MIDDLE EAST: Gathering Clouds

Along the jagged, lawless Arab-Israeli frontier, the political gang war went on in rising fury. In Jordan, Arabs buried their dead—66 men. women & children massacred by Israeli troops in the attack on Kibya (TIME, Oct. 26). Barely had the funeral chant of the priests died away when explosives again jolted the Holy Land. This time the harried U.N. Mixed Armistice Commission found Jordan guilty of an “extremely serious violation of the armistice”: blasting an Israeli freight train off the tracks.

In Amman. Jordan’s capital, roaming mobs stoned the French embassy and the U.S. information office, demolished a U.S. embassy car and cried fruitlessly for rifles. Meeting in secret emergency session in the same city, the eight-nation Arab League Political Committee quadrupled funds for Arab border guards and rejected outright a ten-year, $121 million U.S. plan for a Jordan TVA to divide the life-giving waters between both sides. Cried Lebanon’s Premier Abdullah Yafi: “The project [was] designed mainly for the benefit of Israel.” Actually, the plan would give Jordan and Syria two-thirds of the waters, Israel only one-third. But in the Middle East last week, there was little room for cold facts or cool heads.

Arriving on a peace mission sponsored by President Eisenhower, Eric Johnston could barely get his foot in the door. Lebanon and Jordan gave him a polite reception but no encouragement. Iraq sent word that it hoped Mr. Johnston would not bother calling at all; Egypt, after stalling, finally tendered Johnston a limp invitation to Cairo. Syria’s President Adib Shishekly snorted: “The wandering Jews cannot but remain highwaymen despite their forming a state.” He demanded “liberation” of Israel.

Israel itself was no calmer. Openly defying both U.N. and U.S., 30 floodlit Israeli bulldozers clawed day & night into the Jordan River valley to divert water for an Israeli hydroelectric project. Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett argued bitterly with Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion that the work must be stopped, but in a series of emergency Cabinet meetings, B.-G.’s “tough” line carried, 8 to 3. This decision presumably meant the loss of a critical $50 million or more in U.S. aid, but the Israeli public seemed overwhelmingly behind B.G. Housewives queuing up for their fortnightly three-ounce meat ration quietly accepted forecasts that henceforth even this tiny amount would be a luxury reserved for high holidays. “There is a hint of the Dunkirk spirit about,” said a Jew from Britain.

This week in New York, the U.N. Security Council was to take up “the Palestine question” for the first time since 1951. Star witness: Major General Vagn Bennike, U.N. truce supervision chief, who arrived in Manhattan after a flight from the Holy Land carrying two cases jammed with maps, photos and documents.