Word: aqaba
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Unconditional Conditions. With the injection of Gaza and Aqaba into the debate, the optimist began a war of nerves that was to last for six tense and confusing weeks. Nobody mobilized or signed up "volunteers" in embassies around the world, but diplomats frantically shuttled about, going without sleep, drafting and redrafting documents that never reached public print. Chiefs of state engaged in heavy cannonading in a rivalry for favorable world opinion...
...statesmen centered on two small, sun-scorched strips of Middle Eastern territory, and the discussion was phrased in noble concepts-peace, justice, the dignity of man, national interest. Around Gaza, a huddle of houses and hovels and hapless refugees, and the western shore of the Gulf of Aqaba. an obscure waterway commanded by coastal gun positions, the world's great and small nations maneuvered, found areas of agreement, disputed-friends against friends as well as against enemies...
Here stood Israel's leonine David Ben-Gurion, vowing that Israel's tough little army would not give up conquered Gaza and the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba until it got guarantees that Egypt could not again use these bases to attack Israel or strangle her commerce. There sat Egypt's deep-chested Gamal Abdel Nasser, shirtsleeved before his nine telephones, a hard-pressed, unpredictable man who was hearing the arguments with unaccustomed mildness...
...situation was that Israel was refusing to get out of the last of its conquered territory (the Gaza Strip, the Gulf of Aqaba shore) without specific guarantees, and that the Arab-Asians were demanding U.N. sanctions.*If Israel did not withdraw, said Ike, there would almost surely be a new guerrilla war that might stoke up a general war, in which the Russians might once more be tempted to intervene. If the Israelis did not withdraw and the U.N. did not act, the U.N. would be more or less through. As for the Arabs, Ike pointed out that they could...
Israel's government, Ben-Gurion said, welcomed Washington's willingness to dispatch U.S. ships through the Gulf of Aqaba to establish the right of "innocent passage," but did not consider this sufficient protection against subsequent Egyptian interference with Israel's ships-"as she openly proclaims her intention to do." For this reason, Israel would withdraw from Aqaba only if replaced by U.N. Emergency Force troops that would remain along the Gulf's shores until "peace is concluded with Egypt or until some other reliable and effective arrangement is made to this end." As for the Gaza...