a
history
the
sundcy
deuly
of the
Mideast conflict
I t#a
Number 32 Night Editor: Dave Chudwin
Sunday, October 11, 1970
44
Reaping
of
the
bitter
fruits
a
20th
century
tragedy
Editor's Note: Arab vs. Israeli, Palestin-
ians vs. Hussein, the death of Nasser -
these are today's headlines in the troubled
story of the Middle East. What brought
that area to the conditions that exist now?
This is a background article by a writer
who has traveled extensively in the Middle
East and studied its history).
By WILLIAM RYAN
Associated Press Correspondent
FOR THE United -States, incalculable stakes
now ride on educated guessing about the
Arab East with its baffling politics, volcanic
passions and unpredictable explosions.
The area, long agitated and frustrated by
internal feuds and external foes, has been
freshly jolted by the lossof Gamal Abdel Nas-
ser, a leader in whom many of the 100 million
Arabs found a glittering hero image. That
will make educated guessing even more dif-
ficult.
The guessing must be done against the back-
drop of a highly complicated past in territory-
which has made history longer than any other
on earth. The real roots of today's troubles are
in antiquity. Even the modern chapter of the
tumultuous story dates to the, last century.
The Middle East is the crossroads of the
world and mny nations have stakes in what
happens there. It cradled three great religions
- Jewish, Islamic and Christian. It has been
ruled by Egyptians, Jews, Assyrians, Persians,
Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Turks, Britons and
French. For 3,000 years it has known little
peace.
The basic, conflict today grows out of a
claim by Zionist Jews that they have a right to
a national homeland in an area from which
they were driven 18 centuries ago by the Ro-
mans. The Jews of the Diaspora-Dispersion-
traditionally call the land.Zion and "the House
of Our Life." Through all the hundreds of
years of their exile, Jews dreamt of Jerusalem.
Frightful anti-Jewish pogroms, notably in
Russia and Poland, a century ago rekindled a
Jewish passion for the dream of Zion. Toward
the turn of the 19th century there appeared
a figure seeming like one of the prophets of
old. A tall, black-bearded man from Vienna
named Theodore Herzel published "The Jewish
State." With that book the modern Zionist
movement was born and a year later its first
congress called for establishment of a Jewish
state in Palestine. By 1904, when Herzel died,
Jewish immigration had begun along with Jew-.
ish purchase of land in Palestine.
In 1917, as America was entering W o r 1 d
War I, hard-pressed Britain, seeking the help
of world Jewry, promised in the Balfour Dec-
laration that after allied victory London woulld
support the Palestine national home. Britain
already had a secret covenant with France
for postwar division of the Arab East into
spheres of influence. The Ottoman Empire of
the Turks, which had ruled Arabs. through
four centuries, was tottering. An Arab rebel-
lion on the allied side was in progress, led by
Sherif Hussein of Mecca in exchange for Brit-
ish promises of a return to the ancient glory of
the Arabs.
Hussein expected a united Arab nation.
The British reneged. After the war the League
of Nations confirmed the allied award of a
mandate over Palestine to Britain. The French
drew a mandate over Syria and Lebanon.
By the end of World War II underground
Jewish groups were well-organized and arm-
ed, confident in the knowledge that the Arabs,
lacking technological European background,
would be no match for them organizationally
despite a great disparity of numbers.
Some Jewish organizations in Palestine
mounted a terror campaign against the British
administration which eventually would force
the British hand. The situation of Jews in
a Europe'overrun by Hitler's Nazis was so des-
perate as to arouse compassion all over the
West. The United States, as the war ended in
Europe, was asking Britain to let 100,000. Jews
into Palestine.
Sherif Hussein's sons had to settle for two
minor kingdoms, one in Mesopotamia to be
called Iraq, the other in an artificial country
-east of the Jordan River. The British carved
this out and called it Transj ordan. Faisal I
was installed in Iraq and Abdullah in Trans-
jordan. Their hold on popular allegiance rest-
ed on a claim to direct descent from the Pro-
phet Mohammed. Many Arab intellectuals felt
betrayed.
The area was becoming enormously more
. important to the West all the time. Oil had
been discovered in abundance in 1909, with a
promise of vast resources, practically on t h e
threshhold of the West's automotive age. The
Suez Canal, completed years before, was a
strategic trade line between West and East, a
development then of incalculable importance.
Traditional strong-power politics manipulated
the Arabs' destiny.
Britain's open-door policy brought a flood
of Jewish immigrants to Palestine. Arab re-
sentment exploded in riots and, finally, in
the mid-1930s, full-blown rebellion. Alarmed,
London announced a White Paper pledging an
independent Palestine state within 10 years
with a Jewish minority not to exceed 30 per
cent of the population. Jewish influx and land
purchase would be severely restricted.
WORLD WAR II interrupted the squabbling.
Jews put aside their resentment of the
White Paper and fought on the British side-
meanwhile storing up arms for the future. But
the promise of the White Paper had averted
an Arab revolt, which London had greatly
feared.
The Holy Land respite was brief. In 1943
the Jews, finding themselves frustrated, began
attacking the British administration in Pales-
tine. One cause of their anger was the situation
of refugees from Nazi-occupied Eastern Eur-
ope. Trying to reach Palestine, one leaky old
tub jammed with Jews was 'refused British
permission to dock at a Holy Land port and
subsequently sank off Turkey: At this point
the World Zionist organization evidently de-
cided that moderation did not pay. More vio-
lent methods aimed to induce British co-
operation.
What erupted in Lebanon was not quite
revolution, not quite civil war, but certainly a
mass of confusion involving much shooting
between pro-Nasser and progovernment forces.
It was infecting the entire area and the United
States, defying a threat of confrontation with
the Russians, mounted an efficient military
intervention. That re-established order in Le-
banon but the sparks it generated set off
bloody revolution which brought death to the
King of Iraq and almost dethroned his cousin,
Hussein of Jordan.
By this time Hussein no longer had British
protection. Arab pressures had forced him to
fire the British officers of the Arab Legion.
He was exposed now, a ready target for the
Palestinians and heavily reliant upon the pro-
tection of his Bedouin troops.
The fall of young Feisal and all his min-
isters in Iraq and establishment there of a
revolutionary pro-Nasser government brought
to an abrupt end the Baghdad Pact, a target
of violent Arab hatred. It had been designed
as a northern tier defense against communism,
allying Britain with Turkey, Iran and Iraq.
The United States, while not a member, gave it
full support. Arabs considered it a demon-
stration of colonialism and new proof of Brit-
ain's domination of an Arab regime in Iraq.
Britain's postwar Labor government did not
want to offend the Arabs, but the pressure
from both sides pf the argument was becom-
ing intolerable for London. In its extremity,
Britain turned to the newly organized United
Nations, which set up a committee. In the fall
of 1947 it recommended partition of Palestine
between Arabs and Jews. The holy city of
Jerusalem would be internationalized. Rights
of Arabs resident in what would be Israel were
to be fully protected. About 56 per cent of
Palestine would be Israel, the rest an Arab
state.
The Arabs at once protested, and confused
disorders broke out in Palestine. Britain was
preparing to surrender her mandate over
Palestine for good on May 15, 1948. By t he
terms of the U.N. resolution, two months would
then elapse before proclamation of any new
state.
But the Jewish paramilitary organization
were in action early in 1948, driving Arabs from -
village after village, evidently intent upon
control of much of Palestine before the end
of the mandate.
On the day before the mandate expired, a
Jewish state of Israel was proclaimed. On the
Hebrew calendar the day was the 5th of Iyar,
in the year 5708. The United States and the
Soviet Union raced for the distinction of being
first to recognize the fledgling nation. And
the Arab nations surrounding the Israelis went
to war.
The UN Security Council n a m e d Count
Folke Bernadotte of Sweden as its Palestine
mediator. Four months later a terrorist assas-
sinated him in Jerusalem. The Israelis blamed
Jewish extremists of the Stern gang.
Israeli fighters humiliated the inefficient
and disorganized Arabs, despite their numbers.
By 1949, 500,000-750,000 Arabs had fled the
Israeli-held areas to become permanent re-
fugees and constitute one of the greatest prob-
lems of the Arab East ever since.
Over the years thereafter, by natural
growth and because of new conflict, the re-
fugee population would swell to two million
or more, a pool of manpower for bitter Arab
commandoes seeking the destruction of Israel.
Arab leaders rejected proposals to resettle the
refugees in various lands, contending t h i s
would mean surrendering claims on Israel. The
refugees remained in squalid camps to nurse
their hatreds.
As the 1948-49 war raged King Abdullah of
Transjordan, whose British-trained and Brit-
ish-officered Arab Legion had been the best
Arab fighting force, annexed a bulge of Pales-
tine on the west bank of the Jordan River.
He called his realm the Hashemite Kingdom of
the Jordan and earned new hatred from the
Palestinians who already despised him for
British sponsorship. In 1951 he was assassinat-
ed. His grandson Hussein, who witnessed the'
deed, two years later at 17 would mount the
wobbly throne and rarely thereafter would he
know any peace. He was constantly threat-
ened by the Palestinians' plots and pressures.
THE NEXT major phase of the story begins
in 1955. Israel, determined to administer
punishment for raids on her settlements,
mounted a punishing attack on Egyptian
forces in the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip.
Nasser, by then the rising leader of Arabdom,
felt humiliated. Rebuffed by the West, he
turned to the Communist bloc for arms. The
Kremlin welcomed an opportunity for forceful
intrusion into the picture. Egypt and Syria,
by mortgaging their cotton crops, would get
arms.
Perhaps the United States was trapped
into inflicting the next Nasser humiliation.
Nasser. had been dickering with the World
Bank about financing a pet project: a high
dam at Aswan to reclaim millions of acres for
his food-short people. It was a token of Nas-
ser's intention to look inward to Egypt's
domestic problems. The Soviet Union then
made an offer to do the financing. The United
Mtates was angered. Although Nasser, still
sought to accept the World Bank's conditions,
the U.S. State Department curtly informed
him that Egypt lacked resources adequate to
the program. It seemed to Nasser a calculated
insult.
In anger, Nasser announced the national-
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remember a time in modern history when
British-American relations were at such ia low
point.
The echoes of this crisis had scarcely faded
away when, in 1958, yet another critical situa-
tion afflicted the Arab East. This time it was.
strictly' an Arab affair arising from intrigue
and feuding. Pro-Nasser forces in Syria were
bringing strong pressure on little Lebanon to
get firmly into the Nasser camp. This pro-
voked a strange conflict.
Nasser, meanwhile, persuaded a Syrian
regime to join that nation to Egypt and back-
ward Yemen in a United Arab Republic, a
first step toward the elusive dream of Arab
unity. The arrangement lasted until 1961 when
an anti-Communist coup seized power in Syria
and ended the Syrian participation. It was a
setback for Nasser and his leadership image.
The quiet which followed was deceptive.
Arabs were organizing. Younger Palestinians,
mostly products of the teeming refugee camps,
in 1964 put together an over-all Palestinian
Liberation Organization to co-ordinate the
various fedayeen-commondo-efforts against.
Israel. The fedayeen almost all were dedicated
to the proposition that Israelis must be pushed
into the sea. They would not hear of any
settlement leaving Israel the right to exist.
The raids of these commandos were an-
swered frequently by sharp Israeli military re-\
taliation, and the situation deteriorated. The
guerrillas put pressure on Hussein for bases in
Jordan-which would invite Israeli retaliation.
They also pressured Lebanon, whose govern-
ment also was reluctant. All this touched off a
series of minor Arab crises, quarreling between,
rival groups and serious problems for Nasser
who, despite his array of modern S o v i e t
armament, knew he was in no condition to risk
new war with the Israelis.
BUT IT SEEMED inevitable. In 1967, the
Syrians, most fire-eating of Israel's neigh-
bors, spread rumors that Israel planned a sur-
prise attack on Egypt. Nasser felt pressured in-
to mobilizing. Then, as if feeling his heroism
and leadership were being put to the test,
Nasser suddenly ordered out of Egypt the UN
Emergency Force which had separated the
Egyptians and Israelis. Possibly to his dismay,
the UN complied. The enemies were face to
face. War erupted in June and in six days
Egypt, Syria and Jordan were heavily defeat-
ed. Israel occupied all the Sinai Peninsula, the
Jordan's west bank. Syria's Golan Heights and
what had been the Jordion side of Jerusalem
- the old city - which the Israelis promptly
annexed.
The Suez Canal was choked again and
closed down. This was no longer as serious to
the West as in the past, for now enormous
tankers brought Persian Gulf oil to'Europe
around the foot of Africa.
But the Western stake in the oil is still
huge. Western Europe still depends on the
Arab East for about half the oil it needs for
its economies. Americans have billions of dol-
lars worth of investment in Arab oil.
A settlement of the crisis now would be far
more difficult. The Israelis were hardly likely
to give up Old Jerusalem willingly, nor, for
that matter, the strategic Golan Heights.
The United States in 'November 1967 sup-
ported a Security Council resolution telling
Israel to withdraw from occupied territory.
Israel showed little inclination to get out of
any occupied point without advance assur-
ance of Arab intentions toward a settlement.
This summer, on American initiative, a
cease-fire was invoked in the Canal Zone to
clear the way for negotiations. But the hope
was badly damaged, first by what Israel called
a cease-fire violation by the Egyptians a n d
Russians.in moving air defense missiles to the
zone, and then by 10 riotous days of civil war
in Jordan pitting guerrillas against Hussein's
army.
Scarcely had Arab rulers patched together
a tenuous agreement to end the Jordan strife
when Nasser died of a heart attack. His passing
was perhaps the heaviest blow of all to the
hope of peace. He was strong enough to ask
other Arabs to go along with an accord which
the more militant have sworn never to accept
while Israel exists as a Jewish state.
At best, Nasser 's death seems to have put off
any chance of settlement for a long time.
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