Nasser Requires Tension, Israeli M.P. Tells Seminar

Colonel Nasser is utilizing Arab-Israeli tensions to consolidate his own position and bolster his own prestige, Yigal Allon, M.P., General Secretary of the Zionist-Socialist Party told the International Seminar Tuesday.

Addressing 250 people in Littauer Auditorium, Allen said that Nasser requires a large army to keep him in power. But to justify this publicly, the Egyptian dictator must point to some foreign enemy. That alleged foreign enemy, he said, is Israel.

In addition, Nasser is most anxious to establish an Egyptian hegemony among the Arab states. Only the threat of an outside foe can overcome the mutual jealousies that ordinarily tend to separate the Arabs, so once again, Allon said, Nasser must keep before his would-be allies the image of a threatening Israel.

Two other factors account for the intensity of Nasser's anti-Israeli campaign, Allon said. One is the natural desire to gain revenge for the horrendous losses the Eyyptians have sustained, both in the 1948 war and in the more recent Sinai campaign. Second, Nasser, like the other Arab rulers, maintain their personal positions only by dictatorial methods. They earnestly desire, said Allon, to destroy Israel, "this little show window of parliamentary democracy."

And so, said Allon, the Arabs, led by Egypt, have in effect maintained the state of war that supposedly ended with the 1948 armistice.

Second, they have applied an economic boycott that is so efficient that Israel loses more from this cause than she gains from any single form of foreign aid. To supplement the boycott, the Egyptians have refused to allow Israeli ships to transit the Suez Canal.

The Seminar also heard a discussion of "India Since Independence" by Miss Mukul Mukherjee, of the Indian National Congress, Harish C. Kapur, of the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva, and Narain K. Pant, of the University of Delhi.