World Events in a Month

This column is edited by: Ziyadeh Awwad

The Egypt Crisis Nearly Kindled the Fire of a Third War

On the twenty-eighth of last October, General Burns — formerly chief of the international observers in Palestine, and now commander of the international force in the Middle East — informed the United Nations that Israel had mobilized a huge army whose numbers and equipment he could not reckon, on the basis of the preliminary information he received during this build-up. But he indicated, in his report to Secretary-General Hammarskjöld, that the Israeli forces might commit aggression against Jordan and against the borders of Egypt. The United Nations was in no position to take the measures needed to check the Israeli aggression before it began; indeed, it did not in fact know what numbers and equipment stood behind Israel, nor who was strengthening its arm and backing it — until Monday the 29th of the month, when it was announced that Israel had attacked Egyptian territory and pushed deep into the Sinai desert.

Within less than 24 hours of the start of the brutal Zionist aggression against Egypt, the Egyptian armed forces were inflicting grievous losses on the aggressors and destroying their advancing armies. But Britain and France hastened at once to address an ultimatum to both Egypt and Israel — a veiled ultimatum, studied in advance — that if they did not cease fire, and if Egypt's forces, defending her land, her dignity, and her honor, did not fall back, and if the forces of invasion and treachery did not fall back from their plunder and their ambitions, to a distance of ten miles from the Suez Canal, then the British and French armies allied against Egypt would occupy Egypt within twelve hours.

Egypt rejected the ultimatum decisively and categorically, for she knew of the Western–Israeli conspiracy; Egypt's armies went on fighting the attacking aggressors, and the whole world rose up, proclaiming Egypt's right to defend herself and supporting her to the full.

Britain and France were quick to carry out their ultimatum, directing their fighters and bombers against Egypt's airfields, her military targets, and her broadcasting stations, sowing fear, terror, and destruction, and spreading death and pain among many whose only guilt was that they are a people that believes in dignity and defends it, believes in freedom and fights to the death for it, and believes in right and goes to martyrdom in its cause.

A full week passed, with Egypt resisting like heroes, turning the aggressors' treachery back upon their own breasts — fighting in Sinai, fighting in Port Said, fighting indeed on sea and in the air and on land against the naval and air fleets of Britain and France, and fighting the Zionist monstrosity — and not for a moment did she think of laying down her arms. The invaders occupied Sinai, and Britain and France occupied three quarters of Port Said, and Port Fuad, and all eyes were turning toward Ismailia and then the Suez Canal in its entirety, when Marshal Bulganin addressed his warning to both France and Britain: that if they did not desist from the invasion of Egypt, he would not prevent volunteers from traveling to Egypt itself, to fight side by side with the Egyptian army of liberation; and that the Soviet Union would not want for a second means of bringing Britain and France to submission, even were it by striking their two capitals with rockets and winged bombs.

Panic spread through West and East, Asia and Africa; leaders and men of reason called out for the sudden crisis to be averted, and laid blame and reproach upon Britain and France. "The heavens fell" in the British House of Commons, and the Conservatives, Labour, and the Lords compelled Sir Eden to halt the fire in Egypt and to comply with the orders of the United Nations. Eden in Britain, like his ally Mollet in France, found no course but to answer the appeal of humanity entire, which had stood as one, condemning the aggression and denouncing it.

At last the fighting stopped, and the General Assembly met and adopted a resolution, based on a Canadian proposal, providing for the formation of an international force to be charged with keeping the peace in the Middle East, and to be dispatched at once to the zones of fighting.

Thus was formed the international force which in mid-November began to arrive in Egypt, to take the place of the aggressor forces pending a final settlement of the dispute — that settlement on which depends, to a great extent, the question of security in the Middle East and the warding off of the specter of a third war from the entire world.

And while the world awaits the evacuation by Britain, France, and Israel of the Egyptian territories they occupy, diplomatic observers are looking to America's position on the situation in the Middle East, especially after Britain's and France's foot-dragging over withdrawal from Egypt, and Israel's conditions for withdrawing from Sinai and Gaza.

On November 6 General Eisenhower was elected President of the United States of America, and it was noted that the support President Eisenhower met with was far stronger than what he received in the presidential election of four years ago.

Informed circles pin many hopes on the re-election of General Eisenhower for a second time as President of the United States, with respect to the conditions prevailing throughout the world. In Eastern Europe there are Communist massacres and mass terror against peoples who look to rid themselves of the Communist yoke; and in the Middle East a collective Arab tensing, ready to spring, threatens the explosion of the powder keg beside which the fire has been kindled by a West forever looking there for places of influence and positions of privilege. But what is not yet clear is the extent of the coming steps the United States will take in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East alike, to strengthen peace and to spread reassurance and calm.

Many will perhaps have noticed that the statement of General Gruenther, commander of the Atlantic armies in Europe, concerning Moscow's declarations and its warnings to the Western states, and likewise the warning Gruenther addressed to the leaders of the Kremlin — that the Atlantic organization would answer Soviet aggression, or Soviet interference in the affairs of the Middle East — all this was in the nature of an American step toward stopping the Russians at their limit, and in the nature of a call to Britain and France to work for withdrawal from Egyptian territory at any price.

On November 10 the conference of the Arab kings and presidents opened in Beirut, at the invitation addressed by His Excellency President Chamoun to the Arab kings and presidents, to study the present situation in the Middle East.

The conference was attended by the kings of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Jordan, by representatives of the kingdoms of Libya and Yemen, and by His Excellency President al-Quwatli, as well as by a delegate of the Sudanese Republic.

At the close of the conference, on the 14th of the month, the conferees issued a communiqué supporting the resolutions of the United Nations on settling the dispute in the Middle East, and backing Egypt in her struggle for freedom and independence.

In the middle of last month General Burns, commander of the international force in Egypt, made a trip to Rome, where he met Mr. Hammarskjöld, Secretary-General of the United Nations, and together they inspected the assembly points of the international force for the Middle East. General Burns then left Rome for New York, where he made important contacts with the responsible officials at the United Nations, dealing with the problems particular to the Middle East; Hammarskjöld likewise went to Cairo and met President Gamal Abdel Nasser and Dr. Mohammed Fawzi, the Foreign Minister, and shortly took the Egyptian minister with him on their way to New York.