A Spectator's Notebook
THOUGH UNDOUBTEDLY much less im- portant than the diplomatic revolu- tion of 1756, the exchange of positions between Britain and the United States in the Middle East which occurred exactly 200 years later is striking enough. We are now the friend (if not an altogether reliable one) of Israel, and America is the appeaser of the Arabs, instead of the other way round. As a result of the change both the Foreign Office and the State Department have for once a good many of their own instead of each other's chickens coming home to roost. The Foreign Office must be rueing its tacit support of the Arabs against the Jews from 1945 to 1949, and particularly its threat to tight Israel in 19.49 if she did not immediately withdraw her armies from Egypt. (But for that threat there would have been no Gaza Strip.) It must also be regretting that we did nothing to stop Egypt's closure of the Suez Canal to Israeli ship- Ping in 1951, though we had 80,000 men in the Canal Zone at the time. The Americans on their side must wish that they had not (with Russia) done so much in the UN and elsewhere to secure the establishment of the State of Israel. The great thing about diplomats is that they are not in the least put off by what has happened before. America will now quite happily, pursue Britain's old policy and Britain, rather less happily, will pursue America's.
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