The term "Middle East" has now acquired a special meaning, which makes it, in the present circum-stances, 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 fol-lowing 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 state-ment 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 promot-ers 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 com-mittee of the United Nations that their problem can be solved only by returning them to their homes in Palestine, or by compensat-ing those who do not desire this return.

As for the question of the occu-pation 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