To: The Prime Minister
From: The Foreign Minister
Your conversation with the New York Times representative and the announcement you gave him regarding
not resuming work on the Jordan channel were made know to me only afterwards.
The line taken by the Foreign Ministry, followed by our
embassies in Washington and Paris, was intended to keep the interested parties in a
state of tension owing to the threat of our readiness to resume work at any
moment, beginning March 1st, and to try to gain something both in America and
in France in return for our accepting their beseeching and our agreeing to
postpone the renewal of work for some time.
The public announcement regarding our preparedness to hold off must
break the tension and annuls our chances of gaining something in return.
At the very hour you gave the interview to Bigart the
French Ambassador was visiting Emile Najar and handed him a memorandum in which
the French Government strongly beseeched us to postpone the renewal of work
while pointing to its support for us and especially to the sale of the Mystères. Najar said nothing to [Ambassador Pierre] Gilbert regarding our readiness
to wait – with the intention of continuing to bargain and trying to utilize the
card of the Jordan channel for creating diplomatic pressure in order to get
additional Mystères. It is not difficult to
imagine Gilbert's astonishment upon learning that the government had, in
fact, already decided earlier to
postpone work and that, moreover, this was made known publicly. The situation
thus created would made it impossible for him to understand the logic by which
the conversation with Najar had been conducted.
The same goes for Washington. There too a pressure was
put on us which, for the time being, we have not succumbed to. There too we had
chances of "selling" the postponement in exchange for this or that
return. There was no logic, in my opinion, in our giving away this weapon, to
say nothing of making this known by a public announcement.
I leave it to you as the Prime Minister to conclude, in
view of this experience, whether or not a greater measure of coordination
between us regarding publication of our positions in foreign affairs is
necessary.
Moshe Sharett
SOURCE: ISA FM 130.02/2446/11.
