Referee in the Middle East

...Nor was it meant to be a permanent occupying force...

...By a process of elimination, then, it would thus seem that the responsibility has devolved upon the United Nations...

...General Burns provides no satisfactory answer to the question of whether there is someone capable of calling a halt to this bizarre spectacle...

...Even worse, orders were given by the late Dag Hammarskjold that the UN troops were not to become embroiled in hostilities with the armed forces of either side, should not fire on infiltrators, and could resort to force only in self-defense...

...Yet, despite his pessimism, at one point in the narrative—when classifying the UNEF staff officers according to their nationality—Burns allows the battleweary reader to contemplate the unlimited potential for averting strife and encouraging understanding...

...hatred is being kindled for tomorrow's generation within the poverty and indolence of the scattered Arab refugee camps...

...Confronted with a very real UN financial crisis, resulting in part from the annual deficit incurred in UNEF'S upkeep, it becomes quite pertinent to begin considering the advisability of withdrawing UNEF altogether and reconstituting it as a mobile force ready to intervene quickly in the event of an international emergency...

...In fact, while the UN contingents are encamped along the southern frontier, the present danger appears to be far to the north in the Sea of Galilee area where the Jordan River is to be diverted...

...Now, as before, huge sums of money are diverted from domestic investment to finance the spiraling arms race...

...It has become impossible to point the finger of guilt at any one of the parties to this deadly confrontation...

...With the passing of time, the amassing of volumes of accusations and justifications, charges and counter-charges, and the entanglement of fact and emotion, the line between guilt and innocence is no longer discernible...

...Far more important than UNTSO, however, was the creation of the UN Emergency Force...

...Britain and France simply no longer have the influence they once possessed in the Middle East...

...Having served as Chief of Staff of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) along the tense armistice borders in 1954, and as commander of the much-heralded United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) from November 1956 to December 1959, he is indeed in an authoritative position to offer an "inside" account of UN efforts at keeping a tenuous peace in the Middle East...

...Burns' accounts of the magnitude of UNEF'S difficulties with logistics, and the ways in which they were dealt with, will serve as a manual for any similar future operations...

...In short, the fact that the Egyptian-Israeli border is tranquil is due not so much to the mere "presence" of the UN troops as to the desire of the conflicting nations on either side of the line that it be so—for the time being...

...Both the Soviet Union and the U.S...

...Reviewed by AARON S. KLIEMAN Contributor, "Journal of International Affairs" In keeping with the AngloSaxon tradition that old soldiers do not fade away until they have added their personal footnote to history, E. L. M. Burns, the Canadian General and international public servant, has sought to present his reflections on one particular phase of the 15-year-old ArabIsraeli conflict...

...The decade-and-a-half since Israel's attainment of statehood has been marked by radical changes within all the countries of the Middle East...

...The question is: How many more Suez-like crises will be necessary before this lesson is made sufficiently clear...

...But thus far the UN police force is both immobile and impotent...

...Modernization is being pursued through either gradual evolution or sudden revolution...

...economic blockade and boycott are in force, to the detriment of all concerned...

...are involved in a struggle for power and prestige in the area, and neither is prepared to bring all its force to bear in effecting a solution...

...But above all, one is appalled at the number of lives which have been —and probably will continue to be —consumed in the course of the "hot and cold" war in the Middle East...

...But through his detailed and comprehensive survey of the limited authority and unlimited obstacles encountered by both UNTSO and UNEF, General Burns has unwittingly provided legitimate grounds for suspecting that too much confidence in the UN's type of peacemaking machinery is also unwarranted...

...The Truce Supervisory Organization has proved totally ineffective, for its success hinged entirely upon the desire of either or both sides in the Middle East conflict to utilize its facilities...

...Even a cursory view of the contemporary Middle Eastern scene highlights the fact that the positions of the antagonists do not appreciably differ from those which existed in 1948 or, for that matter, from those which led to the Suez crisis of 1956...

...Not allowed to deal with serious complaints, not equipped with more substantial powers of persuasion, UNTSO, under the command of a man who confesses to having been "sufficiently naive," was quickly reduced to a sounding board for the statements of righteous indignation from both sides, and to a calculating machine for tabulating the latest tally of casualties or destruction...

...Unlike its predecessor, UNEF, established to "secure and supervise the cessation of hostilities" occasioned by the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt and the simultaneous occupation of the Sinai Peninsula by Israeli forces, did succeed in fulfilling its limited objectives...

...even this, however, was quickly relinquished to the Egyptians...

...To be fully effective, even with such negligible enforcement authority, there should be UNEF units patrolling all along the border...

...After reading Between Arab and Israeli one cannot help but come away with a feeling of revulsion: revulsion at the tragedy of it all, at the waste of resources, at the folly of Israeli patrols inviting trouble by conducting exercises at the very edge of the demarcation line, at the inexcusable policy of the Nasser regime (alleged by Burns to be in constant fear of Israeli aggression) in continuing to exhort its listeners throughout the Arab world to prepare for the "second round" against Israel...

...Yet the most crucial issue for insuring the stability and cooperative development of the region—peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors—remains essentially unchanged, thus virtually guaranteeing a violent eruption of hostilities sometime in the future which could obliterate all the first fruits of progress...

...In presenting this tale of bloody borders and clashing nationalisms, General Burns has certainly not offered an optimistic appraisal of the future of the Middle East...

...The unsatisfactory status quo lingers on...

...The leaders and statesmen of Israel and the Arab nations, responsible to electorates and domestic pressures, have inadvertently maneuvered themselves into positions of intransigency, and are either unable or unwilling to recede from the brink on which they find themselves now...

...If nothing else, the roster of UNEF officers demonstrates that men of good will can surmount the obstacle of diverse origins and pool their talents in furthering the cause of world peace...

...Its business was not to negotiate peace but merely to see that Israel and the Arab states observed the provisions of the several armistice agreements concluded in 1949...

...It continues to exist at the sufferance of the host country, Egypt, who, together with Israel, is under no special obligation to provide for its upkeep...

...Although Burns seeks to give "an interpretation of the motives and attitudes of the two sides in the conflict," his book suffers from his inability to maintain the self-imposed standards of clear, detached analysis...

...One of its primary tasks was to govern the Gaza Strip...

...But despite these flaws he manages to make several telling points which have needed saying for quite a while...

...In addition, his style is ponderous...

...It was, after all, conceived as an emergency force, and the emergency has long since passed...

...and the USSR alike as basic to "the peaceful settlement of the disputes," are unheard of...

...But Burns' book prompts one to wonder if perhaps UNEF has not by now reached a point of diminishing returns...

...and negotiations between responsible leaders of both sides, acknowledged by the U.S...

...In depicting his own role, Burns paints a pathetic picture of a little man with a UN armband shuttling to and fro in his white plane or jeep between the Foreign Ministry buildings in Cairo, Amman, Damascus and Tel Aviv, attempting to eke out concessions or promises from the implacable and unbending representatives of the various nations —now pleading for an immediate cease-fire, now working laboriously over the wording of a sentence in order not to arouse the ire of either side...