MIDDLE EAST: THE WAR AND THE WOMAN

Wherever we stroll there are always three--you and I and the next war.

--Contemporary Israeli Poem

FOR a few suspenseful days last week, the people of Israel wondered whether the next war might not be imminent. Israeli units were engaged in the biggest combined air, land and sea operation since the Six-Day War with the Arabs in 1967. Naval commandos were the first to go into action in the Gulf of Suez, blasting two Egyptian torpedo boats. Next, an Israeli armored unit of 150 men ferried across the gulf in landing craft, spent ten hours shooting up troops, bases and radar installations with utter impunity along a dusty strip of Egyptian coastline. Not until two days later did the Egyptians reply by sending swarms of MIG fighters and Sukhoi bombers aloft, but Israel's air force quickly routed them.

Throughout, the telephone wires hummed between Israel's general staff and a grandmotherly-looking woman who is the country's Premier. Mrs. Golda Meir, 71, listened to the reports with obvious relish. At week's end, in a message marking Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, she ushered in the year 5730 on the Hebrew calendar with a warning to the Arab nations. "Attacks on the frontiers, sabotage attempts within Israel and attacks of piracy against Israelis abroad," she said, "have fortified Israel's resolve never to return to the situation of constant peril which prevailed before the Six-Day War."

They were tough words from a tough lady. Golda Meir became Premier six months ago, after the death of Levi Eshkol. With the job, she inherited the difficult task of overseeing the territories captured during the Six-Day War: the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank of the Jordan River, and the Golan Heights. The new boundaries, created under a United Nations ceasefire, soon came to be violated almost daily. One of the deadliest border conflicts of modern history was under way.

It is not full-scale war, but far more serious than the nagging frontier clashes that sometimes go on between hostile nations for years. It involves issues that reason, self-interest and compromise could settle, yet it is wrapped in nationalistic and cultural hatreds that seem beyond resolution in this generation. Each side is backed by one of the world's two big powers and yet, while neither the U.S. nor Russia wants war in the Middle East, neither seems capable of making peace.

Formation of Hawks

The current phase of conflict started about 18 months ago with the appearance of sizable numbers of Arab guerrillas who called themselves "fedayeen" ("men of sacrifice"). Wellarmed, fairly well-trained, bound together by a mystical hatred of the Jews, the fedayeen swelled rapidly with recruits. Soon eleven different organizations, seven of which are loosely amalgamated and led by a burly fighter named Yasser Arafat (TIME cover, Dec. 13), were raiding Israel. Though most Arab governments were reluctant to give them open support for fear of retaliation, the fedayeen before long were powerful enough to defy the authorities. The fedayeen never were of major military significance, but they force the Israelis to maintain constant vigilance, exacting a steady toll not only of lives but of the spirit.

Since Mrs. Meir became Premier, the conflict has heated up considerably, and Arab leaders place much of the responsibility on her. English-speaking Arabs used to refer to her contemptuously as Golda Lox. Now, by and large, they no longer joke about her. "Under Eshkol," says an Arab professor, "I had a vague hope that something was possible. Under Mrs. Meir, I have no such hope." A Jordanian Cabinet member agrees: "Eshkol hated the hawks, but Golda flies in formation with them. She has always been hard as nails." Part of the time, she has had to be. Nine days before she was sworn in, the Egyptians, having turned the Suez front opposite Sinai into one vast, armed camp, loosed a thunderous artillery barrage. What Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser described as "the war of attrition" went into high gear. Since then the artillery has rarely been silent.

Nor was Suez the only scene of action. The Israelis carried out raids deep in Egypt and against terrorist camps along the borders of Jordan and Lebanon. Arab guerrillas lofted Soviet-made Katyusha rockets into Israeli kibbutzim, or crept across the borders to plant mines and blow up pipelines. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine proved particularly nettlesome. Three weeks ago, the P.F.L.P. hijacked a TWA jetliner with 113 aboard and forced it down in Damascus; two Jewish passengers are still being held by the Syrians. Last week several of the Front's teen-aged "cub commandos" tossed hand grenades into Israeli offices in Bonn, Brussels and The Hague, gravely wounding one employee of El Al Airlines.

To the Israelis, the situation along the Suez Canal front was the most worrisome of all. There the unremitting attacks by President Nasser's Russian-trained gunners and snipers as well as occasional Egyptian commando forays were taking a toll greater than Israel felt it could bear. In the past month alone, 21 Israelis died in such attacks. The Israelis felt that they must reply somehow.

The ten-hour war was their answer. It began when a column of six dusty, yellow-painted tanks and three armored personnel carriers began lumbering across the Sinai Peninsula, headed west. The vehicles were Russian, captured during the Six-Day War. The Israeli soldiers aboard them spoke fluent Arabic and wore Egyptian-type uniforms. Moving only at night to escape surveillance by Egyptian planes and hiding under camouflage during the day while temperatures soared above 100DEG F., the strange convoy reached the Gulf of Suez early last week.

Unbearable Burden

The night before the armored unit set out, Israeli frogmen in boats with muffled engines moved quietly out to sea and headed for the small Egyptian naval base of Ras Sadat, twelve miles south of Port Suez. There the frogmen slid into the water and planted powerful charges under the hulls of two Russian-built Egyptian navy torpedo boats assigned to patrol that section of the gulf; the Egyptian craft blew out of the water.

The way was clear for the Israeli tankers. The next night, landing craft carried them without opposition across the gulf to the Egyptian coast. Laden with extra fuel, extra guns and extra ammunition, the Israelis swiveled off the landing craft before dawn. They achieved total surprise and inflicted heavy casualties on their 40-mile sweep down the coast. As the convoy moved south through El Hafayer, trucks pulled off the two-lane asphalt highway with friendly waves to make way for what appeared to be Egyptian military vehicles. They were machine-gunned. Sentries were shot down before they could reach for their guns. Some men asleep in guard posts along the road died without waking when Israeli engineers leaped out of the half-tracks and slid satchel charges into the huts where they lay.

Farther down the road, the column clanked up to the small outpost at Ras Abu Dareg, leveled its guns on a radar installation and demolished it. In the village of Ras Zafarana, the tanks destroyed another radar, then radioed Tel Aviv for permission to attack a detachment of Egyptian armor parked farther south. Because the convoy had already been in Egypt for ten hours--suffering one man wounded during the whole time --headquarters ordered them home. Landing craft picked up the soldiers and ferried them back unopposed.

No reinforcements ever arrived to aid the outgunned Egyptians. Officials later maintained that they did not want to expose tanks and men to strafing Israeli jets. But two days later, smarting under an attack that they refused to admit had succeeded, the Egyptians scrambled jets to attack Israeli troops on the Sinai side of the Suez Canal. All told, Cairo claimed, 102 Egyptian planes were in the air. They were challenged by Israeli pilots, and a swirl of dogfights began. Before darkness ended the fighting, Israel claimed eleven Egyptian planes downed against only one of its own. The total was the biggest for a single day since the '67 war, and brought total Egyptian postwar losses to 51. Egypt maintained that it shot down six Israeli planes and lost two. Judging from the wreckage visible on the ground, the Israeli claim seemed more valid.

The Israelis felt that they had compelling reasons for the strike. Through the summer, the country's morale had sagged as casualty lists grew. Nasser had begun talking of "a battle of destiny." Mrs. Meir and her aides decided to remind Egypt's President not to get carried away by his own rhetoric and to demonstrate that the Arab armies were no match for the Israelis.

The last point was proved beyond the slightest doubt. On paper, at least, the Arab armies are stronger than the Israeli forces. In its most recent annual report, London's Institute for Strategic Studies estimates that, including reserves, the United Arab Republic, Jordan, Syria and Iraq have a total of 400,000 men under arms v. 290,000 for Israel. Together the Arab countries have 2,200 tanks compared with 1,000 for Israel and about 645 jet interceptors and fighter-bombers to 195 for the Israelis. In Egypt's case, the bulk of the equipment has been supplied by the Soviet Union since the 1967 war and includes MIG-21s, T-55 tanks and SA-2 surface-to-air missiles. None of it seemed to help. "It would be absolutely wrong," conceded Russia's Komsomolskaya Pravda last week, "to conceal the shortcomings in the Egyptian army." Morale is low. Once the Arab rallying cry was: "Push Israel into the sea!" Recently, reflecting the Arab feeling of futility, it has been: "Let Israel take all the land she wants, then choke on it."

One problem is that most Arab soldiers are far less motivated than their Israeli counterparts, who are sure that they are fighting for the survival of their nation. Arabs have fought bravely, but they do not have the feeling that the very survival of their countries is at stake. Some of them may also sense that they are serving rulers who use and abuse them. Unimaginative strategy is another problem. Nasser, for example, has stationed powerful forces along the Suez Canal and around Cairo, an in-depth defense reminiscent of the Soviet strategy in 1941, when the Germans were nearing Moscow. "What Nasser has bought," former Israeli Intelligence Chief Chaim Herzog said last week, "is the creation of a Moscow redoubt around Cairo. On this line, the Egyptians will fight. On the rest they will not. But Egypt will also have to import the snow to complete the strategy." The highly mobile Israelis have it within their power to offset such defenses by attacking the exposed flanks -- which is precisely what they did last week.

The scope and ferocity of the week's operations seemed a sure sign that once again the Middle East's irreconcilable antagonists were inching toward the brink of war. In Israel there was grim satisfaction over the week's statistics -- at least 150 Egyptians dead in the surprise raid, nearly a dozen planes downed. "A shocking blow to Egypt," said Defense Minister Moshe Dayan. "The ones to come will be bigger."

No Monopoly

Golda Meir made it clear that in deed there would be further blows, unless Nasser and his allies halt their bombardments and guerrilla raids. A war of attrition "can be a two-way street," she said in an interview with TIME. "It isn't something we wish for. But if it has to go on, if that's the position of the Arabs and they won't stop, it has to go on. We can take more than they believe we can take. And we can fight back."

Added Mrs. Meir: "We also have no alternative. There is nothing we can do about it as long as the Arabs won't have peace, as long as they won't even abide by the ceasefire, and if that's how they want it to be, we will live with it. And they'll know that we aren't the only ones that suffer. We have a duty to protect our people."

That duty can be onerous. Israel, with its small population (less than 3,000,000), simply cannot afford a war of attrition as easily as Egypt, with its 33.5 million people. Every casualty hurts. Last week, for example, the Premier's elation over the successful Gulf of Suez raid was tempered by the fact that three navy frogmen en route back to Sinai from the Ras Sadat exploit were accidentally killed by a faulty charge. "How unlucky it was," she said sadly to an aide, "that they had done their job so beautifully and on the way back had encountered tragedy." When the massive dogfight broke out, the Premier was less interested in the Israeli kills than in the fact that an Israeli pilot had been shot down over Egypt and captured. She telephoned General Haim Bar-Lev, her Chief of Staff, and asked for all the personal information he had on the airman.

Nevertheless, she is convinced that Israel must maintain a tough attitude toward the Arabs and accept the losses. As a result of her approach, the Israelis no longer speak of "retaliatory" raids, but "anticipatory counterattacks."

This theory of pragmatic belligerency receives general support among Israeli politicians, especially in view of the rising casualties along the Suez in recent months. Where the politicians do differ is on the question of what to do about the occupied territories that Israel shows less and less inclination to relinquish. One faction of the ruling Labor Party, represented by Deputy Premier Yigal Allon, argues for the establishment of paramilitary settlements in the occupied territories. Moshe Dayan favors an interlinked economy to benefit Jew and Arab. A program advocated by Gahal, a right-wing nationalist party led by Cabinet Minister Menahem Begin, is for outright annexation. Though she generally favors Allon, Mrs. Meir has publicly refused to commit herself to any of these approaches--until and unless negotiations with the Arabs begin. For the present, the occupation issue scarcely figures in electoral politics. Elections for seats in the Knesset will take place next month, and Mrs. Meir is practically certain of victory. But her successor may well be determined four years from now by a combination of personality and approach to the occupied territories.

Israel has other problems, many of them the result of economic good times. Approximately 25,000 Arabs from the occupied territories have taken jobs in Israel, but the labor pool is still short. Prices are being kept in line only because the government refuses to sanction wage increases; one result of this is a series of labor disputes, including a postal strike which has trapped a million pieces of mail in the Jerusalem post office. About the only problem for which there appears to be no formula is how to achieve peace. Says Golda Meir: "I don't know when peace will come. But I have no doubt that it will."

Golda Meir's character, like that of the state of Israel, was shaped in the ghettos of Europe and drew on a heritage of two millennia of sorrow and insecurity. The essence of the woman is conviction, without compromise, and expressed with all the subtlety of a Centurion tank. She seldom loses an argument, and once, after a heated policy dispute, so unnerved Dayan that he felt obliged to ask before he left her office: "Do you still love me, Golda?" Her convictions extend to her personal life. She still refuses to ride in a German-made car, and is so egalitarian that even as Premier she cooks her own breakfast and will occasionally make tea for a military courier. For all her toughness, she remains feminine enough to weep at the funeral of a soldier.

Like many other Israelis of her generation, including former Premier David Ben-Gurion, Mrs. Meir was born in Russia. At the age of eight, she emigrated from Pinsk to Milwaukee. She can still recall the early days in Russia, when her family regularly boarded up the windows as protection against gangs bent on pogroms against the Jews. On one occasion, while she was playing in the streets with other Jewish children, cossacks spurred their horses to jump over the heads of the children. "If there is any logical explanation for the direction that my life has taken," she said many years later, "it is the desire and determination to save Jewish children from a similar scene and from a similar experience."

In Milwaukee, Golda grew into a fair-skinned girl with chestnut braids, deep-gray eyes and a lively intelligence. At 14, she left home to live with a sister in Denver. There she met a politically enthusiastic group of Jewish students and an introspective sign painter named Morris Myerson. Zionists became her closest friends, Myerson her fiance. She was teaching in a Yiddish school when she was introduced to Ben-Gurion, then 30, who was touring the U.S. in behalf of Zionism. After the meeting, Golda joined the Labor Zionist movement. She and Myerson were married in 1917, and in 1921 she persuaded him to sail to Palestine with her as a member of the third aliyah, or wave of immigration. In the British mandate, they joined the kibbutz Merhavia, ten miles south of Nazareth, where she became an almond picker. Malaria was common. So was sniping from Arab villages.

No Hurry

Golda later moved to Jerusalem and tried to concentrate on raising her son Menachem and her daughter Sara. Unhappy in a purely domestic role, she went back to work as secretary of the Women's Labor Council. As the Jews pressed toward independence, Golda's apartment became a planning center for illegal immigration. Golda was sent to the U.S. to raise money for weapons. In less than three months she collected $50 million, and Ben-Gurion referred to her as "the Jewish woman who got the money that made the state possible." On the eve of Israel's nationhood, she went to Amman to see Jordan's King Abdullah. Dressed as an Arab woman, she secretly crossed the Arab lines. Abdullah asked her to delay proclaiming the state. She replied: "We have been waiting for 2,000 years. Is that hurrying?"

The Myersons were separated by 1945; he returned to the U.S., then moved back to Tel Aviv, where he died in 1951. When Ben-Gurion requested that his Cabinet members all take Hebrew names, Foreign Minister Golda Myerson chose Meir, which means "illuminates."

Mrs. Meir has served in many posts, from Israel's Minister in Moscow to Minister of Labor. She became best known as Ben-Gurion's Foreign Minister, supporting his philosophy of strong retaliation against Arab attacks with such ferocity that he called her "the only man in my Cabinet." One episode still rankles: in 1957, after Israel's sweep through the Sinai, she had to rise in the United Nations and announce that Israel would withdraw, as the great powers had demanded.

Deciding that "I want to be able to live without a crowded calendar," Mrs. Meir in 1966 gave up all assignments except the post of secretary-general of the Mapai, the Israeli labor party. She managed to spend more time with Daughter Sara and her family in the peach, pear and gladiolus-growing kibbutz of Rivivim near Beersheba, where the kibbutzniks recently presented their Premier with a two-room apartment. Son Menachem is a cellist who has studied with Pablo Casals and is now completing his studies at the University of Connecticut.

Crowded Calendar

The rural idyl ended last February when Levi Eshkol died. Mrs. Meir had kept close watch on party politics as secretary-general. "All government decisions," went one joke, "are cooked in Golda's kitchen." Mrs. Meir agreed to become Premier, but younger members of the party questioned her age. "Seventy is not a sin," said Golda flatly. As Premier, Golda happily went back to crowded calendars and 14-hour days. She runs her Cabinet like a front-line officer, thumping the table for order and making blunt and rapid decisions. "She listens to everyone," says an aide, "but she interrupts if they ramble. She has an open mind, but it's like arguing before a judge. When she makes a decision, it's made." A chain smoker who goes through nearly three packs of cigarettes a day, the Premier hides them when she greets a visitor or appears on television. "I don't want to have a bad influence on the young," she explains, "but there's no point in my giving up cigarettes now. I won't die young."

Golda Meir represents a pious, earnest generation that has begun to disappear in Israel. In its place are the fast-living sabras (born in Israel) with whom the older generation is frequently out of touch. Visiting England several years ago, Mrs. Meir was asked by newsmen why the Beatles had been refused permission to visit Israel. Who, she demanded, are the Beatles? After she had watched the quartet perform on television, she turned incredulously to an assistant. "How could they imagine," she asked, "that the government of Israel would give permission to these people to come in and give us culture?"

Mrs. Meir is in good health and plans to serve the four-year term to which she is almost certain to be elected. Nevertheless she is grooming Deputy Premier Allon, 50, a loyal, Oxford-educated party man, as her successor. Dayan, 54, will undoubtedly fight for the job too, but Mrs. Meir considers him a maverick unsuited for the top. To broaden Allon's experience, Mrs. Meir is thinking of making him Foreign Minister, a job now held by the mellifluous Abba Eban. In turn, Eban, 54, would become Information Minister, charged with improving Israel's image.

That image has grown a bit tarnished of late. Before the Six-Day War, Israel was seen as a valiant underdog surrounded by hostile giants. Its victory in that war was widely cheered, but as the border conflict ground on, the feeling began to develop that Israel was being a little too tough in its retaliation, a little too intransigent in its refusal to yield any of the occupied territories without an overall settlement. To avenge an El Al passenger's murder by terrorists in Athens, Israel destroyed 13 aircraft in Beirut. It has annexed all of Jerusalem. For the first time since the Biblical epoch, Jews have become military occupiers of other people's land (see box, page 30).

Fruitless Efforts

In the wake of last week's raid, Washington fired off stiff notes to Cairo and Jerusalem, urging more restraint along the canal. But some U.S. officials were plainly more annoyed with Israel for having launched the attack than with Egypt for having goaded its enemies. A State Department official grumbled, "When is Israel going to learn that it can not shoot its way to peace?" Other officials were irritated by the Israelis' conviction that the only way to persuade the Arabs to end their border violations was to hit them hard and often. The U.S. maintains that escalation by one side merely causes escalation by the other side; the Israelis retort by asking whether they are expected to turn the other cheek to guerrillas and artillery. The U.S. points out that security for Israel cannot be achieved simply by holding onto territory; the Israelis retort that before the Six-Day War they were naked to attack by Syrian gunners from the Golan Heights, by guerrillas from the West Bank, and by Egyptian tanks in Sinai.

In such arguments, one curious factor works against the Jews. Everyone more or so less expects the Arabs to be "fanatics," so that any real or apparent concession is welcomed with wonder and relief; but the Jews are expected to be more reasonable, so that any intransigence on their part is regarded with special impatience. Moreover, Israel is a Western, industrial power and its precise and powerful strikes against guerrilla forces--no matter how much modern equipment the Arab nations have received from Russia--somehow make the struggle seem unequal.

Washington is also annoyed with Israel for waging a vigorous campaign against the U.S.-Russian talks aimed at achieving a proposal for a settlement. As it happens, the talks so far have been totally futile. Next week U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, due in New York for the opening of the U.N. General Assembly, are scheduled to meet to discuss the Middle East. Even if Washington and Moscow were to devise a peace formula, Israel steadfastly refuses to recognize any settlements arranged by outside parties. "Tell Washington that we will never go along with this," Mrs. Meir says. For its part, Israel would like Washington to pressure Moscow to talk the Arabs into meeting Israel across a table. But the Arabs refuse until their territories are returned--and would probably still refuse even if Israel were to comply.

Shopping for Weapons

With the outlook for peace bleak, Mrs. Meir will visit the U.S. next week --at the same time that Nasser will be in Moscow, ostensibly for a medical examination. Her principal reason for coming is to call at the White House with a shopping list of U.S. weapons. Israel's government negotiated almost three years ago for the purchase of 50 Mirage fighters from the French, only to have Charles de Gaulle personally embargo the deal. Initially, it was expected that the new Pompidou government would lift the embargo, but apparently it intends to maintain it.

Deprived of the French jets, Israel worked out a deal to purchase 50 F-4 Phantoms from the U.S. The first of the planes began arriving two weeks ago --much to the anger of the Arabs. Arguing that the only way to preserve peace in the Middle East is to make certain that Israel is stronger than the Arabs, Mrs. Meir plans to ask Nixon for another 25 Phantoms, some A-4 Skyhawks and more Hawk ground-to-air missiles. It may take some time, but the State Department and Pentagon are expected to approve the request.

With or without the additional planes, Israel is certain to step up its anticipatory counterattacks, particularly to relieve the pressure on the so-called Bar-Lev defense line near the Suez Canal. One object of last week's raid, for example, was to provoke Nasser into shifting southward some of the 80,000 men he has along the canal, but he is unlikely to do so. Thus more Israeli attacks can be expected south of Suez. Eventually, the Israelis might also bomb the big industrial center of Helwan, 15 miles south of Cairo, where they could inflict damage to Nasser's economy without hitting population centers. The Israelis do not want to gobble up more Arab land. "Our strategy is not to cross the Suez Canal and head for Cairo," says Dayan. "It calls for holding the Jordan River line, but not for occupying Amman, Damascus or Beirut."

It has been said that while the hapless Arabs cannot win the war, the Israelis cannot win the peace. Political Scientist Samuel Merlin suggests in his The Search for Peace in the Middle East that the great weakness of Israel's diplomacy "is that it has no blueprint of its own for peace. It is not that Israel prefers a state of conflict and tension to normal relations with her neighbors. It is that the minds of the Israelis are totally preoccupied with the job at hand: to build the country." That comment is to the point, and disturbing even to the most hawkish of Israeli politicians and generals.

In a renewal of the all-out wars of '48, '56 and '67, there is little doubt that Israel would overwhelm the Arabs; a decade hence victory might not be so certain. For that reason, observers occasionally wonder whether Israel may not be trying to provoke precisely such a full-scale fight. It might be an appealing idea, if the Israelis were convinced that a total rout of the Arab armies would also send Arab governments toppling. But that too might be a questionable achievement. For despite the Israelis' obvious anxiety to get rid of Nasser and the fanatic Baathists in Syria and Iraq, there is no guarantee that those men would not be succeeded by even more militant extremists.

There is no obvious way out of the dilemma. A more flexible policy toward re-admitting the 1,500,000 Palestinian refugees who left since 1948? The Israelis point out that the Palestinians, who are the heart of the guerrilla movements now in existence, would form an enormous fifth column. A more reasonable approach toward restoration of the Sinai, the West Bank and Jerusalem? The Israelis gave the Sinai back to the Egyptians in 1957, and Nasser promptly filled it with armor. A decision to ignore the guerrilla pinpricks? That might only inspire the Arabs to greater boldness and more attacks. And yet can Israel really settle down to years and decades of continuous conflict? And on which side will such a long, drawn-out conflict be harder in the long run?

Not quite at war but not quite at peace, the little nation endures--even thrives. There is a stunning sense of accomplishment, of determination and of community--the country is small enough to give its citizens the feeling that they all know one another. The economy is booming and supermarkets overflow with a cornucopia of kibbutz-grown produce and high-quality manufactured goods. Most weekends the beaches are jammed, as are the kibbutz swimming pools. But then there are the reminders: the terrorist bomb blasts and the snipings; the veterans of the first two rounds with the Arabs, now serving as home guards; the veterans of the third round, still drilling regularly with the reserves; and most disturbing of all, the teen-agers whose mothers wonder whether they will become veterans, or casualties of a fourth round.

In Egypt, the wartime aura is no less pervasive in the cities, but almost unnoticeable in rural regions. Even if Israel were to continue mounting raids like last week's, Nasser would not necessarily suffer. He is less susceptible to public pressure than is Golda Meir. Moreover, he has going for him that famous Arab shrug known as ma'alesh, which indicates that nothing can be done.

About the only dim hope for peace entertained by Mrs. Meir and other Israeli politicians is that one day the Arabs will change; that Nasser or his successor will be compelled to pay more heed to the real needs of his country than to the blood feud with Israel. Says she: "I don't imagine that tens of millions of people in the Arab countries are prepared to live like this forever, and see their children dead because of lack of food and medical care just for the grandeur of their leaders who want to destroy Israel." Peace may come eventually. But given the nonpacific way in which the year 5729 went out last week, it is not likely to come during the year 5730, or for many years thereafter.

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