MIDDLE EAST: THE STORM GATHERS

WAR these days admits of many qualifications, including cold or hot, limited, shooting and phony. In a sense, all applied to the gunfire and shelling that raged between Arabs and Israelis across their so-called cease-fire lines last week. Continuing a duel that has been going on almost daily for three weeks, Egyptian and Israeli artillery traded fire over the Suez Canal. Egyptian army commandos, their faces covered with grease, crossed the canal in rubber rafts, killing three Israeli soldiers in patrol-sized firefights. Roaring into Jordan, retaliating Israeli jets blasted two Egyptian-manned underground radar stations.

In Cairo, the Egyptian government repudiated the cease-fire lines on the grounds that Israel had fortified the east bank of the canal and the world "cannot expect us to observe the cease-fire in the face of such fortifications." The U.S. termed Egypt's step "retrogressive" and, along with Britain, appealed to both sides to respect the truce. United Nations Secretary-General U Thant gloomily said that "the cease-fire has become almost totally ineffective in the Suez Canal sector, and a virtual state of active war now exists there."

Restive Army. The Middle East is now caught up in what can best be described as a demonstrative war, waged more for political and diplomatic effect than for any hope of military gain. To Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser, this arrangement carries the advantage of showing him in action against Israel--a necessity if he is to remain leader of the Arab world. It also boosts morale at home, appeases his restive army and captures some of the glamour hitherto accorded solely to the Palestinian guerrillas. Most important of all, the shelling continually reminds the diplomats of the U.S., Russia, Britain and France of the urgency that attends the task of agreeing on terms for a Middle East settlement.

The pressure of arms has not brought the Big Four any closer to agreement. Last week they met for the fifth time, and were reportedly unable to even agree on an appeal to both sides to cease firing while the talks continue. When the U.S. suggested such a statement, Russia demurred, contending that Egypt could not be blamed for shelling Israeli fortifications on occupied Egyptian territory.

Ransom in Lives. Big Four disagreement, of course, works to the diplomatic advantage of Israel. It has insisted all along that a lasting peace must be negotiated between the Arabs and Israelis alone, a stand that allows Israel to continue to occupy the conquered Arab lands as long as the Arabs refuse to negotiate. Nasser has so far obliged the Israelis, dismissing the notion of direct negotiation as sitting down at a "table of capitulation."

Israel's Premier Golda Meir admitted last week that "if the Big Four should reach agreement, then Israel is in a bad spot," since that would mean big-power pressures to withdraw from the occupied territories on terms negotiated by others. Yet as Israel celebrated its 21st anniversary as a state last week, what should have been a joyful occasion was overshadowed by a sense of siege, evidence enough that Israel has suffered as much as any other country involved from the post-1967 stalemate.

In the heavily guarded streets of Jerusalem, knots of people gathered every hour on the hour to listen to the latest radio news, with its bulletins of new casualties. Since the Six-Day War, Israel has lost 700 dead, as many as died in the war itself. At last week's anniversary services, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan grimly reminded Israelis of the ransom in lives that the stalemate is costing them: "Hardly a night passes without battle; tombstone follows tombstone, and we meet every day among fresh graves."

The United Nations has also suffered casualties. Last week a U.N. observer, Irish Captain Joseph Young, was seriously injured by an Egyptian mine. Should the danger increase, U Thant would have to consider pulling out the U.N. observers, leaving no international presence on the cease-fire line--a situation all too reminiscent of the days just before the 1967 war.

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