World Events in a Month: The Suez Canal Question and Its Offshoots Remain the Axis of International Politics

The term "Middle East" has now acquired a special meaning, which makes it, in the present circumstances, a target of criticism and objection on one side, and a subject of treatment and remedy on the other. The sessions of the American Congress in early February to ratify the Eisenhower plan for the Middle East; the talks of the monarch of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in Washington, Madrid, Rabat, Tunis, and Libya, and then Cairo, where the conference of the heads of the four states — Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan — was held to study the American President's plan, which provides for aiding the states of the Middle East and protecting it from Communism — all this came within the compass of the criticisms at which the Eisenhower plan was aimed, on one side, and of the welcome extended to it, on the other.

It is no secret today that the Cairo conference — though it may stand as an example of an Arab front — does not embrace all the other states which have taken it upon themselves, with their own means and their own policies, to treat Arab questions in a manner befitting the general interest; its resolutions bind none but the parties concerned, and they are responsible for their own policies. Iraq, for example, was not content merely to watch King Saud's talks in Washington, or to await the results of the negotiations in Madrid, Rabat, Tunis, and Libya; it decided that the Emir Abd al-Ilah, the Crown Prince, should head an official delegation to Washington and to some of the states we have mentioned. It was a stroke of Arab good fortune that these visits of his coincided with the presence of King Saud in some of them — above all in Washington, where the joint Saudi-American communiqué was the best evidence of the sound course that Saudi Arabia is following in the international sphere in general and in the Arab sphere in particular. Iraq, for example, has declared over and over again that it is against Communism and an enemy of Zionism; Lebanon spoke its decisive word on this subject through His Excellency the President of the Republic, Mr. Chamoun, in his historic statement to the Beirut newspaper al-Hawadeth; and King Hussein's letter to his prime minister, on the eve of the opening of the Amman talks for the termination of the Anglo-Jordanian treaty, came down like a thunderbolt on the head of local Communism — among its results was the announcement of the treaty's termination, after talks that did not take long. Likewise, the refusal by His Majesty the Saudi monarch of any assistance from the Communist Eastern bloc came as a finishing blow to the promoters of extreme leftist tendencies in the Arab world. This may well have been among the reasons that led to the removal of Shepilov from the Soviet Foreign Ministry and the appointment of Gromyko in his place. All this went on while the Arab world kept its gaze fixed on the problem of Palestine in its two parts: the Arab refugees, and the occupation of Gaza and the Gulf of Aqaba by the Israeli forces.

As for the refugees, Lebanon's delegate Dr. Karim Azkoul declared before the special committee of the United Nations that their problem can be solved only by returning them to their homes in Palestine, or by compensating those who do not desire this return.

As for the question of the occupation of Gaza and Aqaba, Dr. Charles Malik's speech before the General Assembly at last month's session was the first wedge driven to pound at the structure of Israel, that her entity — founded upon aggression, expansion, and covetousness of the borders of the Arab states — might come tumbling down; and so, too, the draft resolution that Dr. Malik presented, in the name of the Arab-Asian-African bloc, to the United Nations, demanding that sanctions be imposed on Israel for refusing to comply with the evacuation of Gaza and the Gulf of Aqaba without being internationally guaranteed freedom of navigation and the non-return of Gaza to Egypt.

At this point, the political observer would do well to look at the Western position on this score:

Britain: holds that the solution of the Gaza and Aqaba problem must come together with something else, following directly upon that solution — namely, the entry of the Emergency Forces into Gaza and the declaration of the Gulf of Aqaba an international waterway.

France: endorses the British thesis of the necessity of Israeli withdrawal from these two zones.

The United States: appears more zealous than France and Britain. President Eisenhower has repeatedly threatened Ben-Gurion, the Prime Minister of Israel, with sanctions of every kind — military, economic, and diplomatic — until these threats of his nearly provoked a split among the members of the two houses of Congress. Israel's reaction was to recall her ambassador in Washington and furnish him with new instructions that were considered something of a retreat from Israel's previous position, so that the Israeli ambassador's meetings with the American Secretary Dulles on the evening of February 25 pointed to the existence of hope for untying this knot.

A communiqué was issued on the talks of Saud, Hussein, Quwatli, and Abdel Nasser in Cairo, embodying the four states' point of view on positive neutrality between East and West, on continuing to support the causes of Algeria and the Arab refugees, and on demanding the withdrawal of the Israeli forces from Egyptian territory without restriction or condition.

Nor have the efforts of the Arabs at the United Nations been confined to treating the questions of Palestine and Israel's withdrawal from Gaza and Aqaba; they have gone beyond them to other international matters, such as the Algerian question, on which the General Assembly unanimously resolved, after two weeks of debate, to call upon France and Algeria to negotiate for a peaceful settlement of the existing dispute, leading to a cessation of the fighting. The views and statements delivered by the delegates of the Arab-Asian-African bloc found a far-reaching echo in the various international circles represented at the United Nations.

And so, if we set aside from the international field President Eisenhower's plan for the Middle East; the opposing Soviet plan, announced in the Supreme Soviet by the Minister Shepilov before his removal from office; the recent British-American-French plan for a temporary administration of the Suez Canal; and the Cyprus dilemma, which the United Nations has recommended be resolved peacefully along the lines of what was done in the Algerian question — then we can say: the important questions branching out from the Suez problem still form the principal axis on which international politics turns, and for which it musters its efforts and resources, in search of a solution.