UNITED NATIONS: A Heavy Burden

The problem of Palestine no longer looked the same. While the U.N. had been marking time (pending the outcome of the U.S. elections), the Jews had been busy making history. Rickety truces were now beside the point; sanctions had become impracticable. Last week, the Security Council, readjusting its sights, sat down to catch up on its homework.

Chief item for study was a master plan for peace in the Near East proposed by U.N. Mediator Dr. Ralph Bunche. The plan would order Jews and Arabs to evacuate designated zones, settle all outstanding truce problems, reduce military forces and declare a permanent armistice. The Negeb desert, Bunche thought, would provide a good starting point. According to blueprints produced by a U.N. subcommittee, the Jews would be ordered to quit all of the Negeb (except for a small corner in the north); the Egyptians would abandon their few remaining pockets, keeping only the coastal area and a narrow strip just north of the Egyptian frontier. Beersheba, one of Israel’s most treasured war prizes, would return to the Arabs under Egyptian administration. At week’s end a Security Council special committee approved the Negeb plan, ordered Jews and Arabs to withdraw to the designated lines by Nov. 19.

Defiance in the Desert. Would the Jews accept the order? There was no sign of it in Tel Aviv. Cried one government spokesman: “Absolutely astounding … a shameful proposal.” The U.N., he said, had come “dangerously close to the prerogatives . . . held by God of quickening the dead.” Even Israel’s gentle, scholarly President Chaim Weizmann was moved to truculence. “No force on earth,” he declared, “can remove the Jews from the Negeb, short of carrying them bodily—and they are a heavy burden.”

The Israelis continued to flout U.N. authority. Last week they arrested two U.N. observers, explaining that they had been “found wandering around” near the front without their Jewish liaison officer and had simply been “deposited at the bar in their hotel.” When the U.N. requested permission for the Egyptians to send food convoys to troops trapped in the Faluja pocket, the Jews stalled. Said one government official: “They are there as a result of their aggression. If they need supplies, we will be willing to accept their surrender.”

History in the Making. Meanwhile, in Tel Aviv, Israel’s Premier David Ben-Gurion stepped up colonization schedules for the Jerusalem corridor and the Negeb, planned to settle 5,000 to 10,000 Jews in the southern desert within the next three years. Within two months, he announced, several hundred Jewish pioneers would move into Beersheba to make it a Jewish town. He also announced that Israeli representatives were holding secret talks with leaders of two Arab nations (probably Lebanon and Egypt).

He made it clear what boundaries he would want. Going to a map on the wall, he traced the present Israeli lines in the Negeb. The pointer he used was a rifle cartridge stamped with the date 1948 and two tiny Stars of David. “Our own manufacture,” he said proudly.