Torrid Zones

By ERSKINE B. CHILDERS

EARLY this Month, two events—One in the Suez Canal roads at Port Said, the other by the waters of the Jordan—brought back the Arab- Israeli conflict into prominence. The Danish ship Inge Taft. long detained by the UAR because it was carrying an Israeli cargo, unloaded it and steamed back out of the Canal. And on the Israel- Syria Armistice line, Israeli troops occupied an Arab-village. They then blasted most of its forty houses into rubble.

To set these events in perspective : first, the

destruction of Tawatiq : Israel's case is that Syrian troops had fortified the village as a military post. Last week, the United Nations Mixed Armistice Commission (M AC)—which the Israeli delegate refused to attend—found differently. It con- demned *Israel for a 'flagrant violation' of the Armistice and for destruction 'contrary to elemen- tary humanitarian principles.' According to UN observers the village was 'not a fortified position.'

Tawafiq was in one of the four demilitarised zones established in 1949 between Israel and Egypt and Syria. The zones were compromises over territory on whose demarcation the two sides could not agree. They were to be supervised by MAC; and neither side was to introduce military forces into them.

- But almost at once trouble began. In 1950 and

1951 Israel began trying to empty the zones of all Arabs living in them. The UN decided that over 6,000 Arabs had been forcibly expelled by Israel Army units from the El Auja zone, their tents and crops burned, thirteen of them killed; and that 785 Arabs had been 'removed from their homes' in the Syrian zones. And though, in 1951. Israel claimed that the demilitarised zones were 'part of the State of Israel,' the UN truce chiefs stood by their interpretation that 'neither party . . . enjoys rights of sovereignty.'

From then on there has been persistent trouble.

The El Auja zone, astride most of the road ap- proaches to the Sinai Peninsula, was occupied in a. major military assault by Israeli •troops in Sep- tember. 1955: the UN observer was for a time 'detained for his own safety.' Ordered to withdraw by the UN. Israel refused; used El Auja in the Sinai attack a year later: and still occupies the zone today.

El Auja was needed for military purposes; th.: Syrian-line zones have a different function. Water is required for the great Negev triangle in the south, rich in minerals and affording access to Israel's new Afro-Asian trade port at Eilath. In publicity. the Negev is described as offering major agricultural potential and settling more immi- grants. But the cost of piping water south, over 100 miles, from the upper River Jordan, makes Negev cultivation uneconomical. When , the American expert, Marion (lawson, tried to sug- gest this he vas. in the words of Alex Rubner, a former Israel Finance Ministry adviser, 'fiercely attacked' : It was pointed out to him that the Negev must he irrigated with the waters of the north, not because the south could produce more crops, but because political considerations demanded a farming community in the south. (Commentary, Sept.. 1958.)

By this complex route, Tawafiq re-enters the picture. Israel has now announced that, in the absence of Arab agreement to implement the standing paper schemes for joint use of the Jordan waters, she will go ahead with unilateral diversion on her own plan (promising, it ought to be noted, not to use more than she would have been allo- cated under these joint schemes). Under this the Jordan will be tapped, for the pipe-line to the Negev, at Lake Tiberias. Tawafiq was in the de- militarised zone beside Lake Tiberias. The hydro- electric power to pump the water down the mam- moth pipe is to be developed from higher Jordan

The Middle East situation is more uncertain and dangerous today than at any time since Suez. We have asked Erskine Childers and Michael Adams, our correspondent in Beirut, to comment on the reasons why.

waters at Lake Huleh. And there have been in- breasing incidents, very similar to that at Tawafiq, in another demilitarised zone bordering Lake Huleh.

In the light of Israel's known plans, it is not uncharitable to predict that Mr. Ben-Gurion wishes to take these zones outright—as with El Auja—first seeking to empty them of Arabs. If he tries, however, the results may this time be very serious indeed.

• * Second, the Suez Canal blockade : If Israel were a normally established State with a normal history, then the blockade would surely be outrageous, as Israel insists. But Israel's neighbours simply do not regard her in this way. And no Western people, if confronted by an Israel, would take any more tolerant view. Reference's to international law and morality over this blockade really ought to be qualified by appreciation that no other modern State has had to face quite so extraordinary a situation as Egypt over Israel and the Canal.

Ships flying the Israeli flag (they totalled thirty- four in 1957) are barred from the Canal. The rules about other ships carrying Israeli cargo are less stringent. The blockade is now eight years old since the UN Security Council condemned it. In that time—according to a mid-1959 official Israeli pamphlet—fourteen vessels have been held up. and not all the cargoes were confiscated. And this low number is not because no other ships have presented themselves: over forty such cargoes were quietly presented, and quietly allowed pas- sage, between 1956 and 1959--according to the Israelis themselves.

Periodically. however. Mr. Ben-Gurion appar- ently feels it necessary to announce the sending of a cargo. Israel, the argument is, must continue to ventilate her basic complaint, that it is intoler- able that her cargoes should be allowed through only on arbitrary Egyptian sufferance. A different but plausible explanation is that, periodically, Mr. Ben-Gurion and his colleagues wish to maintain Western antagonism towards Nasser. Last year the voyage of the Inge Toft was highly publicised; it was detained. Mr. HammarskjOld then secui ed

• Nasser's private agreement to the passage of all Israeli cargoes free-on-board (manifested as al- ready assigned out of Israeli ownership). Although the Inge Taft dispute was not settled, future ones were.

Two months ago, however, the Astypalea arrived at Port Said with an Israeli cargo not so mani- fested; and it Was detained, under Israeli protest. It is curious that this vessel, whose papers could so easily have been correct, arrived at the Canal just as it was known that the World Bank was making up its mind about a loan to the VAR to develop the waterway. The Bank loan went through, and Mr. Ben-Gurion was criticised even in Israel for clumsiness.

The legal issues are obscure. A clause in the 1888 Canal Convention gives Egypt self-defence rights; but another clause in this archaic and vague document can be argued to disallow blockade in self-defence. Egypt points to the precedent of British blockading during two world wars : Israel says that the 'free to all nations in war or peace clause was scrupulously observed until 1948 In theory, it was: Britain simply applied blockades at both ends outside the requisite three-mile limit.

The U AR also claims a continuing state of war with Israel. In 1951, the Security Council dis- allowed this, holding that with Armistices in force for over two years, a state of war could not be held to continue. Since the Sinai 'attack, however, it is doubtful whether a Security Council—even assuming it has legal force without World Court rulings:—would find as in 1951. •Israel publicly repudiated the Armistice in 1956; she has since refused to work with the Mixed Armistice Com- mission, and -refuses to alloW UNEF on her soil.

It is little known that, just two weeks before attacking in Sinai, Israel filed heavy reservations of her acce,ptance of World Court rulings. And when, in March, 1957, Krishna Menon stated in New Delhi that Egypt was willing to accept a World Court ruling, Israel declined--and still declines to take the issue to the Hague. Her usual explanation is that a Court judgment would be lengthy; but the blockade is already eleven years old. There is, in fact, considerable doubt whether Israel could win her case before the Court, and this probably explains her jurisdictional reser- vations.

The concurrence of the Tawafiq tragedy and Israel's defeat over the Inge Toft and the Astypalea, though the explanation in each case is different, probably stems from a growing mood of frustration in the Israeli Cabinet. For live years Mr. Ben-Gurion has tried to `diminish Nasser's stature'—the stature of a 'personality' like Ataturk which, he told the Knesset on April 2, 1957, he has 'always feared might arise among Arabs,' injecting new dynamism. unity and progress into their world, But both in the Middle East itself, and in Western policy, Mr. Ben-Gurion's admitted aim has failed. The era of almost pathological loathing of Nasser in the West is just about over: his standing in the Arab world remains high: if unity is still distant, dynamism and progress are everywhere evident. The danger is that Mr. Ben- Gurion, knowing that Israel's survival on Zionist terms depends on Arab .disunity. fear of Israeli military power, and conflict with the West, may be seeking new ways of restoring these safeguards. Water apart, Tawafiq may be the beginning.