Middle East: What to Do About Germany

The latest angry round in West Germany’s hassle with Egypt last week led Chancellor Ludwig Erhard to announce that he was at last prepared to establish diplomatic relations with Israel. Having made his announcement, Erhard belatedly realized that it might be important to discover Israel’s sentiments in the matter.

To that end, Special Envoy Kurt Birrenbach flew to Jerusalem and was astounded to discover that Israeli officials were not exactly jumping with joy. For one thing, anti-German feelings lie bone-deep in many Israelis; for another, everyone recognized that Erhard’s decision was prompted less by a desire to do right by Israel than by a need to slap back at Gamal Abdel Nasser, who has been diplomatically flirting with East Germany.

Through Birrenbach, Israel’s Premier Levi Eshkol prodded Bonn for action on 1) extending the statute of limitation to permit the arrest and trial of Nazi murderers still at large, 2) forcing the return home of German scientists working on Egypt’s rocket program, and 3) resuming the shipment of arms to Israel suspended last month because of Nasser’s protests.

As Birrenbach flew back to Bonn to deliver Eshkol’s message, foreign ministers of 13 Arab states assembled in Cairo to decide on a common course of action against Bonn. Nasser, sensing a chance to rally the Arabs behind him, was fast off the mark with a four-point proposal of penalties, ranging from the withdrawal of Arab ambassadors from Bonn to a complete trade boycott of West Germany. “If the Jews win this battle, then the Arabs had better go bury their faces in the mud!” he cried.

But as is well known, when it comes to unity, the Arabs are long on words and short on deeds. Hardly had Egypt’s leader spoken than Tunisia’s President Habib Bourguiba made it clear that his country would not go along with extreme measures against the West Germans. And Morocco’s King Hassan II, in Cairo for a state visit, did not even mention the German problem in his speech at an official dinner. Fact was, all the Arab states were probably willing to withdraw their ambassadors from Bonn, but many were reluctant to go much farther. Only the extremist bloc of Egypt, Yemen and Iraq, possibly joined by Syria and Algeria, seemed likely to go the whole way.