The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
With Western governments still trying to appease the expansionist-minded junta in Cairo, Israel may strike first rather than await inevitable destruction Middle East Battle By W Z....
...Everybody, indeed, has been preoccupied with the one issue that did not figure on the official conference agenda...
...Only ignorance of what the Egyptian leaders openly say and write each day could possibly lead one to think that they can be appeased by arms, dollars, or fulfilment of their "national aspirations...
...Any of the almost daily clashes on the Egyptian-Israeli frontier may now turn into a real war...
...Israeli Foreign Minister Sharett has seen Messrs...
...the latest one stands no chance whatever of being accepted by the Arab leaders...
...Arab representatives were not very enthusiastic about this trial balloon because it would compel them to recognize Israel...
...But in practice this would be both undesirable and unnecessary: Moscow may well be able to unleash a Middle Eastern war by supplying arms to one side only...
...Just recently, after an interview with Colonel Nasser, Senator Theodore Francis Green (D.-R.I...
...Ben-Gurion unquestionably had this point in mind when he made his offer...
...John Foster Dulles and British Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan are sadder and wiser men than they were two months ago as far as Egypt is concerned...
...The half-Jew David Lawrence writes in the New York Herald Tribune.," said the Cairo Radio on October 25...
...I am very hopeful of Egypt's future if she follows Nasser's leadership.' As Egypt's intentions become more and more obvious, naive statements of this sort will be less frequent...
...Ambassador Henry Byroade in Cairo and some visiting American Senators still believe otherwise...
...There have been many such offers from the Israeli side, all of which have been rejected...
...War against Israel may seem to be the central problem right now, but to the Egyptian leaders (as their own words testify) it is but one step on a long road, like Hitler's conquest of Czechoslovakia...
...However, the junta believes in pursuing a great-power policy...
...it may well be the last for some time to come...
...They may modify their attitude somewhat if faced by a firm Western demand to discontinue their present fomenting of war...
...On the other hand, Jizhak Gordin, an obscure Yiddish-language commentator on Radio Warsaw, quoted Western newspapers in a broadcast to the United States (!) as saying that Israel under certain conditions may get as much Eastern arms as it wants...
...This rather obvious attempt to misinform public opinion apparently formed at least part of the basis for a dubious State Department statement that Soviet arms had in effect been offered to Israel...
...If quotations from the official Egyptian press and radio were published more frequently in America, it would soon be clear why the West cannot do business with dictator Gamal Abdul Nasser...
...The chances of a Western rapprochement with the present Egyptiai regime have completely vanished...
...This appears to be gradually dawning on John Foster Dulles, but U.S...
...It is interesting to note that, while the Soviet anti-Western propaganda line has again hardened of late, there has been a virtual embargo on Middle Eastern problems in Soviet propaganda on the eve of and during the current Geneva conference...
...They have ended in failure, and the scene has again shifted to the battlefields of the Negev and the Sinai desert...
...The USSR, on the other hand, is a true democracy, with rulers taken from the people through the Communist party...
...A real fascist regime is unlikely to emerge in the near future, for that presupposes a modern state, which does not yet exist in Egypt...
...The other big question mark is Israel's policy now that the Paris and Geneva conversations on the Middle East have failed...
...Cairo divides all American journalists and politicians into Jews, half-or quarter-Jews, and servants of Jews...
...The Soviet attitude remains the least complicated of all, though Soviet and satellite diplomats were loath to utter any opinion on the Middle East at Geneva...
...French policy in the Middle East is not altogether clear...
...With Soviet and British policy on the Middle East reasonably clear, there are two major question marks at the present time...
...Premier Edgar Fame, on the other hand, leans more to the viewpoint of the French General Staff, which holds that the Cairo junta cannot be trusted and that support for Israel would bo in France's best interests...
...Since all the issues had been fairly clear anyway, this does not add up to very much, and the drift toward a Middle Eastern war continues unabated...
...Outside warnings are apt to strike Israel today much as the threat of a fine would a man who was in imminent danger of murder by his enemies...
...declared: "Egypt, like any other state, is perfectly free to obtain arms wherever she wishes...
...The Western foreign ministers have talked to each other and to Molotov about the Middle East...
...These aims are to have a Middle Eastern war, in which Moscow would neither be directly involved nor inte vene, but which would promote the spread of Communism and Soviet influence, especially in the Arab countries...
...British Middle Eastern policy today is almost unbelievably shortsighted...
...This, of course, was a meaningless offer, since no one would need a British guarantee once an Arab-Israeli agreement had been reached...
...With Western governments still trying to appease the expansionist-minded junta in Cairo, Israel may strike first rather than await inevitable destruction Middle East Battle By W Z. Laqueur Paris The Paris and Geneva talks on the Middle East are over...
...It was probably not just another Israeli peace offer, however...
...But no one knows whether a positive Middle Eastern policy will emerge...
...In contrast to the Western powers, however, Russia has always had more than one policy: If there should be no war, the Soviet leaders would be perfectly happy to be consulted by the Western powers on Middle Eastern affairs, take part in decisions, and thus be officially recognized as a major Middle Eastern power...
...But Molotov in his talk with Sharett was completely noncommittal...
...And the) are unlikely to he deterred by Western threats and remonstrances??unless these are accompanied by an offer of substantial military aid...
...Soviet journalists in Geneva suggested a "general Middle Eastern peace conference" in private talks...
...Israeli Prime Minister David Beu-Gurion has proposed a meeting with Arab leaders to discuss either a lasting peace settlement or a limited agreement to insure fulfilment of the armistice agreements and prevent further hostilities...
...The French Ambassador in Cairo has apparently received a promise from Colonel Nasser that Egypt will stop supporting the North African rebels if France backs Egypt against Israel, and he is reported to have partly persuaded Foreign Minister Antoine Pinay to oppose French arms aid to Israel...
...Yet, nothing has been achieved in all these talks except perhaps a "further clarification of the issues," as the diplomats would say...
...Moreover, his deputy in the House of Commons, Anthony Nutting, announced that Britain would not go so far as to guarantee present frontiers in the Middle East, though she would guarantee any agreement reached by Israel and the Arab states...
...It is quite true that, as a matter of principle, Moscow may be ready to supply arms to both sides in the Israeli-Arab conflict if this promotes Soviet interests...
...Most of the members of the Cairo junta are fascists with strong "national Bolshevik" leanings...
...The only paper in the whole Soviet bloc to comment on Sharett's mission to Geneva was the Prague Obrana Lidu (organ of the Army command), which attacked the Israeli Prime Minister's ''audacious'' and "ridiculous" attempt to bring up the Czech-Egyptian arms deal...
...he has also seen Molotov...
...All appearances are that the die has definitely been cast for want of a practical alternative...
...it reminds one of the 1930s, when Western statesmen simply could not understand that it was impossible to do business with Hitler and Mussolini...
...Instead of strengthening the Israelis, as proposed by such Conservative papers as the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator, and thereby making an Egyptian attack more risky and less likely, Macmillan rejected Israeli requests for arms??even items, like Centurion tanks, that had already been supplied to Egypt...
...One is America's stand, which appears to be in a state of flux...
...In their view, Egypt is to lead the struggle of the oppressed peoples of Africa against the West, and they are convinced that Russia \will delegate to them the same status given Communist China in the Far East...
...Here is a typical excerpt from an October 11 broadcast over the Cairo radio (as reported by the British Broadcasting Corporation's "Summary of World Broadcasts"): "United States democracy leaves the capitalists free to rule the country while the masses chase dollars and watch baseball...
...we have no right to influence her in this respect...
...If Communist weapons were delivered to Israel as well, this would make Soviet aims in the Middle East too transparent...
...The London Daily Telegraph commented on the new proposal: "If an attempt to avert war by negotiation is thwarted by the refusal to negotiate, then the government which refuses will be regarded everywhere as the aggressor, whatever the rights and wrongs of past conflicts...
...Indeed, in view of the treaties with Jordan and Iraq, Britain would theoretically have to join a campaign against Israel in the event war broke out...
...This misguided optimism is based on a fundamental misjudgment of the character of the Cairo junta...
...Whereas Nazi Germany had the physical power for an expansionist policy, however, Egypt does not and her present course can only end in disaster...
...On the other hand, a mere reaffirmation of the 1950 three-power declaration guaranteeing peace and stability in the Middle East (which is likely to be made) will not deter aggression, since it does not explicitly promise Western intervention in the event of war...
...However, their disillusionment has not yet yielded concrete results, especially in Macmillan's case...
...Dulles, Macmillan and Pinay several times...
...The Soviet line seems to be to let the present drift toward war in the Middle East continue as long as possible while posing as a disinterested onlooker...
...But such a demand has not yet been made in this form and the Soviet policymakers appear to be convinced that they will be able, for some time at least, to continue the present division of labor: "Geneva spirit" for Europe, and a calculated increase of tension for the Middle East...
...Its credo, as frequently expressed by the London Times and the Economist, is that if a choice has to be made between the Arabs and Jews, it must be the Arabs because they have the oil and everything else...
...The Israelis would ha\e to be angels in human guise??something they definitely are not??in order to wait patiently until Colonel Nasser has completed his preparations to destroy them...
Vol. 38 • November 1955 • No. 45
