MIDDLE EAST: Time of Trouble

Inviting the heads of Israel’s Christian churches and communities to a New Year’s tea, sad-faced old President Itzhak ben-Zvi of Israel begged his guests to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem.” The peace of Jerusalem—and the Middle East —was standing in the need of prayer last week.

The Jordan-held sector of the Holy City still lay in shock after riots in which at least 56 Arabs died protesting the ill-timed British proposal that their country join the new Baghdad pact for a Middle East anti-Communist front. The U.N.’s patient mediator, Canada’s Major General E.L.M. Burns, announced that both the Israelis and Egyptians are still blocking the latest plan for a border truce, and are both violating the armistice regularly. The governments of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria, making common cause of their enmity to the Baghdad pact, appointed Egypt’s War Minister, Major General Abdel Hakim Amer, as supreme commander of their three armies. Red-faced London officials admitted that Egypt had just acquired 190 British tanks, Valentines of World War II vintage, bought as scrap and reconditioned, then resold by Belgian dealers. Israel was in no condition to protest, it seemed, having just come by a quantity of surplus British tanks in like manner.