ISRAEL: Promise in the Promised Land?

Israel struck oil last week, right on the fringe of the Negeb desert and only six miles from the Gaza strip. Rushing to the spot from Tel Aviv, Premier Designate David Ben-Gurion clambered down into a pit and dug to watch the first flow of the stuff. “Mazel Tov [Congratulations],” he murmured to the drillers. “When can we start to use the stuff?” Development Minister Dov Joseph hurried off by car to the Weizmann Institute of Science 25 miles away with a pop-bottleful to be assayed.

The finding: better than average quality, the same type as in Iraq’s big fields. When the drill casings were pulled off, the gusher spurted 60 feet into the air. The whole nation rejoiced over the discovery. Israelis hugged each other in city streets.

Newspapers sold out extras in minutes.

Farmers traveled to the scene of the strike from nearby desert settlements just to dip their hands into the oil spreading out over the reddish earth. “Blessed be this day,” a group of them prayed. In faraway Manhattan, Israeli oil stocks boomed (see BUSINESS).

One of the main reasons the Israelis fought so hard to conquer the barren Negeb in the Palestinian war was that they were sure they could find oil there.

Last week’s strike climaxed 18 months’ drilling by the Lapidot Oil Co., part-Israeli, part-U.S. The company spudded in, ironically, almost precisely where the British-owned Iraq Petroleum Co. abandoned a test drilling in 1947 after going down 3,500 ft. The strike promised a major oil field, sufficient at least to save Israel $50 million* in oil imports a year, weaken the Arab states’ blockade and diminish the country’s dependence on the West. For the first time since their state was established, Israelis now saw the means to economic independence in their grasp. This produced an almost immediate stiffening of political independence as well.

“Now that oil has been found in the Negeb, we will never leave,” said one Israeli. At any rate, the Negeb’s boon was not going to make any easier U.S. Secretary of State Dulles’ effort to persuade Israel to cede some of the desert to the Arabs in return for a peace treaty.

* A bill presently paid for Israel by the West German government as part of the reparations to atone for the Nazis’ savagery toward the Jews.