The Sequences

Officially, the U.S. and Britain "see eye to eye on the imperative necessity of an early settlement in the Middle East." But in practice, a pointed difference turned up last week. At the very moment that Israel was asking the U.S. State Department for arms to meet "the grave national emergency" created by Egypt's Soviet arms deal, Sir Anthony Eden was pushing a "compromise" plan to redraw Israel's border in favor of her neighbors. Eden, anxious to avert war (but also hopeful of weaning the oil-rich Arab states away from Soviet influence), proposed that new frontiers be drawn around Israel some where between the narrower limits proposed in the U.N. partition plan of 1947 and those accepted by the Arab states in the 1949 armistice.

To embattled and embittered Israelis, Eden's proposal was proof positive that the British Foreign Office would like to carve up their country into tidbits for the Arab states. The most overworked word in Israel last week was "Munich," and the most popular slogan "We have no Benes for Britain." Appearing in Parliament in khaki battle dress, Premier David Ben-Gurion rasped out against "dismemberment of Israel [and] a grant of reward to the "Arab aggressors of 1948 . . . Israel will not yield an inch." The defiant speech caught the spirit of the streets: the mood seemed to be that Israel might find itself without friends, and might even find itself at war, but if so, so be it.

In Washington, the State Department pointedly omitted to endorse the Eden border compromise. Still hoping not to choose sides between Israelis and Arabs while discouraging both from making trouble, the State Department was warned by the Egyptian and Syrian ambassadors that if it complies with Israel's request for "emergency" arms, they will feel obliged "to buy more arms elsewhere."

Everybody was caught up in a succession of sequences. Egypt's purchase of Soviet arms had set off the Arab-Israeli tension; Egypt's own dangerous flirtation with the Communists had in turn been set off by the decision of the northern Arab states to side with the West. On that basic Middle East decision, the U.S. and Britain still saw eye to eye. Accompanied by General Sir Gerald Templer, chief of the Imperial General Staff, Britain's Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan flew to Bagdad for the first Northern Tier meeting under the new Bagdad Pact. Britain has formally linked itself with Iraq, Iran and Pakistan in the pact. Though not a member, the U.S. showed its support by sending as "military and political liaison" Admiral John H. Cassady and Ambassador to Iraq Waldemar Gallman.

Moscow angrily denounced the Bagdad meeting as "the creation of a new, aggressive alignment" against Russia. Soviet diplomats were dickering to sell arms to Syria, Saudi Arabia and Yemen -all of them countries located south of the line behind which the Northern Tier is supposed to contain Soviet Communism.

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