Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1956-03-09
Hope and the Middle East

The somber trend of events in the
Middle East fully Justif1eS President Eli
Senhower's call for an urgent and early"
effort by the United Nations to pacify the
situation. He has not defined the type
of action he has in mind, but presumably
it would involve-in addition to new steps
by the U. Ms truce supervisory organiza-
tion-a full-dress attempt in the Security
Council to adopt measures effective
enough to keep Arab-Israeh tensions
from exploding into about war.
U. N. Secretary General Dag Ham,
marskjold continues to be moderately
optimistic about the outlook Despite the
belligerent aspects of the Arab summit"
meeting in Cairo, despite the ominous
meanings that can be read into Jordan'S
custer of British General Club, despite
the latest Syrian-ISrael shooting Incl
dents, and despite such other sinister
things as the continuation of Soviet
sponsored arms shipments to Egypt, he
still feels that peace can and will be
maintained in the area. At any rate, in
his opinion, there is enough human wis
dom to master the present dangerous
situation, and he warns against defeatist
and despairing talk to the contrary. "We
must not develop" he says, Unto a state
of mind where we believe that we are
drifting without will and direction toward
war. I do not believe that is true, and I
believe so even less after having met the
leading personalities of the Arab coun-
tries and of Israel"
This may prove to be nothing but
wiShful thinking. Yet Israeli Premier
Ben-Gurion has just solemnly pledged
that his government twill not start
war" And If the same sort of pledge can
be had from the Arab leaderS-and if all
parties concerned live up to it-then
urgent and early" action by the United
Nations may well vindicate Mr.. Ham
marskjold's hopeful view that there are
good possibilities of making real progress
toward an enduring peace in that part Of
the world. Certainly, if the men of the
Kremlin would join in unanimous U. N.
decision on measures designed to promote
such progress, if they would refrain from
using their veto, and if they would call
halt to their fear-breeding arms ship
mentS, the current situation would I'M
dergo profound change for the better.
More than that, besides markedly dinin-
iShing the great danger of full-scale hos
tilities in the Middle East, any Soviet CO.
operation of that kind would constitute
impressive evidence that Russias leaders
really mean it when they say they want
to ease international tensions and live on
friendly terms with the United States and
the West as whole.
The offs" involved in all this are
obviously very big, and the Soviet record
to date, of course, plainly suggests that
the Kremlin-which can play decisive
role for or against war in the Middle East
lis in no mood to abate the Arab-Israeli
crisis. Still, assuming that Premier Bull
ganin's peace advocating letters to PreSi-
dent Eisenhower are not wholly insincere,
there may be at least chance that
urgent and early U. N. action will re-
ceive Russian support In that case, the
situation should greatly improve. Other
wise, unhappily, Mr.. Hammarskjold's
hopes are likely to be shattered, and
drastic steps may eventually have to be
taken in accord with the Anglo-French-
American declaration OF May, 1850.