“Terrorist raids from Syrian territory multiplied. At no time did they affect thousands of lives or bring about the collapse of public order. But Israel is a close-knit society; personal grief affecting a kibbutz or a suburb invades the whole public mood. We had every cause to regard this Syrian terrorism as an early stage of malignancy. It could not be left alone. Our policy was to make an attempt, however despairing, to dissuade the Soviet Union from supporting the inflammatory policies of Damascus.
…All my efforts to enlist Soviet influence against terrorism were in vain. At first Ambassador Chuvakhin hinted to me that the Israeli victims might have blown themselves up in a cunning attempt to create an atmosphere of Syrian-Israeli hostility. Later he asked me “to give serious consideration” to the possibility that agents of American oil interests and the CIA, disguised as El Fatah infiltrators were laying mines on Israeli roads in order to provoke Israel into retaliation which would, in turn, weaken the regime of Damascus! In reply I asked the ambassador that his government “give serious consideration” to a less sophisticated idea, namely that when the Syrians and the terrorists said that they were laying the mines, they really were. I added that “if it were made clear to the Syrians that the USSR opposes terrorist acts, it is probable that these would be stopped.”
Nothing of the kind was “made clear.” Instead the Soviet Union began to incite Egypt against Israel so as to involve Egypt in the burden of protecting Syria.”
Abba Eban, – Abba Eban: An Autobiography. Random House. ISBN 0-394-49302-8
© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025
