D A - CIR C,i J L AT! N G 
YUN Tape  
APRIL 16. 1990  
AMBASSADOR ABBA EBAN 
NEW YORK CITY  
SUTTERLIN. Interviewer 
Table of Contents UN/SA : 
I. UN Role in the Establishment of Israel 
Transition of the Palestine Question to the UN 1-3 
Soviet Policy 3-4; 24-27 
The UN Special Committee on Palestine 4-15 
The Status of Jerusalem 11-15 
UN Constabulary for Palestine 16-20 
US position on Partition 20-24 
The Attitude of Trygve Lie 27-28 
Isr a e l i Attitude toward the UN 28-34 
II. The 1956 Suez War 
Isra e l i Motivations 34-36 
Lester Pearson's Contribution 36-40 
The Understanding on the presence of UNEF 40-43 
Assessment of UNEF 44-45 
III. The Attitudes of US Presidents Toward the UN 
Role in the Middle East 49-54 
IV. Impressions of Kurt Waldheim 54-55 
YUN Tape 
APRIL 16. 1990  
AMBASSADOR ABBA EBAN 
NEW YORK CITY  
SUTTERLIN, Interviewer 
JSS Ambassador Eban, I'd li k e to f i r s t express appreciation 
for your participation in this oral history project, and 
i f I may I would l i k e to begin at the creation, so to 
speak, to use Dean Acheson's phrase, and take you back to 
the special session of the General Assembly which 
convened in A p r i l , 1947. At that time the United Nations 
Special Committee on Palestine was established and I 
believe that you accompanied that committee as 
representing the Jewish agency when i t went to the Middle 
East. Two of the Secretariat members accompanying that 
committee subsequently were awarded Nobel Peace Prizes, 
Garcia Robles and Ralph Bunche. 
Eban Robles received the Nobel Prize for what? He didn't 
get the Peace Prize. 
JSS Yes, he did, I think. 
Eban I'd l i k e to look into that. He was very minor. 
JSS Well, that was exactly my question, how did the committee 
work in terms of the accompanying Secretariat people? Did 
the Secretariat people have very much influence on the 
committee's findings, or not? 
Eban I'd l i k e to say f i r s t of a l l that for the United Nations, 
2 
h i s t o r i c a l l y , this was a very big challenge, i t was the 
f i r s t important problem brought to the General Assembly. 
The United Nations Security Council had to deal with 
crises, especially Iran, and later on Indonesia. But 
here was one of the founders of the United Nations 
ca l l i n g for a recommendation on a major international 
issue with the widest implications. The decision was 
taken i n London in February and i t took us, the Zionists, 
by surprise. The assumption was that the British were 
somehow going to carry on with this responsibility, we 
knew that they were getting impatient through their own 
frustration. And Bevan, who was the central character of 
course, was extremely impulsive. We also knew that many 
people in Britain were asking, why should we British 
continue to carry this charge when no less a voice than 
Winston Churchill, the leader of the opposition, had said 
that we should stop this squalid war against the Jews; 
either carry out the mandate in i t s original terms or 
else hand i t back to the United Nations, or at least get 
the United States to come in instead, but he did use the 
words the United Nations as the successor to the League 
of Nations. Then this obviously was a concrete 
po s s i b i l i t y . Nevertheless, in February when the British 
announced their intention there was surprise and no 
elation because from the f i r s t examination of the 
problem, the conclusion from the Jewish point of view 
3 
was that we would fare even less well under the United 
Nations than we would under the Mandatory Power. And we 
started making the count. 
JSS It came really early, i f I may say. 
Eban It certainly did. The Arabs began with 5 or 6 votes in 
the Moslem countries. We thought that the Latin American 
countries would be dominated by Catholic theology, that 
the Jews ought to be a wandering people forever. Nothing 
to hope for, obviously, from the Soviet Union which 
regarded Zionism as a kind of conspiracy against the 
Soviet Union. Nevertheless i t was a new challenge in the 
open arena and i t was completely different working with 
a multilateral international organization than in a kind 
of exclusive relationship with one power - two completely 
different techniques. Therefore we approached this with 
a kind of innocence, and apprehension, and were surprised 
at the momentum which had then developed. 
The f i r s t meeting was in New York and i t only had 
a procedural purpose, which was to appoint a committee 
which would investigate and then make i t s recommendation. 
It became very substantive not only because most 
countries gave some indication of their predilections or 
tendencies, but because the Soviet Union ignored 
completely the normal procedural limitations and made a 
very dramatic and far-reaching announcement of a change 
in i t s policy. In fact the Soviet Union was the f i r s t 
4 
great power which openly said that Israel should be a 
Jewish state - admittedly i s an alternative to the ideal 
of l i v i n g together. In expressing skepticism about that, 
they said quite openly that i f the two parties cannot 
l i v e together either federally, or as a unitary state, 
then Palestine should be divided into two states. At 
that stage, already the United Nations sprang into the 
headlines as the forum from which a very monumental 
transition was made in the policy of one of the great 
powers. The Soviet Union was persistent and constant in 
this for the next 2 or 3 years. 
The other innovation (and the last occasion on which 
I believe i t was used) was the deliberate attribution of 
mediation to a committee of medium or small powers. 
Since then one i s familiar with great power mediation, 
one i s familiar with individuals l i k e Frank Graham, like 
Gunnar V. Jarring, and others in the Cyprus problem -
usually either Secretariat people or people brought in as 
the servants of the Secretary-General. One i s familiar 
with the Secretary-General, himself, mediating conflicts 
as Hammarskjold did, and as the present incumbent has 
done since. But I don't find anything in United Nations 
history to compare with the idea of eleven member 
nations, medium and small powers. I don't know how the 
idea arose, probably because the super powers didn't want 
to show their hands too early. And these eleven member 
5 
people who were represented - they were not people who 
were central figures in their countries' diplomacy. Here 
and there was a judge l i k e Sandstrom and Rand; somebody 
with colonial experience l i k e the Dutchman, Ambassador 
Blom. Here and there would be a member of the Foreign 
Service l i k e Hood, the Australian. I would say i t wasn't 
the most b r i l l i a n t array of talent one could imagine. 
Few of them had wide international experience and 
therefore the Secretariat became important. And i t 
begins with Trygve Lie who was a very a c t i v i s t Secretary-
General. The fact that Hammarskjold was even more 
ac t i v i s t has tended to obscure this fact but he took an 
extremely assertive view of his role. F i r s t of a l l , he 
was the f i r s t Secretary-General, and therefore would set 
the tone. The three people he appointed were Victor 
Hoo, Bunche and Robles. Stavropoulos was the legal 
advisor. It became clear rather early on that although 
Bunche was Number 2 he was, in fact, the central figure, 
I think, by reason of being an American as distinct from 
being a Taiwan Chinese. Also Victor Hoo was a very 
passive sort of a person. He reminded me of what some 
people were later to say about U Thant. When i t was 
suggested that he was inscrutable, somebody said, well 
there's nothing there to "scrute". I can't remember in 
Victor Hoo any expression of an attitude, while Bunche 
was to be taken very seriously - a decisive, dynamic 
6 
character. I t i s clear that his influence was great on 
people l i k e the Chairman, Sandstrom, and on Justice Rand, 
who became a really dominant figure and was the f i r s t to 
move the committee in the direction of partition. Here 
were the two very effervescent Latin Americans, Granados 
and Fabregal; and the quieter Latin American, Salazar 
from Peru. Obviously to pull that eleven together (and 
you know that in England eleven i s a soccer or a cricket 
team) the Secretariat had to be very active. There was 
a multiplicity and diversity of approaches. For example, 
Granados was palpably anti-British because of the Belize 
problem. The tendency we would have thought of many of 
the others would have been rather one of deference to the 
mandatory power because there was Canada and there was 
Australia at a time when they were only just beginning to 
feel complete sovereignty within the Br i t i s h Commonwealth 
and Holland - these are countries which had taken refuge 
in Britain during the Occupation. And Czechoslovakia was 
s t i l l the Czechoslovakia of Masaryk, not of the 
Comintern. The Secretariat, therefore, in defining the 
agenda and in reaching consensus, was very active with 
Bunche as the Secretary. 
JSS And would you say that they had influence - Bunche in 
particular- on the move toward partition as the 
recommendation of the Committee? 
Eban F i r s t of a l l , partition was already a fashionable 
7 
doctrine because the British themselves had pioneered i t 
in the 1930s. They were under the influence of 
one of them, S i r Reginald (inaudible) , 
whose approach was much more analytical-intellectual than 
i t was diplomatic-political. The area of his discipline 
at Oxford was the conditions in which nations could or 
could not form a state together. Later he was to relate 
that to the Indian problem and was probably the author of 
the Atlee Commission report which led to the partition. 
He was interested in why, i f i t was possible in 
Switzerland, i f i t was possible in Canada and Belgium, 
why was i t not possible in India and in Palestine? Sir 
Reginald thought that the idea that this i s a nation, 
that the Jews and Arabs constitute a single entity and 
can bring themselves to have a single allegiance was just 
grotesque. He once put i t to me graphically. He said 
"I've spoken this morning to Ben Gurion and to Jamal 
Hussein. For you to t e l l me that both would salute the 
same flag or be responsive to the same set of values, 
i t ' s nonsense. And he made this historic statement: the 
idea that there's such a thing as Palestinian nationality 
i s a mischievous pretense. There is no such thing. We 
are quite different from one another and we can only 
therefore maintain a unitary state by suppression, words 
which would become prophetic. In other words, you have 
to deny either one or the other, an expression of 
8 
nationality or a unitary state which can only be 
maintained as a unitary state by increasingly harsh 
repression, something that Israel i s finding out now. 
Because each of these entities was s u f f i c i e n t l y turbulent 
and individualist and particularist, not to be digested 
by the other, neither of them could subdue the other, but 
neither of them could accept the other. So when Gromyko 
said "partition", he was saying something familiar. The 
United States at one stage (through Dean Acheson) had 
said in response to Zionist pressure in 194 6 that one of 
the proposals - in fact the Zionist program - was 
partition. The phrase was (I remember because I had just 
joined the Zionist Secret Service) "a viable Jewish state 
in an adequate part of Palestine". This was a compromise 
of the great Israel idea. And i f that was a Zionist 
proposal i t had been a British one, very eloquently 
defended. The British had never abandoned i t 
intellectually, they just abandoned i t because of 
appeasement. They just didn't want to do what was 
necessary to put i t into effect. And therefore, because 
of Arab interest they just abandoned i t because of 
strategic nationalist egoistic interests. They never 
thought i t was wrong, and in fact tried to revive i t in 
1944 when Winston Churchill appointed a commission under 
the chairmanship of Herbert Morrison, a very senior 
cabinet member. And what they did was to c a l l for 
9 
partition in November 1944. When Lord Hoyne was murdered 
by one of the terr o r i s t groups, Churchill in anger 
abandoned the whole business, the Egyptians hanged these 
two people and the partition committee dispersed. So i t 
wasn't a sudden kind of innovation. And i t was natural 
that when the Committee met (and I think this was 
the influence of the Secretariat) Bunche l a i d down the 
po s s i b i l i t i e s , and at the end when i t came to Geneva this 
was how they analyzed i t : 
What are the options? The whole of Palestine as an 
Arab State, the whole of Palestine as a Jewish state, 
Palestine as a federated entity under a unitary system 
of partition. The discussions were pretty well channeled 
into these four options - I should have also l i s t e d 
continuation of the mandate. In other words, they wrote 
down these options and studied them in the course of 
their business. 
The Secretariat had a very large role. Once they 
defined the nature of the problem (as everybody knows in 
science, scholarship and even in legal judgments) they 
have gone a long way towards narrowing i t down because 
some of the options become obviously unfeasible. 
JSS Mr. Horowitz I believe was your colleague at that 
point. 
Eban That was an important innovation because this was the 
f i r s t time that Zionism was recognized in the United 
10 
Nations system - by appointing two li a i s o n officers who 
were of the Jewish Agency. The United Nations really 
said, well the Jewish Agency i s the representative body; 
they didn't ask i f we had any elections. The reason why 
there was no argument was that the Jewish Agency already 
had an international status that derived from the 
jurisprudence of the League of Nations. The mandate of 
the League of Nations said that there shall be recognized 
or established a Jewish Agency, with which the mandatory 
power shall cooperate. One of the great achievements of 
the Weizmann was not only to get the Balfour Declaration 
- the Zionist Policy - endorsed by Britain but also to 
get a unanimous League of Nations to endorse the Zionist 
program and the status of the Zionist organization. My 
feeling i s that the Secretariat had a great part in 
giving conspicuous place to partition as one of the 
outcomes. 
JSS And you, representing the Jewish Agency, did you at that 
point assume that partition would in fact be the 
desirable recommendation, and did you 
Eban Yes. This was the banner that we carried. We wanted 
that and nothing else. We no longer wanted a 
continuation of the mandate because Ernest Bevin was very 
abrasive toward the Zionist point of view. Nobody 
understood why he was with such radical extremism. It 
can only be understood in terms of individual psychology. 
11 
I believe in the role of the personality of history. So 
we didn't want that to continue since i t would eventually 
have led to an Arab state. We didn't want an Arab state 
in the whole and we didn't want the kind of federal state 
i n which the Zionists would be a rather minor kind of 
province, predominantly under Arab rule. Ben Gurion and 
Weizmann - though they were not always in agreement with 
each other, were the two figures that counted, especially 
with the United Nations Committee. I would say that 
Weizmann counted more than Ben Gurion, even though he was 
no longer in office. That was regarded as the pro-
Jewish, the pro-Zionist thing to do and when Gromyko 
made his statement, i t didn't sound so crazy because i f 
in February we had put the Russians in the negative 
column, they were not a l l i e s . It began to look as i f you 
could get a majority. We really needed the United States 
and we were pretty well home. We knew the United 
States had a bias towards i t although i t was not very 
popular in the State Department. 
JSS Let me ask you.in that connection about the geographic 
divisions, so to speak, and in particular about 
Jerusalem. The recommendation of the Special 
CommitteeCommission with regard to Jerusalem was a 
special one, and I wondered whether that was welcomed, 
accepted at that point, by the Jewish Agency, by the 
Jewish side, by you, or did you make an effort to alter 
12 
that particular aspect? 
Eban It's very strange when you look at the situation from the 
perspective of today how l i t t l e passion Zionists invested 
in that question. And in a very notable book published 
by the I s r a e l i Amos Alon he draws attention to the fact 
that the founding fathers of Zionism had some 
reservations about Jerusalem. For example, Theodore 
Herzl said the capital of his visionary state should be 
in Haifa, and Weizmann used to say that Jerusalem would 
never be truly ours. He f e l t uncomfortable there and 
always wanted to get back to Rehovoth. A l l these 
priests, rabbis, archdeacons and patriarchs, the whole 
thing reeked of incense and he didn't feel comfortable as 
a Zionist. When Ben Gurion made his f i r s t v i s i t to 
Palestine in the early 1900s he didn't even mention going 
to Jerusalem. For him the central facts were the newest 
settlements - the kibbutzim and the moshavim - and 
therefore, the assumption was that the world wouldn't 
give i t up anyway, and that i t would be very good fortune 
that i t shouldn't be given to the Arabs although our 
weapon was the view of the majority. And when the 
Committee said corpus separatum of which the fate would 
be decided later on (which meant that the majority would 
decide after 10 years) i t was accepted with tranquility 
and the Israelis established a l l their institutions in 
Tel Aviv: the Knesset in Tel Aviv, government houses in 
13 
Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv was the capital in the Isr a e l i eyes. 
If that had been l e f t alone, i f the United Nations had 
just l e f t i t alone instead of (in i t s resolution in 1949) 
wanting to impose a government and a trusteeship council 
in 1950, i t could have gone on like that. The man who 
was the f i r s t secretary of the Isra e l i cabinet, Zeev 
Schiff, recorded in his book he never remembers anybody 
in the provisional Isr a e l i government sighing with 
sadness and grief that we didn't have Jerusalem. It was 
kind of a docile acceptance of this fate. The price from 
the I s r a e l i point of view was that i f i t was going to be 
United Nations, we wouldn't have to fight then, and at 
least i t would be safe. It was only when that assumption 
collapsed - the idea of internationalization - when i t 
became clear that the United Nations could not assure 
peace, tranquility or security... 
JSS But by the time the United Nations, as you say, put 
forward the idea of the international administration of 
Jerusalem Israel was in control of the western part of 
the c i t y . 
Eban Yes, of the western part. The fact i s that we had the 
majority there; but as the war developed Jerusalem was 
our weakest point. F i r s t of a l l i t was very easily 
isolated from the rest of the country. If you go along 
the road now and you see some of these rusty old half?
tracks that indicate the fight to get in. It could be 
14 
easily cut off because of i t s geographical position. One 
part in 1948 was under siege. On my television show I 
have an interview with General Herzog who describes how 
we were down to X l i t e r s of water a day to eat and drink. 
It was a very precarious position. I think the fact that 
our military people admitted that i t would be very hard 
to defend the partition state i f you also had Jerusalem. 
There was also of course the precedent of the British 
partition plan of 1937 which also made Jerusalem an 
international enclave. There were even those who wanted 
a Jewish state who didn't envisage giving i t Jerusalem. 
There was so much jubilation about getting the state. 
There were some opponents of partition who said "what are 
you doing without the eternal Jerusalem?" But Ben Gurion 
and Weizmann didn't worry about i t . 
JSS Now these many years later with a l l of Jerusalem under 
Is r a e l i administration i t s t i l l remains a problem, 
though, as evidenced by the recent statement by President 
Bush and the reaction to that in Israel, and so forth. 
Eban Well the powers had really gotten used to the idea of the 
partition of Jerusalem. If in 1967, King Hussein had 
l e f t i t alone, Western Jerusalem would be the capital. 
In my speech in the Trusteeship Council in 1950 I said, 
why not leave i t alone? The Jordanians want to leave i t 
alone, we want to leave i t alone. The Jordanians are 
just as hostile to internationalization as they are to 
15 
Jewish control. If Hussein had l e f t i t alone in 1967, i t 
could to this day be a divided ci t y . Which doesn't mean 
i t couldn't be united some other time. But again, in each 
case the Jewish reaction was one of defiance, "leave us 
alone and we'll leave you alone". When the United 
Nations fa i l e d to establish security then the Jews would 
be perfectly satisfied with Western Jerusalem. The 
endless error on the part of the Arabs, especially 
Hussein, was to be drawn by Nasser into the war and 
bombarding Jerusalem. I experienced that personally and 
have a collection of shrapnel in my garden. The reaction 
was "OK, i f that's the way you want i t then we'll see who 
has the better military organization. In two days 
Jerusalem was in our hands, the seventh of June. 
JSS Mr. Ambassador, the ensuing years, have you ever thought 
or do you think now of an alternate solution for 
Jerusalem in the event there could be a peace? 
Eban What i s completely out of the question i s this very naive 
idea of international administration by the United 
Nations. I explained that in my speech, I think in March 
1950. I know i t was then because in an Isr a e l i paper, 
Maariv. which publishes a column "40 years ago" there 
was recently a headline in which I am denouncing the idea 
of removing the existing administration and appointing a 
governor. I think the United Nations has developed to a 
point that the idea of administering t e r r i t o r i e s and 
16 
population i s completely overtaken. The trusteeship 
system i s obviously purely informal. Somaliland and a 
few colonies were probably the last. The trusteeship 
provisions of the Charter were never really put into 
effect. The idea of what i s called evolution to s e l f -
government and independence didn't happen that way. The 
United Nations does have an important role in 
decolonization by supporting the idea of self-government 
against the idea of colonial rule. But administratively 
i t never brought any opposing kind of system. If i t had 
i t would be governing in a l l kinds of places, even to 
this day, in Hong Kong and God knows where. 
JSS To continue on a somewhat different subject, what was the 
Jewish reaction to the idea that was put forward partly 
by Trygve Lie quite early of an international military 
force to maintain order in Palestine? This was amplified 
later I think in the third session of the General 
Assembly, when Trygve Lie proposed sp e c i f i c a l l y a 
constabulary, an armed constabulary? 
Eban The weak point of the November resolution was what was 
called implementation. Here was a very surgical 
operation being suggested and the assumption was that i t 
would be carried out peacefully. On what was that based 
when one of the parties didn't want to have anything to 
do with i t ? Who was going to keep order? And there was 
something rather unreal in that respect about the 
17 
November recommendation. It was so detailed in other 
respects: the structure of governments and democracy, 
self-determination and c i v i l rights, but not going into 
the question of the enforcement. Of course this reflects 
the general weakness of the United Nations system and 
especially the General Assembly. Later we were going to 
see the attempt to make the General Assembly a surrogate 
for the Security Council in the Uniting for Peace 
resolution. But Trygve Lie was actually completely 
correct, he was in support of the partition - very 
actively. Incidentally, both he and Hammarskjold 
showed a predilection for taking positions. There was 
always a Secretariat view. He was for the partition of 
Palestine, he was for the participation of Communist 
China. Trygve Lie really didn't have this hesitation. 
Just as there were governments which had their position, 
the Secretaries-General had their positions. And usually 
on very sensitive issues which, of course, stirred up the 
enmity of those opposed to i t and the admiration of those 
who agreed. We frankly admired Trygve Lie, he was our 
a l l y . But the idea of a constabulary -
The United States was very apprehensive. In fact i t lead 
to their temporary abandonment of the partition idea 
because i t really meant that they were going to take over 
the Bri t i s h role. What's involved in a constabulary i s 
this: you enforce, you punish, you provoke, you enrage, 
18 
you arrest people and put them in j a i l . The United 
States, one must remember, was very reluctant about 
assuming the Bri t i s h role. They wished to God the 
Bri t i s h would stay where they were. There was a kind of 
contradiction i n American policy which enraged the 
Br i t i s h . On the one hand they maintained an anti-
colonial rhetoric a l l the time and Churchill was 
i r r i t a t e d by Roosevelt. On the other hand, when i t came 
to the point, they wished the Bri t i s h would just get on 
with i t i n Greece, Turkey, Palestine, and Iran because so 
long as they were there, the United States didn't have to 
enlarge the range of i t s responsibilities. By 1947 I 
think the Truman Doctrine for Greece and Turkey was 
already enunciated. But not only was i t unrealistic, 
having a constabulary, even the partition commission 
would not be allowed in. This was a very interesting 
development, the Bri t i s h h o s t i l i t y to partition, because 
logi c a l l y and h i s t o r i c a l l y they were the authors of the 
idea. It took the form of this five-member commission -
Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Bolivia, and the Philippines ? 
and they wouldn't even l e t them go into the area to carry 
out the partition resolution. A l l they did was to make 
a judgment that the Arabs were at fault in defying the 
resolution. They were called the five lonely pilgrims. 
I don't know exactly what Trygve Lie was doing there; he 
seemed to choose the least significant people he could. 
19 
There were much more significant Latin countries than 
Bolivia and Panama - and much more significant countries 
i n Europe than Denmark. At any rate this commission met 
and i t was quite obvious by the end of 1947 that the 
matter would be decided on the ba t t l e f i e l d , not by some 
United Nations enforcement. You must remember that there 
had already been a collapse of the Charter provisions on 
the Military Staff. They were meeting ridiculously every 
month, very high officers - American, Soviet, British, 
French and Chinese. Then after 5 minutes they said "we 
have noted that we have met" and went home. So the idea 
of the United Nations as an enforcing agency had been 
weakened in general and therefore the idea that in the 
particular case of Palestine there would be a United 
Nations constabulary was really logical but unreal. 
JSS And so on the Jewish side you did not attribute great 
importance to the idea. 
Eban It was obviously not going to happen and we would 
obviously have to fight for ourselves. The Arabs 
understood i t . I talked with 
(inaudible) and he said "you w i l l have to fight, and i f 
you don't win, you won't get your state. And we're going 
to try and prevent i t . The United Nations had not bui l t 
the kind of image that would reassure. I don't think 
that there was any serious discussion in Washington or 
Britain. The British were afraid that, in the end i f you 
20 
said constabulary/ they would be asked to stay on. And 
they really didn't want to stay on. I understood because 
i f they had given up India, what's the use of Palestine? 
Palestine was regarded as one of a series of bases. 
Malta, Cyprus, and Palestine were stepping stones on the 
way to India, and i f you don't have India, what's the 
point of having the others? You would be on your way to 
nowhere. If you are going to have a major 
decolonization, these places weren't important enough for 
100,000 Brit i s h troops to be tied down there when the war 
was ended. It was a country which could sustain massive 
losses i f there were a war, but the war had ended. And 
they were getting k i l l e d and the public just wouldn't 
stand for t. Or they said, "what for?" and i t was very 
hard to say what for. It wasn't a source of mineral 
wealth or o i l . I would say i t was l i k e a beehive without 
honey. You've got the stings and you've got nothing out 
of i t . 
JSS Mr. Ambassador, you mentioned that the idea of the 
constabulary might have had some effect on Washington and 
the move away that Washington took from the partition 
idea. You have discussed this in your autobiography of 
course. It remains somewhat mysterious how the United 
States could have switched positions so suddenly without 
any warning and quite contrary to the indication that 
President Truman had given before. I wondered, are you 
21 
s t i l l inclined to attribute this i n i t i a t i v e in the 
Security Council to the influence of the State Department 
on American policy, or have you gained new perception on 
the situation? 
Eban A l l the new perceptions support the idea that in this 
case the State Department was not very careful about 
getting presidential support. Truman made a dramatic 
gesture on the 14th of May. There's a book now in the 
bookstores about General Marshall. Also in my interview 
with Clark C l i f f o r d in the television series the 
virulence of Marshall's opposition to i t surprises me 
very much. He's almost insubordinate. 
JSS To the proposed partition? 
Eban Yes. When the recognition of Israel was made he really 
was insubordinate to his own president. He said " i t ' s 
just p o l i t i c s , and i f you do this I might not vote for 
you". And Truman who revered Marshall said "OK, that's 
one vote less". It had to be fought very heavily. In 
March why they abandoned i t I think was clear. F i r s t of 
a l l they didn't think we were going to make i t . You must 
remember that this I s r a e l i i n v i n c i b i l i t y was a myth. Our 
military situation was very, very bad, and we were going 
to lose, and even our own Haganah leaders were saying 
that i t ' s not sure that we can do this. Here we are only 
fighting volunteers, and not the o f f i c i a l Arab armies. 
They hadn't reached the frontier. Yet Jerusalem was cut 
22 
off, the Negev was cut off. The Arabs had seized points 
of communication, the Jewish state was fragmented. The 
Arabs very cleverly didn't try to defeat the Isr a e l i 
armies but to seize communication points. The United 
States was watching us with skepticism, and that's on the 
local scene. They thought that was going to be a 
massacre and they would have to come in and rescue us. 
They were getting reports from people li k e Marshall, 
General Montgomery, saying in March that the Jews were 
really ( i t ' s a slang phrase) they've got a hot potato 
there. They can't do i t . The French were always saying 
i t was absolutely impossible . On the international 
level the Soviet war pressure was intense, there was a 
prospect of war. Czechoslovakia was invaded, NATO was 
established. People li k e the Pentagon - Forrestal - were 
saying the Arabs were beginning to cancel o i l contracts. 
So there was a feeling that i t was beyond the 
pos s i b i l i t y , beyond Israel's power, to implement 
partition and i t was against American's interest to fight 
for i t . So they said, "let's have another look." The 
other look was a l i t t l e b i t absurd -the trusteeship - but 
at any rate, l e t us halt the dynamism with which the 
state i s established. Truman was surprised because he 
had met Weizmann the day before, and they talked about 
partition, partition, partition. C l i f f o r d i s going to 
illuminate this in my own book. The next morning he 
23 
reads in the paper - and I don't know what happened. I 
think after November 29 Truman thought the matter 
settled and he would go on to deal with other matters. 
But he l e f t the whole thing alone. It doesn't figure in 
history very much between November and March. And then 
when he heard of this, "oh my God, what's happened?" And 
i t ' s then that he very conscience-stricken, about to see 
Weizmann, sent John Rosenmann (Judge Samuel I. Rosenmann) 
to see Weizmann to say " i f you've decided nevertheless to 
establish a state I ' l l recognize i t . I won't take 
responsibility, but i f you'll take responsibility, i t ' s 
OK. So the gap was very strong, but this description of 
the recognition meeting on May 12, this biography of 
Marshall, indicates that the confrontation was so great 
that after the meeting, Lovett, the under-Secretary, 
called up Marshall and said "there's a great danger here 
that there w i l l be a Truman-Marshall r i f t which would of 
course destroy the cohesion of the Truman 
administration". What kind of a chance would the 
Democratic Party have of winning an election i f there was 
a r i f t at that high- level? Marshall was more than just 
a Secretary of State, he was a figure in his own right, 
probably could be president himself. And therefore they 
thought that this declaration of Jewish independence as 
going to be a headache. 
JSS And then in due course apparently.... 
24 
Eban It did show the President was not the President who had 
been elected, that's another matter. He had been the 
Vice-President, he was not the assertive Truman of from 
'48 to '52, a completely different person, saying "I've 
been elected, you just do what you're told". He didn't 
have that sort of approach. 
JSS But apparently then, for his part Truman never told the 
State Department of his conversation with Judge Rosenmann 
or of his intentions. 
Eban Obviously not, because i t doesn't figure at a l l in the 
May discussions. But they must have been suspicious. 
The fact that he recognized the state 10 minutes 
afterwards, i t must have been clear to Marshall that 
he had thought this one out before. I mean that was not 
a decision to be taken in 12 minutes. In other words the 
whole thing was l a i d on before. 
JSS Ambassador, before we leave this period I want to go back 
just a minute to the Soviet attitude which you have 
referred to and which was really very positive. I wonder 
what explanation do you have for the strong and 
consistent support of the Soviet Union at that time for 
partition and for the Jewish state, especially in light 
of the subsequent history? 
Eban You really have to look to the general foreign policy 
considerations of Moscow. They came out of the war 
t e r r i b l y worn with 20,000,000 dead, and suspicious that 
25 
everybody who could invade the Soviet Union would do so. 
The central aim of their foreign policy was to get r i d of 
the bases which surrounded them. It sounds absurd when 
you look at a map, but they had a fear of encirclement. 
Western bases then meant British bases, and would for 
several years. The British had Palestine, the British 
were in the Canal Zone, in the airport in Iraq. Even 
when the Arabs claimed freedom they had no objection to 
having B r i t i s h bases. These kings, they would sign up 
with the British, i t was a tradition. In North Africa i t 
was French and i t was the Soviet objective to shake them 
away, push them away. It explains their aggressive 
policy towards Turkey and Greece. The people more l i k e l y 
to get the Bri t i s h to move out - the Arabs - were 
being h i t on the head very hard by the British for 
revolting against Britain. But in the end they would 
settle for a base. I think the Soviets understood in 
point of fact that at that time the people who were 
saying "get out" to the British were the Israelis and 
that's the only reason for the Soviet policy. 
JSS So i t was a strategic concern. 
Eban Yes, a very important strategic concern which persisted 
for two or three years. In the early 1950's they no 
longer had that concern. The Israelis had done their job 
of getting the Bri t i s h out: now the Soviet policy was to 
win the Arabs over in their cold war against the United 
26 
States. During that period one must stress how right 
they were. They were more constant in their 
assertiveness i n support of Israel than even the United 
States. There were no wobblings, no vacillations. And 
in the end without the Soviet Union this generation 
couldn't have made i t because without their five votes, 
and without their Czech arms, we couldn't have made i t 
either diplomatically or m i l i t a r i l y . 
JSS Do you think that Ambassador Gromyko had very much 
influence in this policy or was i t s t r i c t l y as you say 
strategic, determined probably by Stalin himself? 
Eban I've just read the memoirs of Gromyko. He was the 
servant of policy and did not presume to i n i t i a t e i t . 
Once he was told that was the policy, he played i t very 
strongly and boldly and embraced us. Sentimentally, he 
reminded me of this later on in Geneva in 1967. He 
said, "I raised my voice in the Security Council and the 
GA, read my speech again." He became a Zionist hero. 
But one must say, however uncomfortable i t i s , this came 
from Stalin, the clearest part of whose policy was to 
get r i d of this encircling grip. And while they needed 
to do i t - they even found an ideology - they talked 
about the Zionist ideology as having h i s t o r i c a l roots. 
JSS Even though they had opposed Zionism, and for very good 
hi s t o r i c a l reasons? 
Eban And continued to oppose Zionism in the Soviet Union. 
27 
They gave us no help in the exit of the Jews but 
supported this national struggle with a l l the terminology 
of a people struggling for independence. They attacked 
the Arabs vehemently. Then and afterwards, the Soviet 
Union were either for you or against you. If they were 
for you, they were 100%, i f they were against you, they 
were 100%. The United States always had a pl u r a l i t y in 
their objectives and tried to combine their objectives in 
a single policy. So they were never 100% for you, and 
they were never 100% against you. Nobody could 
completely trust them and nobody could completely despair 
of them. 
JSS But you needed them. 
Eban Oh yes. 
JSS Trygve Lie, as you mentioned, took a very strong position 
i n favor of the partition and in fact he appears to have 
been even more stunned than you on the Jewish side by the 
switch in the American position. He even threatened to 
resign at one point and I wondered, were you in direct 
touch with him? 
Eban Very much, for you see, he was our great a l l y . He said, 
"don't accept this major change." For him i t was a 
tremendous blow to the United Nations. In his book In  
The Cause of Peace he says this was the f i r s t attempt 
since the Second World War to achieve a p o l i t i c a l end by 
aggression. Therefore the United Nations system was 
28 
challenged. It was the f i r s t real action by the General 
Assembly. He thought that i t was making a fool of the 
United Nations and a fool of him personally, that i t was 
destroying the hope of that degree of authority that 
comes under the myth of prestige. It was a terrible 
defiance of the United Nations system by one of the 
founders of the organization and he became the a l l y of 
the Zionist lobby in working against i t . I don't know 
how the views of the other Secretariat people were. I 
thought that Robles was rather cool, the legal advisor, 
Stavropoulos, was somewhat hostile. 
JSS I was going to ask you about that 
Eban I suppose you've been talking with Brian Urquhart. 
JSS Well, Brian was not too much involved at that point. 
Actually the three that Lie seems to have consulted most 
closely at this point were Cordier and Protitch and, 
later, S i r Robert Jackson who was a very young man at 
that point and kind of a troubleshooter for Lie. 
Eban His chief fame was to be the husband of Barbara Ward. 
JSS I want to ask you one philosophical question, i f I may. 
In your book, you refer back to your experience at the 
General Assembly in Paris, I think in 1948, and you say 
that your legal advisor whose name was Robinson did more 
than anyone else to educate us a l l on the potentialities 
and limitations of multilateral diplomacy. And I wonder 
how did you assess at that point the limitations and the 
29 
potentialities of multilateralism and how have you 
changed? 
Eban Well i t was completely new because there had been one 
power that counted, Britain, although i t was recognized 
that the United States would have some influence. There 
was the permanent mandate Commission, comprised of 
learned and somewhat remote academic judges like 
Professor LaParra and Professor Hambro and others. 
Basically we had one central international organization, 
and now we had to worry about Paraguay and Iceland. It 
was quite a change and we had to adapt ourselves to a 
completely new technique and then ask "was the United 
Nations very important? Could i t really change for good 
or i l l the destiny of our history?" The chief feeling 
was that failure would be catastrophic, that i t would 
lead to the loss of what we already had in the League 
mandate and the Balfour Declaration. Success would open 
vistas. It must also be remembered that the United 
Nations at that time had great prestige, I would say the 
f i r s t 5 years were i t s florescence. People took i t very 
seriously. Some of i t s actions were actually 
implemented. We wanted the Soviets out of Iran and they 
got out. And the Dutch l e f t Indonesia. It had, as i t 
were, impressive psychological victories like the 
Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. There was a 
tremendous press corps, with much more coverage than now. 
30 
Hundreds of journalists. For the general debate foreign 
ministers would come for three weeks and not leave New 
York. We would see each other, conduct transactions 
together, l i s t e n to each other's speeches. Today the 
speeches of foreign ministers in the general debate pass 
from the ministerial l i p s into oblivion without even a 
temporary resting place in the New York Times. You 
could pick up the New York Times in 1948 and 1949, and 
there were two large pages with excerpts of speeches. 
There was a great sense of gravity, solemnity and 
importance, decisiveness. Now you can be here in the 
middle of October and not know i f there's a session on. 
New York society was dominated by the United Nations 
session. The Secretary-General would give a dinner here 
and the Mayor a dinner there. And you had Bevan, 
Acheson, Robert Schumann - a l l these luminaries. That 
was the United Nations that was dealing with our problem. 
JSS Yes. Now i f you look at the situation today i t could be 
suggested that there's almost a return of the situation 
in 1945 and that there i s a degree of agreement, a 
consensus among the five Permanent Members of the 
Security Council and this has been reflected in some 
effective actions by the Council or the Secretary-General 
in the past two years. Has this influenced your 
perception of the potentialities of multilateralism as 
reflected in the United Nations? 
31 
Eban Well f i r s t of a l l , the Israeli disillusionment with the 
United Nations i s understandable in the short term which 
i s not a very hi s t o r i c a l view. The United Nations f i r s t 
of a l l was the f i r s t outlet for the Jews from their 
agony. It was a pioneer in familiarizing the world with 
the concept of the Jewish state. On the f i r s t of 
September, 1947 when I went into the Palais des Nations 
to receive the report, I reflected that this was the 
f i r s t time that the words "Jewish state" had been used by 
an international organization. The words had not even 
occurred in the Zionist program. There i t was "the 
Jewish national home" or "the Jewish people in 
Palestine". The Balfour Declaration said the same thing. 
It really put the concept of the Jewish state on the 
international map - legitimizing i t . The November 
resolution may have been weak j u d i c i a l l y ; i t was only a 
recommendation. But i t was very dramatic and historic. 
The Zionists called i t a decision, which i t was not. The 
Arabs called i t a recommendation, and were on stronger 
ground. In fact in February 1948 there was a very 
important Four Power meeting which ruled that the 
Security Council had no obligation to take any notice of 
the General Assembly resolution. In general, GA 
resolutions have merely moral force as noted in Goodrich 
and Hambro. Nevertheless, the November resolution marked 
a turning point in the emotional and psychological 
32 
history of Israel. And then above everything else, 
Israel was admitted to the United Nations, which i s also 
admission to the other 30 agencies on the basis of what 
i s called sovereign equality. In other words our status 
i s equivalent to that of the United States or Soviet 
Union. These are services to Israel that completely 
transcend a l l the pinpricks of the resolutions later on. 
And then the peace-keeping in 1956 which gave us free 
passage in the Gulf of Aqaba and the a b i l i t y to put up 
the pipeline piecemeal over the years in the South; and 
resolution 242 which legitimizes to this day our presence 
in the t e r r i t o r i e s , subject only to the establishment of 
peace. The work i t ' s doing on the Golan Heights. United 
Nations was a great success while i t lasted. What went 
wrong was that i t was abandoned, as I said, very 
precipitously by the Secretary-General. I'm not sure 
that Hammarskjold would have bowed so easily as did U 
Thant. 
JSS I have a question on that 
Eban I don't believe Trygve Lie would have either. But anyway 
there i s this obscene anti-Zionist resolution which i s 
completely ineffective in any legal sense. It doesn't 
commit anybody to anything. I think i t i s really 
perpetuated because Israel perpetuates i t . 
JSS You mean that "Zionism i s a form of racism?" 
Eban Yes, otherwise we would agree, so much other nonsensical 
33 
stuff has appeared - I'm not sure i t ' s wise to make 
i t the anniversary of this resolution. Nobody cares 
about i t . I t hasn't affected anyone's relations with us. 
I'm rather perturbed. The idea of revoking resolutions 
has never occurred in an international agency. If you 
put i t up and f a i l I think i t ' s nonsense. 
JSS Mr. Ambassador, we were talking about multilateralism 
and i t s prospects. 
Eban It has had a tremendous effect. I don't think i t should 
be l e f t to any single power with i t s strategic emphasis 
to make these breakthroughs. The other point i s that 
once you enter the multilateral sphere you enter a world 
in which there i s also a certain s p i r i t , a kind of 
id e a l i s t i c rhetoric. There was the stupendous transition 
- and the United Nations inaugurated i t - from the lowest 
point in our Jewish history. Of course the price was 
and this was because the Zionist leadership had 
the genius to define i t s aspirations in concrete terms 
which were violent and they did not want to share 
sovereignty, to share territory. I have said on many 
occasions, and I would say again, that i f the Zionist 
movement had then said "we want 100% of the territory 
and to be sovereign", the number of countries that would 
have given support would have been zero. The world would 
have organized i t s e l f successfully to prevent our 
emergence and therefore sharing territory and sovereignty 
34 
with the Palestinians was bu i l t into our history. And 
that's why i t ' s proving so d i f f i c u l t to emerge from i t 
and that's why the idea of having 100% territory and 
sovereignty has won no victories anywhere, not even in 
the United States. Not one nation out of the 160 has 
reall y abandoned i t s pa r t i t i o n i s t approach. 
JSS Later I want to come back to this in questions about the 
Secretaries General and the role of the Secretary-
General, but I'd lik e to move on now i f I could to the 
1956 war. As you have pointed out in your books, Ben 
Gurion stated that the major objective of the Suez 
undertaking from the Israe l i point of view was the 
achievement of a peace treaty. My question i s , was this 
understood at the time by the British and French? 
Eban No, because that was not really the objective. A l l of 
this i s covered in several books and in Ben Gurion's 
memoirs where he states very r e a l i s t i c a l l y that the short 
term objectives were to break the blockade of the Suez 
Canal and the Gulf of especially Aqaba. If you have 
Elat, you don't care about the Canal because you have 
your independent link; and to give such a blow to Nasser 
that we would be l e f t in peace in the South. If he f e l l 
- well, obviously i f Nasser should f a l l , there would be 
no one with whom to make a peace treaty. Once we had 
succeeded I put up the slogan "not backwards to 
belligerency but forwards to peace" . Now we had an 
35 
opportunity here; dictatorial power has been broken; 
there's now a chance that even people who objected to i t 
I think I said that we might wish to have 
reached this situation with less sacrifice and tension; 
but having reached i t , we mustn't go back. So the idea 
that this was a chance to get a real settlement was then 
accepted by people l i k e Lester Pearson and others who 
wouldn't have approved of what we did. Foster Dulles 
became a l i t t l e b i t interested in i t later on. He became 
very anti-Nasserist in 1958. Therefore precipitous 
withdrawal was not very intelligent from the viewpoint of 
the United Nations. But here we encountered a Secretary-
General who f e l t , on the contrary, there were two 
principles involved: one was that you had to respect 
existing j u r i d i c i a l situations. The armistice system was 
the existing j u r i d i c i a l system which, incidentally, the 
Israelis had signed onto. Secondly, i t would be a great 
blow i f something as unauthorized as the Anglo-French 
Is r a e l i attack were to be rewarded, and therefore either 
i t shouldn't be rewarded at a l l in the case of Britain 
and France or, in the case of Israel, i t should only be 
rewarded on that matter where Israel had a strong case. 
You have the memorandum of Dulles to me in February 1957 
that we were right about the illegitimacy of the 
blockade, we were right about illegitimacy of the 
fedayeen raids. So Israel should only be satisfied on 
36 
those matters on which the right was on i t s side - on 
these two issues. Ben Gurion always j u s t i f i e d the action 
- whether this i s retrospective or not - saying " a l l I 
had in mind were these two things". There i s some 
evidence that even in advance when we met with a group 
called Maporen who were against going to war, he said 
"we are not going to keep the Sinai. We just want to get 
a breakthrough to the East and we want to give Nasser a 
kind of spanking so he really ought to leave us alone. 
JSS So the Canal was a very important factor? 
Eban The Canal, really the Straits of Tiran, much more 
because they provide an Isra e l i outlet and i f you have 
that and you also have a land connection, you don't 
really need the Suez Canal, 90% of which i s o i l t r a f f i c 
and we would be getting our o i l from Iran or from the 
Gulf. 
JSS You just mentioned your friend, Lester Pearson. A l i t t l e 
later Dean Acheson in describing his experiences at the 
United Nations said that, while he liked Lester Pearson, 
that there were two people in New York that gave him 
problems. One was Krishna Menon and the other was Lester 
Pearson. This was with regard to Korea. But I wondered 
i f you could give your perception at this point of 
Lester Pearson's influence at that time in the movement 
toward peace-keeping and the resolution of the Suez War. 
Eban There grew up in the United Nations system a gallery of 
37 
people who were fundamentally Western in their allegiance 
but who didn't believe that the United States had a 
monopoly on wisdom. There was Canada and there was 
Brazil. There was India which, with i t s representatives 
attending, could not even be described as pro-West, and 
the Scandinavian countries (especially Sweden and Norway) 
- at that time, Lange - I remember these people. It was 
kind of a third force within the United Nations basically 
oriented to the West whose members thought there could be 
independent i n i t i a t i v e s . It came to special expression 
in Britain when they joined the movement toward relations 
with Communist China. So the United States was not 
really the father of a great obedient family. Largely I 
think for personal reasons, countries l i k e Canada and 
Sweden developed an idea that the United States ought to 
be listened to with deference but not with d o c i l i t y . On 
the question of Israel, for example, Canada was really 
embarrassed because the two countries which came f i r s t to 
Canada had gone off on the Anglo-French expedition. On 
the other hand the j u r i d i c i a l element in the External 
Affairs was very much against that sort of going off on 
a tangent alone. But Pearson in his speech said he was 
quite willing to chastise where deserved but frankly this 
didn't mean that the status quo was right and shouldn't 
be disturbed and that way building something. 
Peace-keeping was to be the f i r s t , and that naturally was 
38 
a tremendous development in the United Nations system 
although frankly he worked very much with Bunche on that. 
Bunche already had his Nobel prize for the Rhodes 
Armistice which, incidentally, i s a very great United 
Nations achievement. The United Nations, after a l l , i s 
the author of these Rhodes agreements which have, in 
fact, defined the Israeli-Arab partition since they were 
devised. We are s t i l l l i v i n g within 
JSS In a very pragmatic sense 
Eban Yes, except that the salients on the Golan Heights and in 
Jerusalem have developed within the system l a i d down by 
the armistice agreements. Because the word "armistice" 
sounds modest, i t i s not always rated as one of the great 
achievements of the United Nations system. The fact i s 
that in those days, which bears out what I said before, 
i f a conflict had to be resolved, the natural thing was 
to see i f the United Nations could resolve i t . So they 
both deserve their Nobel prizes. They come to expression 
on the Is r a e l i when the United States tried on 
trusteeship. It, after a l l , was defeated by Western 
countries - Australia, New Zealand, Latin America, 
Canada. They didn't want a contemptuous revocation of 
the partition resolution. There were people l i k e Karl 
.... and .... (inaudible) who were in a rage about i t . 
Then on the Korea cease-fire, Acheson says, Pearson - I 
would say that Gladwyn - Jebb and others were his 
39 
opponents on the matter. Jebb, who conquered the 
microphone, used to make speeches in direct c o l l i s i o n 
with Acheson. Pearson really represented one sort of 
United Nations zealot who, without surrendering their 
devotion to the Western cause because they were a l l NATO 
partners, didn't see why the United States should have 
a l l the responsibility, especially as they said we, 
Canada and certainly Britain, certainly Sweden, we're not 
inhibited by the Jewish lobbyists. This was one of the 
rationalizations of why they should be allowed to develop 
positions as Europe i s doing now. 
JSS And from your point of view, his thinking was not as 
restricted by the moral principles you mentioned that 
was very evident in Hammarskjold's approach to the 
problem? 
Eban Exactly. The fact i s that i f the process i s leading to 
something negative, i t doesn't mean that the best thing 
to do i s put the egg back in the shell - i f i t ' s not a 
good egg, i t ' s not a good situation. I think they 
accepted the example I used to give that when there has 
been a f i r e , you don't reconstruct the exact proximity of 
the gas to the f i r e exactly as i t was before. This was 
my attempt to ridicule Hammarskjold's conception of 
reconstitution of a situation, which was not valid. 
Pearson was more enlightened than Hammarskjold because he 
was willing to join i n the castigation of what was done 
40 
but this didn't mean to say we shouldn't try to do better 
than what existed. 
JSS I'd l i k e to go ahead now to Dag Hammarskj old's efforts to 
get a status arrangement with Nasser on the presence and 
departure, or non-departure, of UNEF. F i r s t of a l l I 
want to ask i f you were familiar with the texts of the 
memoranda that Hammarskjold agreed to with Nasser on the 
status of the UNEF. 
Eban I don't remember being shown the documents. I do 
remember talks with him in which he said that we didn't 
need to worry, and i t ' s not true that they can just walk 
out any day. This was not r e a l i s t i c . But of course 
everything has to be l e f t a l i t t l e b i t in the a i r . He 
liked leaving things in the a i r - words like 
"assumptions", "hopes", "presumptions". In 1957 he 
worked up the typical compromise under which the maritime 
powers could get up and say they assumed that the 
following would happen and the Egyptians would just s i t 
there and say nothing. They never really committed 
themselves to i t . On the other hand, as time went on we 
went deeper and deeper into the assurance that the United 
Nations force can't just be taken away when there i s 
explosion and violence. What happened, as some feared, 
was that he always gave me and others the impression that 
would not happen. When I said in the Security Council 
that i t was l i k e the f i r e brigade going away at the f i r s t 
41 
smell of smoke or abandoning the umbrella just as i t 
begins to rain. I could see that U Thant was very 
disgruntled by that. But I could see many glances of 
approval around the table. Even the United States 
didn't much l i k e what U Thant was doing, not that you 
could have denied Egyptian sovereignty. The United 
Nations couldn't really compromise on the principle of 
Egyptian sovereignty; but i t could have compromised on 
the pragmatics of how you reacted. It could have said 
"let's wait a minute. If the United Nations's going to 
go out, we'd just l i k e to know what's going to happen." 
JSS One of the questions though that did repeatedly arise was 
whether U Thant should have taken the matter to the 
General Assembly, and i t has been expressed that was the 
anticipation of Dag Hammarskjold. I think in your 
autobiography you have quoted the memorandum that was 
published after Hammarskjold's death which I think you 
interpret as meaning that this was Hammarskjold's belief 
and intention. 
Eban I s t i l l have the feeling that he would not just have.... 
think U Thant just lost his nerve, or perhaps as a Third 
World leader he was more sensitive to t e r r i t o r i a l 
sovereignty of the members. I think that both Lie and 
Hammarskjold said, "Oh I agree to accept the principle 
the United Nations has to move out but you have to give 
us time to find out what w i l l succeed the condition. 
42 
Since the Egyptians needed their territory back, they 
would have compromised in a way that later on they 
accepted. Even now in the peace treaty they have 
accepted the massive demilitarization of the area. I 
think that he gave up much too easily. 
JSS So what you're thinking i s that i f the matter had in some 
way been referred to the General Assembly this would have 
at least given a delaying time. 
Eban Yes. I have always found the Security Council a more 
rational body. I don't know what would have happened in 
the Assembly at that time. I think they might have 
appointed a committee to negotiate with the Egyptians 
the conditions for withdrawal - not with 150, but with 8 
or 10, or they might have asked the Security Council. I 
think there should have been a negotiating process, not 
just an order - not just say O.K, we are asked to leave, 
we w i l l leave. Of course I know his rationale was that 
he didn't have a choice. Some of them were going anyway, 
Yugoslavia and India were going whether he said so or 
not. Recently in the peace-keeping machinery sometimes 
countries have walked out because they're tired. In one 
case Canada got out and Ireland came in. That's 
rationalization. The other rationalization was that 
Nasser was in a very angry mood and he would have thrown 
the United Nations out anyhow, physically. I wonder i f 
he would have done that when he was trying to get 
43 
sympathy for himself. If he had started k i l l i n g -I don't 
know who - Norwegians? 
In the end though from the perspective of Israel, you 
feel that this decision and the withdrawal of the United 
Nations had an adverse impact in terms of Israel's 
interests? 
Yes. F i r s t of a l l i t certainly committed us to a war 
that was very bad. What I have said in the 1967 speech 
i s true. I t undermined our interests and created the 
dangers that we would not otherwise have faced. It put 
our national security in the gravest possible p e r i l . And 
the United Nations - the idea that you could create a 
vacuum l i k e that - i s irresponsible. Internationally, 
and certainly in terms of Israel i t had the psychological 
effect of creating skepticism in Israel about the United 
Nations (inaudible). I think i t undermined the 
importance of the United Nations in the world as such 
because there was a certain s t a b i l i t y and because the 
United Nations was the custodian of that, and the United 
Nations abandoned i t s trust. 
One specific question I wanted to ask you. In 1957 Dag 
Hammarskjold established a study group which included 
Anatoly Dobrynin to examine and draw conclusions from the 
UNEF experience. Did you have contact with Dobrynin when 
he was in the Secretariat? 
Who appointed the study group? 
JSS Hammarskjold. 
Eban Hammarskj old? 
JSS And the report has been published. It points to the 
weaknesses as well as the strengths. Hammarskjold wanted 
to play down somewhat any euphoria about what peace?
keeping operations could do. 
Eban And this i s before the fiasco of U Thant? 
JSS Yes, this was.... 
Eban I wonder why he had reason to look at i t then? 
JSS Well, Brian Urguhart has talked about i t on tape 
actually. It's not in his book, but he gives that as the 
reason why Hammarskjold established this group. In any 
event, you personally, i f you were doing an assessment of 
the UNEF experience, how would you come out with i t ? 
Eban The UNEF experience was a success story. The fact i s 
that i t enabled Israel to create a new dimension in 
international communications. It sounds fantastic i f I 
say we became a two-ocean country. It's at the root of 
our success in Africa and Asia in creating that great 
network of development agreements, of access, i t gave us 
independence in our o i l t r a f f i c , i t made Elat a center of 
o i l t r a f f i c which I think i t s t i l l i s , in spite of what's 
happened in Iran. It was very viable and that's why i t ' s 
tragic that i t was brought to an end. It could have 
created a new belief in the United Nations as a 
stab i l i z i n g influence in international p o l i t i c s . There 
45 
was not a single shot fired in anger in Gaza, although 
the Egyptian administration came back. The Eqyptian army 
didn't come back. 
JSS So you would conclude that this was a very persuasive 
i l l u s t r a t i o n of what a peace-keeping operation can do, a 
multilateral operation? 
Eban Except that i t s effects were diminished by the skepticism 
about i t s durability. 
JSS In bringing i t up-to-date, how do you assess that in 
terms of the present world situation? There are 
increasing demands now, a c a l l for peace-keeping 
operations of a different type. 
Eban I'd say in general that theoretically ( I'm going to have 
a talk with P6rez de Cuellar in connection with my book) 
the present context, i f glasnost, i s not going to be 
k i l l e d by Lithuania ( i t ' s quite a setback) - i f glasnost 
and perestroika stay alive, that's a situation in which 
an international organization ought to come back into i t s 
own. It seems to be the real arena in which the new 
s p i r i t can be expressed of planetary concern. The 
functional organizations ought to have much more freedom. 
The Secretary General ought to become a much more 
important figure. I don't know how he sees that but in 
theory we ought to be going back to the era of the f i r s t 
five years in which the United Nations was really the 
central arena for international diplomacy. Also this 
46 
fact: I think the American administration i s less 
un i l a t e r a l i s t than i t was in Reagan's time and Bush also 
has a United Nations background. I haven't seen i t 
developing, perhaps i t ' s too early because the Assembly 
w i l l only start meeting again for the f i r s t time since 
perestroika in September. I don't know i f the Sec Gen i s 
thinking of how to put a stake for the United Nations 
into this new situation. 
JSS Well, I can t e l l you that he very much i s . Would you 
give your thoughts on this particular change because 
between the f i r s t five years and now, the nature of 
conflict has altered. There are not many wars l e f t that 
are between states, between national armies. They tend 
to stem now from societal roots and that raises a 
question. You were mentioning just now the functional 
organizations, the greater freedom and so forth. Do you 
see the United Nations or multilateral organizations in 
general having the capacity to deal with this type of 
conflict which i s l i k e l y to characterize the world? 
Eban Here we come across one of the paradoxes of the foreign 
aid situation. The preference of the donor powers i f 
they give this money away, and especially i f they have to 
persuade their parliaments, i s to give i t away under 
their own flag. That's why I said in my "New Diplomacy" 
the tendency in the United states i s to want to wrap i t s 
own flag around i t s e l f where i t i s active, and therefore 
47 
the disproportion between what i t ' s prepared to do in i t s 
b i l a t e r a l programs and the relatively small amount i t i s 
prepared to devote of i t s foreign aid to international 
agencies. I don't know whether that w i l l change or not. 
What makes me a l i t t l e pessimistic i s , as I've said, that 
monies come not from governments but from parliaments, 
and parliaments tend to be proprietary. They go to 
Nigeria and see that the United States has b u i l t some 
great system of irrigation. They want the stars and 
stripes on i t . They don't want the blue flag. Whether 
an American administration could be disinterested enough 
to allow the international agencies to take 
responsibility? If i t should? No. One reason that 
recipient countries are more congenial to accept aid from 
an international agency than from a foreign power i s 
because then i t ' s free from any suggestion of domination 
- of "Washington runs you", etc. An international agency 
can't dominate you. One reason why the I s r a e l i programs 
were successful was that recipient powers knew they could 
throw us out on five minutes notice. They weren't sure 
at a l l i f aid was coming from the Soviet Union or China. 
They didn't want this Yankee imperialism, especially 
in Latin America. So i t would be intelligent for the 
United States [to use multilateral agencies]. This 
really meant that the glasnost thing has to take hold and 
come to expression in the United Nations and i t depends 
48 
on what w i l l happen in the f a l l . That's why I'm very 
perturbed that in the f a l l they may only be discussing 
how to get the Soviets out of Lithuania, or how to get 
the Lithuanians to be less impatient. It's a tragic 
thing, i t ' s emotional. I saw i t yesterday on television. 
It's a question whether the summit w i l l be torpedoed as 
was the case with the Eisenhower-Kruschchev summit. 
JSS If the United Nations were to be able to play a more 
decisive role in bringing assistance in order to head off 
the type of conflict that stems from social and economic 
causes, i t would require a greater coordination by the 
United Nations, I think, of the functional agencies. 
Based on your experience, which was, of course, not so 
directly related to ECOSOC, do you have any feeling that 
the United Nations i s capable of doing that? 
Eban ECOSOC has been rather weak since each agency has become 
rather l i k e the Roman governors, with independent Much 
more depends on who are the directors-general. There i s 
the misfortune that UNESCO degenerates under this African 
gentleman. You might have to have an African president 
when there isn't one available, but i t ' s got to be an 
African. I don't see any escape from that. To take the 
most powerful of them - the World Bank and the 
International Monetary Fund, they're pretty independent 
organizations. I would say even their dependence on the 
Secretary-General was rather weak. He doesn't interfere 
49 
much. There's never really been a Secretary-General who 
saw the functional agencies as his main terrain. They 
are a l l captivated by the conflictual diplomatic 
conditions. 
Well this i s an area where he has no power. 
Yes. In other words their link i s very weak. It's a 
very loose federation of agencies. I think that whoever 
i s the Director General of UNESCO counts for more than 
anything in the center. 
Mr. Ambassador, to go ahead again to a rather broad 
question. In your positions, you were able from the 
beginning to work with and observe four American 
presidents very closely, a l l of whom were directly 
involved in the Middle Eastern situations, and in the 
United Nations' role in the Middle East. I wondered i f 
you could give your perception, not of the presidents as 
individuals, but of their attitudes toward working with 
the United Nations, through the United Nations, in terms 
of the Middle Eastern situation. 
It has followed a curve. It was highest in the early 
days and then i t declined. Truman's attitude toward the 
United Nations was very respectful, Eisenhower's was 
almost deferential. I used to say that in Eisenhower's 
theology, between the President of the United States and 
God, there was an intermediate level, the Secretary-
General of the United Nations. Remember Foster Dulles' 
50 
speech about Suez and how he said more or less that our 
devotion to the United Nations transcends our devotion to 
our a l l i e s and our strategic interests? I think i t ' s the 
only occasion when you could prove that a major power 
gave the United Nations predominance over i t s own 
egotistic interests. Although we didn't like i t at the 
time, there was a degree of s e l f - s a c r i f i c e because 
frankly, strategically they ought to have supported the 
Br i t i s h and French. People like Acheson said, "what the 
h e l l are you doing?" Kissinger says i t to this day. If 
he had been around he would have supported the British 
and French, or at least prevented them from being 
humiliated because the humiliation of Britain and France 
injured American interests. It created a bi-polar world. 
Suez created a bi-polar world instead of a diverse world. 
Then you come on later in the scene and Johnson 
became very disillusioned by his experience in 1967. He 
said to me, "I w i l l go through the motions of going to 
the UN but I would be strongly surprised i f they do 
anything". And his reference was to U Thant who was a 
pain in the neck to him. Goldberg also began to regret 
that he hadn't stayed in the Supreme Court. He had the 
idea that in that job he was going to have a preponderant 
role in American foreign policy. He found, as Stevenson 
found out, that that isn't true. It's not true, f i r s t of 
a l l , because of physical absence. You're not in 
51 
Washington. The fact that you're a member of the Cabinet 
and the Security Council doesn't count very much. I see 
now the United States has expressed that in the 
appointment of a career officer, no longer these pundits 
l i k e Cabot Lodge, Stevenson, Moynihan, and Kirkpatrick. 
Johnson became really i r r i t a t e d by the attitude in 1967 
and Nixon developed the idea of great power p o l i t i c s , of 
a Council of Europe. The direct American-Soviet line -
that was the important thing. There was no disposition 
to, say, l e t the United Nations take something over. 
Carter should have had the disposition but in the end he 
found i f there was a massive and important conflict to be 
resolved, i t had to be resolved outside the United 
Nations system. Moreover, the United Nations had 
spoiled i t s credentials with Israel. That's why Camp 
David had to be done as an American 
(inaudible). The Geneva Conference was an opportunity 
but Kissinger was so apathetic about international 
organizations that he stole the UN flag, hijacked i t , and 
went off on his own and came back only for the signature. 
JSS If I r e c a l l correctly that's the only time the Secretary-
General was present, opening the meeting. 
Eban That was arranged at the beginning, incidentally, because 
Israel was worried and Kissinger couldn't get us to go 
there u n t i l he gave a letter saying the Secretary-General 
would simply set the b a l l r o l l i n g . Actually in 
52 
Kissinger's time he also got Waldheim to accept that role 
i n the Indo-China Conference. The Secretary-General 
became l i k e a monarch, breaking the bottles to launch a 
ship, but after that the ship goes over to somebody else. 
JSS Why did Israel have any reservations about the Secretary-
General? 
Eban Because in the United Nations we had this b u i l t - i n 
majority against us and therefore the less answerable to 
the UN, the better for us. There was even some problem (I 
thought i t was a great success) when we got Golda [Meir] 
to agree to the Soviet chairmanship of the Conference. 
Later on Perez t r i e d to revive i t by accepting the idea 
of the five permanent members inaugurating the 
Conference. Even then the United states was very dubious 
about i t because the Soviet Union would be involved. I 
don't know what they say now. Peres said yes because i f 
you had that arrangement, Israel would be the predominant 
military power and the United States would be the 
predominant p o l i t i c a l power. Nothing could happen that 
America and Israel didn't want to happen. 
JSS There was the brief period at the beginning of the Carter 
administration when there was a successful consultation 
between the United States and the Soviet Union. 
Eban Yes, i n October. Yes, but even then you couldn't c a l l 
that a United Nations framework. Carter believe, and he 
believes now ,1 believe, we w i l l have to come back 
53 
to that and that i t i s much more logical now that the 
Soviet Union has a much less acrimonious relationship 
with Israel. 
JSS This gets away from the United Nations but just to 
divert, there i s the theory that this move by Carter to 
reach an understanding with the Soviets was one of the 
things that prompted Sadat to make a move toward Israel. 
Do you agree with that? 
Eban Oh yes, because he was much more fanatic about the Soviet 
Union than we were. He had broken relations with the 
Soviet Union. That was his enemy. So i f they are going 
to the Soviet Union, then we go to Israel instead of the 
Soviet Union. And, in fact, he dictated that there 
should be a unilateral American mediation. He accepted 
Carter very well, as America, as the United States, but 
not the Soviet Union tagging along. In the disengagement 
agreements with Egypt in 1974, both Kissinger and I would 
have accepted the idea of signing that in Geneva, or 
rather of conducting the discussions in Geneva. I think 
in the end we did sign the agreement in Geneva. 
JSS It was signed in Geneva. But you mean the disengagement 
on the military front at kilometer 1 where there was a 
United Nations presence. 
Eban Yes, but very muted. The military signature was in 
Geneva. The fact i s that by actions, chiefly I must say, 
by the GA rather than by Security Council action; the 
54 
Security Council has always been more central. In fact 
I would say, the Arabs would say, i t has gone the other 
way because the United States would veto anything to 
which any I s r a e l i objected. If Sharon were to say we 
have to capture Damascus, the United States would veto a 
resolution expressing criticism. I'm not sure i t ' s very 
good for us. The United States i s passionately against 
these settlements, both nationally and Bush personally. 
They won't allow the Security Council to act and the 
reason they give i s , not that they're against these 
resolutions which the other 14 accept. They're for i t but 
they don't want to give the Security Council the idea 
that i t ' s back i n business. Here I see they have a 
point. If you allow the Council to make one 
condemnation, then every three weeks i t w i l l condemn some 
action of Israel. 
JSS You think that's the stronger influence than the 
consideration of the American Jewish community? 
Eban I think that's part of i t . When they have l e t things 
pass, nothing te r r i b l e has happened. They did abstain on 
something to do with the settlements. In general, of 
course, they say quite correctly, " i t ' s the Arabs' 
fault". They [the Arabs] formulate their texts in such 
a way that there's no balance and they're rather stupid 
in not allowing some third party to formulate texts in a 
way that isn't pro-Arab - some of the Europeans. It's 
55 
always a resolution which i s f u l l of anti-Israeli 
rhetoric. Then the American representative says, "we 
agree that Israel shouldn't have done this, etcetera, 
etcetera, but we can't vote for the text. It's not 
balanced. I t only condemns violence that emanates from 
Israel, and not violence which, either before or after, 
emanates from them. The PLO i s becoming a l i t t l e more 
sophisticated. Once they start getting Sweden or 
somebody else, or even Britain for that matter, to 
formulate a resolution, they might get i t through. 
JSS Another 242. Mr. Ambassador, going now from presidents 
to Secretaries-General. You have recorded your 
impressions pretty well in the book of the work of the 
f i r s t Secretaries-General. You didn't get around to Mr. 
Waldheim, I don't believe. 
Eban One i s a personal reason. I never served with him 
really. I t was a period when my work was in the 
parliamentary thing and not so much the executive branch. 
Also I once said of him, and I'm afraid he got to hear 
i t , that his career refutes the theory that nature abhors 
a vacuum. On the other hand, my friends who worked with 
him said that Israel had no cause for complaint, l i k e 
Chaim Herzog. I think he was very helpful with the 
Soviet Union. He came to Israel and he had a l i t t l e 
mishap. I gave him lunch or dinner and he said how nice 
i t i s to be here in this capital of Israel and the Israel 
56 
television celebrated i t too early so we more or less 
revoked i t by changing i t to the spi r i t u a l capital of the 
world. Whatever has arisen around him since then had no 
expression whatever during his Secretary-Generalship. In 
a way we are rather grateful because President Herzog has 
been against this witch hunt, as he ca l l s i t . Also my 
own feeling i s that a l l one can say i s that he was a 
Wehrmacht office r . 
57 
NAME INDEX 
Acheson> Dean 1, 8, 30, 36, 38, 39, 50 
Alon, Amos 12 
Ben-Gurion, David 7, 11, 12, 14, 34, 36 
Bevan, Aneurin 2, 30 
Bevin, Ernest 10 
Blom, Nicolaas S. 5 
Bunche, Ralph 1, 5, 6 , 9, 38 
Carter, Jimmy 51--53 
Churchill, Winston 2, 8 , 9, 18 
Cl i f f o r d , Clark 21, 22 
Cordier, Andrew 28 
Dulles, John Foster 35, 49 
Fabrega, Jose Isaac 6 
Forrestal, James 22 
Garcia, Robles 1 
Goldberg, Arthur 50 
Graham, Frank 4 
Granados, FNU 6 
Gromyko, Andrei 8, 11, 26 
Hambro, Carl J. 29, 31 
Hammarskj old, Dag 4, 5, 17, 32, 39-41, 43, 44 
Herzl, Theodore 12 
Herzog, Chaim 55' -56 
Herzog, General 14 
Hoo, Victor 5 
58 
Hood, J.D.L. 
Horowitz, David 
Hussein, Jamal 
Hussein, King 
Jackson, Robert (Sir) 
Jarring, Gunner V. 
Jebb, Gladwyn 
Kirkpatrick, Jeane 
Kissinger, Henry 
Lange, Halvard M. 
LaParra, E. de 
Lie, Trygvie 
Lodge, Henry Cabot 
Lovett, Robert A. 
Marshall, George C. 
Masaryk, Jan 
Meir, Golda 
Menon, Krishna 
Montgomery, General 
Morrison, Herbert 
Moynihan, Daniel Patrick 
Nasser, Gamal Abdel 
Nixon, Richard 
Pearson, Lester 
Peres, Shimon 
Perez de Cuellar, Javier 
5 
9 
7 
14, 15 
28 
4 
38, 39 
51 
50-53 
37 
29 
5, 16-18, 27, 28, 32, 41 
51 
23 
21-24 
6 
52 
36 
22 
8 
51 
15, 34, 36, 40, 42 
51 
35-39 
52 
45, 52 
59 
Protitch, Dragoslav 
Rand, Ivan C. 
Rosenmann, Samuel I. 
Sadat, Anwar 
Salazar, Joaquin E. 
Sandstrom, A.E.F. 
Schiff, Zeer 
Sharon, A r i e l 
Stavropoulos, Constantin 
Stevenson, Adlai 
Thant, u 
Truman, Harry S. 
Waldheim, Kurt 
Ward, Barbara 
weizmann, Chaim 
28 
5, 6 
23, 24 
53 
6 
5, 6 
13 
54 
5, 28 
50, 51 
5, 32, 41, 44, 50 
18, 20-24, 49 
52, 55 
28 
10-12, 14, 22, 23 
60 
UNITED NATIONS ORAL HISTORY PROJECT 
ORAL HISTORY AGREEMENT 
(Interviewee) hereby agree to 
participate in the United Nations Oral History Project, sponsored 
by the Yale University Institution for Social and Policy Studies, 
and consent to the recording by magnetic audio tape of -fan^. 
interviewXej with i^ffiVy?<?3 So i ~ f t v jj'Ut (Interviewer) 
on (Mv^f i t . (Date) at Vi-^ A Ywk ~~ (City) , 
jVn <f. J (State) . 
It i s my understanding that a typed transcript w i l l be made 
of such tape(s) and returned to me for any necessary corrections. 
I hereby agree that i f for any reason I have not returned the 
transcript with my corrections to the Institution for Social and 
Policy Studies within three months of the time i t was sent to me, 
the Project Staff may edit the transcript and make i t available for 
research and other use as provided here below. 
In the understanding that the tapefs^and transcriptase w i l l 
be preserved at the United Nations and made available for 
his t o r i c a l , scholarly and (as deemed appropriate by the United 
Nations) public information purposes, and that copies w i l l be 
placed on deposit at Yale University for research and study, I 
hereby grant, assign, and transfer legal t i t l e s and a l l li t e r a r y 
rights i n the tape^fsl/and t r a n s c r i p t ^ K to the United Nations. 
However, i t i s agreed that neither the United Nations nor Yale 
University w i l l publish or authorize publication of the 
tr a n s c r i p t ^ s ^ o r any part thereof during my lifetime without my 
written permission. 
(Interviewee) (Date) 
^ ( I n t e r v i e w e r ) ^ ( D a t e ) 
(For the Institution of Social 
and Policy Studies) 
(Date)