The second, the Partition Proposal of the Peel Commission, was never quite adopted although two years later, the proposal became the 1939 White Paper which reversed the underpinnings of the League of Nations decision to grant Great Britain the mandate ("the establishment of self supporting independent Arab and Jewish States
within Palestine has been found to be impracticable. It has therefore
been necessary for His Majesty's Government to devise an alternative
policy...His Majesty's Government believe that the framers of the Mandate in which the Balfour Declaration
was embodied could not have intended that Palestine should be converted
into a Jewish State against the will of the Arab population of the
country") based on this 1922 truth, that
...recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the
Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country
as written in the preamble.
The third was the 1947 UN Partition Recommendation. That attempted to fix that
Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime
for the City of Jerusalem, set forth in Part III of this Plan, shall
come into existence in Palestine two months after the evacuation of the
armed forces of the mandatory Power has been completed...the boundaries as described in Part II of this Plan are to be modified
in such a way that village areas as a rule will not be divided by state
boundaries unless pressing reasons make that necessary.
I have now read an article by Uri Heitner in Kivvunim Chadashim [New Firections], No. 28, June 2013, pgs. 251-257. In it he quotes Levy Eshkol, when, serving as Israel's Prime Minister in the post-1967 period, in a meeting with Gunnar Jarring on December 15, 1967 and in a unfinished and unsent communication with Amos Keinan of August 18, 1968, who considered there was yet an earlier partition of Israel's territory: when the Sykes-Picot Agreement was done in 1915-16.
That agreement stemmed, in part, from the British pro-Zionist desire:
At a Cabinet meeting David Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer, "referred to the ultimate destiny of Palestine."...In a discussion after the meeting with fellow Zionist Herbert Samuel, who had a seat in the Cabinet as President of the Local Government Board, Lloyd George assured him that "he was very keen to see a Jewish state established in Palestine."
Later,
Prior to the departure of Sykes to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Sazonov in Petrograd
on 27 February 1916, Sykes was approached with a plan by Samuel. The
plan put forward by Samuel was in the form of a memorandum...Of the
boundaries marked on a map attached to the memorandum he wrote:
"By excluding Hebron and the East of the Jordan there is less to
discuss with the Moslems, as the Mosque of Omar then becomes the only
matter of vital importance to discuss with them and further does away
with any contact with the bedouins, who never cross the river except on
business. I imagine that the principal object of Zionism is the
realization of the ideal of an existing center of nationality rather
than boundaries or extent of territory...
In other words, Eshkol, a Labour/Socialist Zionist, was quite well aware that the British had reduced the area of the Jewish National Home already in 1915.
And, as I emphasized in bold above, the Temple Mount was even then a recognized issue.
^
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