Edging Toward an Explosion

MIDDLE EAST

Edging Toward an Explosion

Amid the first tentative steps toward peace in Southeast Asia, the Middle East edged closer to an explosive new war between the Arabs and Israel. The fresh hostilities flared, as usual, in the name of retaliation--that modern word for the Biblical "eye for an eye" that both sides have employed to justify repeated violations of the 17-month-old ceasefire. Last week it was Israel's turn to retaliate. A few days earlier, the Egyptians had unleashed a sudden Sabbath rocket and artillery barrage that killed 15 Israeli soldiers guarding the right bank of the Suez Canal. Israel's riposte was the most spectacular raid since last year's war.

The raid came not on the Suez front but on the Nile River, deep in Egypt's heartland. By the light of a nearly full moon, a band of airborne Israeli commandos penetrated farther into enemy territory (140 miles) than they had ventured even during the war. Then the force split into three groups. One squad assaulted the bridge at Qena (pop. 40,000), a $5,000,000 span completed only this year. Another attacked the bridge-dam at Nag Hammadi (pop. 20,000), whose lock controls the flow of water for irrigating upper-valley sugarcane fields. The third hit the nearby Nag Hammadi electric power station, one of the four major relay points between Cairo and the Aswan Dam. A short time later, all three units were lifted back to Israel, probably by helicopter. They left behind deep holes in the bridge and dam, and roaring fires in eight of the nine transformers built by Russia at a cost of $15 million.

The Long Crush. Arabs professed to find some comfort in the fact that Israel chose to avoid a strike at "the strong Arab front line," as Beirut Columnist Ghassan Kanafani put it. But such dubious optimism belied the main point of the raid: Israeli forces had staged a daring attack within 140 miles of the Aswan Dam, on which Egyptians are banking so heavily that they have nicknamed it simply "our future." Now 96% complete, the dam could probably not be destroyed by anything short of an atomic warhead, but damage to its sluice gates and other vulnerable parts could impede Egyptian agriculture and industry. That possibility was hardly lost on jubilant Israelis. Wrote the union daily Davar: "From now on, the Egyptians will have to take into account that the long and crushing arm of the Israeli defense forces is capable of reaching anywhere in the land of the Nile."

For reasons of face, the Egyptians refused to acknowledge that anything more than airplanes had been used in the attack when they protested it to the U.N. Security Council. The damage was so pinpointed, however, that it almost certainly required ground troops. The Israelis were not about to divulge the mechanics of their caper, and about all a shaken Nasser could do was call an emergency Cabinet meeting to discuss ways "to put the United Arab Republic on a war footing," including formation of a popular defense force. A day later, two Egyptian MIGs tangled with a pair of Israeli Mirages, engaging them in a dogfight that lasted several minutes. The outcome, as usual, was disputed. Israel claimed that one Egyptian craft flew back "trailing smoke"; Egypt said that one Israeli plane was shot down. But the MIGs' intrusion could hardly be counted as Nasser's next punch, anyway. In the perilous game of reprisal, as it is now being practiced in the Middle East, Nasser will have to produce something a good deal more conspicuous than a jet scrap.

Purified Guerrillas. Events in Jordan added to the region's sense of unease. King Hussein's power struggle with extremist Arab commando groups (TIME, Oct. 25) moved into a shooting phase when 16 people were killed during street fighting in the capital of Amman. After army troops and Bedouin fighters, using automatic weapons, had secured the city, Hussein broadcast an emotional victory speech, claiming that the insurrection attempt had been caused by a group of "paid agents" called the Victory Phalanxes. El Fatah and other major commando outfits evidently had had no hand in the violence, and the King was careful to pick fights with no more guerrillas than he had to. "Purified from these treacherous elements," he said, Jordanian guerrilla action against Israel could continue.

Only a day before, Jordanian commandos had stepped up fighting on their front by sending rockets across the frontier into the Israeli seaport of Elath, setting fire to oil tanks. Since the Jordanian port of Aqaba, where Arab oil stores are equally exposed, lies only 800 yards away, a tacit nonaggression pact had prevailed even during the war. Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan considered the breach so serious that he hurried off to inspect the damage-- and perhaps consider an appropriate attack on that front. As for other aspects of the simmering conflict, Dayan appeared remarkably sanguine. He dismissed reports of Russia's plans to re-open the Suez Canal, for example, as a course unlikely to appeal to Moscow's Arab allies: "Egypt does not want the canal to operate while we are sitting on the east bank. It might turn into a permanent arrangement."

Losing Traction. Ironically, during most of the increased fighting in the Middle East, the Israeli and Egyptian Foreign Ministers have been huddling in U.N. headquarters with Mediator Gunnar Jarring, trying once again to find a basis for peace negotiations. With every new retaliatory move, their efforts-- if not the whole Jarring mission--loses that much more traction. Compared with the swift and ominous increase in battlefield momentum, the peacemakers are already far behind.

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