The Atlantic Report on the World Today: The Middle East

RENEWED attempts to maintain a united Arab front on Palestine and a trend toward militarization darken the prospects for early peace with Israel. Egypt’s $125,000,000 defense budget is six times the cost of her defense before the war with Israel. Purchases of fighter planes, corvettes, Sherman tanks and armored cars, and plans for a native arms industry receive almost unanimous Egyptian approval even though paying for them means that the revenues from Egypt’s new graduated income tax must be diverted from the social and education program for which they were intended.

The possibility that Egypt will take over the defense of Suez from Britain accounts for much of this military fervor. But other Egyptian moves indicate the firm purpose of assuring the “containment” of Israel.

Syria and Lebanon have conscription for the first time and have increased their defense budgets. In Jordan a new British subvention assures the enlargement of Mafraq airport and Arab Legion expansion. Recruiting is being pushed. In Jordanoccupied Palestine a course in military training for all able-bodied men is under way.

An “Arab nation”

Arab League leaders are attempting to harness all this military activity into a collective security system for the Arab states. Fear of Israeli expansion provides the incentive which, it is hoped, will draw together the Arab stales for mutual protection, and which will lead eventually to coördination of training and staffs, and standardization of equipment, if not actual “unification.”

The long-range goals of the League strategists, led by Abdul Rahman Azzam Pasha, are to eliminate the artificial frontiers that were drawn by the mandate governments after World War I, and to re-create an “Arab nation.” First steps contemplated to bring about this restoration of a geographical and cultural entity are the abolition of passports, modifications of customs barriers, and the resolution — already passed at the October meeting — to grant citizenship to any Arab asking it in any member country.

The experience of acting together and being treated as a bloc by the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine has helped to crystallize a common attitude among the members of the Arab states. It has become increasingly clear to them, as a result of their experiences at Lausanne and at Lake Success, that their best hope of wringing concessions from Israel lies in united action. Once one of them breaks this solid front or consents to separate pence talks, they can be played against one another and be deprived of much of their bargaining power. It is one of the ironic effects of the UN’s action on Palestine that it should have helped to sustain this Arab front and in a sense frustrated its own aim of final peace with Israel.

This turn of events is one of several which enable the Arabs to appear for the first time as champions of the UN. The Jerusalem decision is a case in point. Except for Jordan, which has everything to gain from working with Israel to maintain the status quo in a divided Jerusalem, Arab interests demand a neutral wedge between themselves and Israel.

In the matter of the Arab refugees, determined Arab action secured reaffirmation in the last General Assembly of the rights of refugees to return to their homes and citrus groves or to receive compensation by Israel for their property if they chose not to return. On this principle, agreed on originally at the time of the establishment of the Conciliation Commission in December, 1948, the Arabs have rested their case. Since then it has been the fate of Israel to find itself “flouting” the UN in this matter as in Jerusalem.

Temporary aid for refugees

The Arabs’ stand has been immeasurably aided by the presence in their midst of some 800,000 officially acknowledged refugees and additional thousands of displaced, if not destitute, Palestinians. The UN Economic Survey Mission headed by Gordon R. Clapp has highlighted, in two reports, the extent of distress and political danger which the refugees constitute for the entire Middle East.

The interim Clapp report, released in November, recommended that relief funds should be diverted as fast as possible into wages for work on essential, small-scale improvements in the countries where the refugees are living at present. These involve, specifically, terracing and planting many barren hillsides, afforestation, and irrigation and water conservation works which can be lilted eventually into larger irrigation schemes. This temporary employment program would put the heads of families, at least, to work while political settlement of their problem hangs fire.

In making these proposals the Mission had to abandon the original United States plan to settle the refugees permanently in the Arab states by offering them practical inducements to remain there. This effort to use Point IV aid as a lever to solve the refugee question was completely unacceptable to the Arab governments and to the refugees themselves, and the Mission was obliged to retreat to a non-political approach.

It falls to the new United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees to initiate immediate steps toward economic relief in coöperation with local Arab governments. This coöperation will be hard to secure on projects which involve sharing of resources across frontiers. It will require a period of peace and a fresh start on the part of both Arab governments and the Western advisers.

The problems for the Western specialists assisting the Arab governments are formidable. They must first agree on what specifically is to be done by way of implementing the pilot operations envisaged in the final Clapp report. Once the location and the extent of such projects are settled, there must be agreement on how to do it.

No imperialism, please

Here political considerations necessarily arise. For the basic premise on which the four countries now represented on the UN Relief and Works Agency United States, Great Britain, France, and Turkey) operate in their individual dealings with Middle East stales is that the area must be saved from turning toward Communism as a way out of its troubles. Moreover, each of these powers has an important stake in the Middle East. They will have to demonstrate a disinterested approach as agents of the UN and avoid imputations of imperialist intent.

In the ease of the United States it has been clearly recognized by responsible Americans in the area that a unilateral approach along Marshall Plan lines would be unwelcome and suspect. Arab leaders interpret every American gesture as designed to further Israel’s interests at their expense. They point to the disparity between the size of the proposed Point IV appropriation for the Middle East and the amount of American financial assistance already advanced to Israel. Hence the emphasis at the meeting of American diplomats in Istanbul in November on aid via the UN, and on economic and social rather than military support.

British representatives favor an alternative approach through a separate four-power agency composed of the present members of the Works Agency. While the technical advantages of such an approach are obvious, its political implications must be weighed. Arab officials feel it would threaten their independent status to have erstwhile rulers and patrons exerting the degree of influence that an effective economic mission would necessarily have. Other opponents of the plan point to the theoretical existence of a UN Economic Commission for the Middle East. Its actual birth has been twice postponed by the UN Economic and Social Council for political reasons. Yet many Arabs hope and expect it to materialize once the touchy relationship of Israel with regional UN bodies is solved.

Meanwhile there is strong feeling against any unilateral or multilateral agency which threatens the integrity of the UN approach to the area. All of this enters into the present backstage discussions on how best to carry out the Clapp recommendations. Until a decision is reached, the application of Point IV on a broad basis will not be possible.

In actual fact, Point IV already exists in the Middle East and a formal agency need only accelerate and supplement the work of many existing institutions. The services of the FAO, ILO, and WHO are already recognized and sought by Arab governments. American, British, and French schools and hospitals provide examples of disinterested technical aid. The projected engineering school at Beirut shows a trend toward training Arab technicians in their own countries.

Reform from within

The chances for success of a broad program of modernization are enhanced by the mood of reaction from defeat and seeking for fresh strength which dominates Arab life today. Two small books which tune appeared since the fighting ceased are revealing. The first, written by Constantine Zurayk, Syrian diplomat and educator, is called in translation The Meaning of the Disaster. The second, by Musa Alami, a leading Palestinian, is entitled The Lesson of Palestine.

It is significant that both books agree on the remedies for the Arab loss. A note of strong self-criticism, based on the Arab tendency to live in the past, lack of unity, and decadence of the governing regimes, is struck in each book. Dr. Zurayk calls for radical revision of the entire Arab social structure, separation of church and stale (as is under way in Syria), and modernization through discipline in the sciences, to qualify the Arabs to survive in the modern world. He believes that Zionist expansion will overwhelm them unless the Arabs transform their society.

Musa Aland takes the same line, emphasizing the disastrous result of divisions among the Arab leaders themselves and their disinclination to make effective military preparations with the personal sacrifices entailed. He too insists on modernization. He envisions large-scale development under Arab auspices, to be financed by increased taxes, personal loans, and a greater share for the Arabs in oil revenues. All of these measures are geared to an eventual showdown with Israel.

The coincidence that the means the Arabs propose for saving themselves are the same means urged by Western advisers to preserve them from the Communist threat improves the prospects for economic and social reform. But it is sobering to realize, as the Clapp mission clearly did, that the settling of the score with Israel is openly regarded in the same light as was the historic drive to settle with the Crusaders.

The Arabs have the advantage

Regardless of the motivation back of the Arabs’ reform efforts, two positive factors favor them economically. The first is the fact that they control the most cultivable land and the great rivers of the Middle East. All they actually require is the necessary skills and the credits to develop a healthful, well-fed society. This leads to the further advantage that time is on their side.

The big question is whether, given these advantages, their sense of urgency is strong enough to overcome the age-long habit of passivity and whether the new men coming to power in Damascus and Cairo can lead enough of their people to realize that procrastination is suicide.