The Mid-East Explosion

...But the large-scale move, which involved huge risks despite all the military and diplomatic precautions taken, was also prompted by many other things, including: -The Jordan-Syria-Egypt pact, which brought the armies of the three Arab countries under the command of Egyptian Army chief General Ab-del Hakim Amer in the event of a war with Israel...

...The night before it began, in fact, fedayeen had attacked at Sde Boker, Premier David Ben-Gurion's kibbutz retreat, and several other points...

...Officially, the Foreign Ministry announced that Israel's military operation was merely a "security measure to eliminate Egyptian fedayeen [suicide commandos] in the Sinai Peninsula...

...suffering constant toll of life among its citizenry...

...pressure and in a bid for Arab-world friendship, allowed its dwindling position of strength in the Middle East to be further weakened by agreeing to evacuate Suez...

...Regardless of how much one might like to believe this, the simple truth is that Israel can present strong legal as well as moral justification for its action...

...Almost immediately afterward, King Hussein, in a move to placate the Nasser-inspired forces challenging his reign, had to order the removal of John Glubb, the famed British general, as head of Jordan's Arab Legion...

...At Secretary of State John Foster Dulles's insistence, they convened the first London Conference...

...The latter can present no legal defense...

...For it came when: -The Soviet Union was preoccupied with insubordination in Poland, a revolution in Hungary, and attempts to prevent similar uprisings in its oilier satellites...

...In Amman, Jordan's capital, Cairo organized and financed a wave of riots that threatened that country's very independence when London attempted to draw it into the Baghdad Pact...

...The Suez situation was typical...

...embattled, blockade-besieged Israel alone among the nations faces the battle for its security anew with every rising dawn and with every approaching nightfall...

...The restraining hand of Washington persuaded them to act otherwise, but in the months that followed they had cause to become more convinced than ever that their initial decision was the proper one...

...bombarded by threats of neighboring governments to accomplish its extinction by armed force...

...They saw this as a threat to their national existence...

...But it is known that, at an October 17 meeting with Eden, French Premier Guy Mol-Iet contended that the way to strike at Egypt was through Israel...

...Six French nationals of Algeria who had studied terrorist tactics in Cairo were also found aboard...

...The latter move failed at the time, but a few weeks ago pro-Nasser forces scored a decisive victory in the Jordanian elections...

...They had no right to assume their "police" role...

...Inevitably, shifts in U.S...

...The bulk of Egypt's forces had been shifted to the Suez Canal-Nile Delta area to cope with any invasion that might come from British-French forces massed on the island of Cyprus...

...Since then, Nasser has been hacking away at Britain with feverish intensity...

...Cairo radio has been beaming a steady stream of incendiary propaganda to French trouble spots in North Africa, keeping nationalist passions high and thus blocking any chances of peaceful solution of the area's difficulties...

...The White House, which at first (according to James Reston in the New York Times) "rang with barracks-room language that had not been heard at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue since the days of General Grant," had begun to see the proverbial "silver lining.'' The present situation cannot, however, be realistically appreciated without some knowledge of what led Britain and France—as well as Israel —to lash out at Nasser just now...

...On October 16, in the waters off the frontier between Morocco and Algeria, the French intercepted the Athos, a ship out of Alexandria laden with arms sufficient for more than 1,500 men...

...subjected to savage and relentless hostility...

...policy led to further losses for them...

...In any event, the Israeli strike was cautiously timed...

...Middle Eastern policy, punctured Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's dreams of Arab empire, cleared the way for Anglo-French occupation of the Suez Canal, and joined the U.S...

...exposed to penetrations, raids and assaults by day and by night...

...In the month prior to the assault, in fact, 28 Israelis were killed or wounded...

...Here Dulles proposed the formation of the Suez Canal Users' Association, which would bring economic force to bear on Egypt...

...They had suffered defeat after defeat at the hands of Egypt's dictator, and following Washington's counsel they had refrained from exerting any serious pressure on him...

...But the death of a young farmer, blowing up of a military patrol or wounding of a kibbutz family was no cause for risking war...

...I personally think Suez's importance is overrated and its nationalization, as such, was not as serious as some might like us to think...

...For a detailed account of the implications of this incident, see George B. Boswell's article on page 16.?Ed.] Just about two weeks ago, the extent of Nasser's anti-French campaign was again demonstrated...

...In practical terms, however, their decision can certainly be understood...

...No dramatic incident had occurred that could explain so drastic a step...

...The knowledge that those who vowed to "drive Israel into the sea" might eventually learn to use these arms and would no longer be easy to rout...

...and the USSR together in the frustrating role of impotent onlookers...

...overshadowed by a new menace of irresponsible rearmament...

...A desire to give the country a chance for a normal, peaceful existence once and for all...

...Soviet Premier Nikolai A. Bul-ganin had sent a note to President Eisenhower urging that U.S...

...This is the crucial difference between Israel's move and that of Britain and France...

...Nor can it be judged without an awareness of the part played by Washington since 1954...

...Egypt's blockade of the Suez Canal—UN efforts notwithstanding?and Gulf of Aqaba, which had seriously hampered Israel's economic development by cutting her off from her natural markets...

...The United Nations General Assembly had gone through a historic series of noon-to-dawn sessions which vainly called for a cessation of hostilities, and had finally approved formation of an international police force to be drawn from the small powers exclusively...

...If he could boastfully abrogate a widely applauded agreement which granted him full control of the canal in 1968, he could also decide some day soon to cut off the flow of their life-blood, oil...

...In this instance, however, many are inclined to agree with Sir Winston Churchill's observation that world peace and the Middle East "will surely benefit from the [British] Government's resolute action...

...To what extent the three nations actually did coordinate their moves probably will not be known for some time, if at all...

...All efforts to negotiate with Nasser proved unsuccessful...

...To be sure, it would be hard to find much to praise in Anglo-French colonial activities of the past or even the present...

...Nasser's next move was an offer to give Jordan the same amount of money and supplies it was receiving from England if it would join in his plans...

...The United States was in the final week of a Presidential election campaign that was likely to moderate its criticisms and temper its actions...

...and Soviet air and naval forces move in to halt the conflict...

...Quite obviously, the Israeli attack had been used to carry out threats made after July 26...

...The feeling that the West, while willing to go to any lengths to secure Arab approval, did not feel it had to be terribly concerned about how this affected Israel because the latter could never cast its lot with the Communists...

...France, of course, has also been a Nasser target for some time...

...Upon his return to Washington, Dulles gave the plan an interpretation completely at variance with that of London and Paris which, from their point of view, rendered the Users' Association useless...

...Exasperated, the Western Allies felt that the time had come for them to follow their own policies...

...On one day, in protest against the arrest of five Algerian rebel leaders, the French Embassy in Amman was sacked and burned to the ground, four French-sponsored schools in Aleppo, Syria were attacked, and Cairo was the scene of a Government-approved general strike...

...The Egyptian dictator's severest blow against the two Western powers, of course, was his July 26 nationalization of Suez...

...By now, these should have been considered part of the natural hazards of living in the young state...

...What is more, they decided that the time had come for them to accomplish this task...

...This made the chances of direct Soviet intervention remote and eliminated the danger that Israel might be accused of lighting the fuse of a third world war...

...Nevertheless, when news of Israel's invasion was received the world was stunned...

...It is not surprising, therefore, that Prime Minister Anthony Eden's explanation of the Anglo-French action in the House of Commons as a move "to separate the belligerents and to guarantee freedom of transit through the canal by the ships of all nations" was greeted with skepticism...

...Paris and London further recognized that Nasser would continue to plague them both if he wasn't cut down to size or eliminated altogether...

...This has been particularly obvious in Jordan, where the British have had close and longstanding ties...

...Israel had seized the entire Sinai Peninsula, an area three times its own size, and opened the waterway leading to the Negev port of Elath by routing Egyptian forces in key positions overlooking the Gulf of Aqaba...

...At that time, Britain, under U.S...

...The constant state of tension that has cursed Israel's existence from birth was perhaps best summarized by its Ambassador to Washington and chief UN delegate, Abba Eban, in his midnight address to the General Assembly on Thursday, November 1: "Surrounded by hostile armies on all its land frontiers...

...Indeed, if Eban were pleading his country's case before an impartial jury rather than before delegates of the General Assembly who were sitting with preconceived judgment, a negative answer certainly would have been given to his concluding question: "Can anyone say that this long and uninterrupted series of encroachments did not constitute in its totality the essence and the reality of an armed attack...

...More tangibly, the Egyptians, flushed with a wealth of arms secured from the Kremlin, have been supplying Algerian nationalist arsenals...

...Indeed, there is much evidence to suggest that it was set up for this purpose...

...This, though, is a subject for another article...

...One week later: -British and French forces were invading Egypt after a week of bombing that country's airfields and military installations...

...The global significance of Israel's swift penetration of the Sinai Peninsula on Monday, October 29 is illustrated by its repercussions...

...Then the second London Conference was called...

...If there was no "collusion" between England, France and Israel, certainly there was mutual understanding...

...True, a total of 465 Israelis have been killed or wounded as a result of raids into their territory from surrounding states...

...The Cairo-Moscow arms deal, which had turned Egypt into a funnel that freely supplied Israel's hostile neighbors with weapons and other equipment...