Middle East: Up the Escalator

Few things could be more unsettling than the vision of Arabs and Israelis—or for that matter, Arabs and Arabs—rattling rockets at each other. But after a twelve-year limitation on major military aid to any Middle Eastern state, the U.S. broke the pattern by announcing that it would sell Israel a consignment of Hawk missiles. The professed reason: to offset Communist military aid to the Arab nations. Actually, the situation has not substantially changed since the 1960 pact between Nasser and the Soviet Union, which gave Egypt 60 Ilyushin jet bombers, several squadrons of new MIG-21 fighters and 500 T-54 tanks.

In itself, the Hawk does not represent any great threat to the Arabs. A supersonic ground-to-air missile with a range of 26 miles, the Hawk can hunt down hostile bombers in the skies above Israel but has little offensive capability. But the sudden reversal of U.S. policy spurred the Arab press to frenzy. “Americans urinate on their own principles!” screamed Beirut’s Al Anwar. The Egyptian Gazette, drawing a parallel between the Middle East and the Caribbean, cried that “Israel is a greater menace to Arab countries than Cuba will ever be to the U.S.” Cairo’s semi-official Al Akhabar took a more sophisticated line in charging that the Hawk deal was aimed at U.S. Jewish voters so as “to win as many seats as possible for the Democratic Party.”

Even with the Hawk, which will not be operational for at least two years, Israel theoretically lags in the missile race. Last summer Nasser witnessed the successful test firing of the El Kaher (Conqueror) rocket, built in Egypt with the help of private West German and Italian companies. El Kaher has a range of 360 miles and could land, says Nasser pointedly, “just south of Beirut,” i.e., in Israel. There is even a dim possibility of nuclear warheads. In moving up the escalator toward atomic power, Israel, with French help, has built a 24,000-kw. nuclear reactor in the Negev near Beersheba. and Egypt has a 2,000-kw. reactor at Inshas, 30 miles from Cairo, built with Soviet and private West German aid.

At week’s end. the arms race was taking its predictable course. Britain, which had followed the U.S. in limiting arms to the Middle East, now was ready to sell its Bloodhound missile to all comers. And the Soviet Union gleefully informed Egypt of its willingness to step up arms deliveries, including its SA-2 ground-to-air missile, as an answer to Israel’s Hawks.