Old Flaw, New Crisis

As the New York mayoralty campaign turned into the home -stretch last week, the Republican candidate, Harold Riegelman, bolted off to Washington for a well heralded conference with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Candidate Riegelman, with an eye on New York's powerful Jewish vote, wanted to talk to Dulles about the U.S.'s cancellation of economic aid to Israel, which came after Israel had defied the order of the United Nations truce commission to stop work on a dam in a demilitarized zone on the Syrian border. Riegelman stayed with Dulles for an hour and a half, then appeared in the State Department lobby with a carefully typed statement initialed by Dulles' personal assistant. He was confident, said the candidate, that the Israel dispute would soon be solved and that Israel would be back in good economic graces.

Next day, back in Riegelman's Manhattan, Israel promised the United Nations Security Council that she would stop work on the Jordan dam while the Security Council debated the case. The offer was much like one which the U.N. truce commissioner had rejected as unsatisfactory two weeks before. Nonetheless, on the strength of the stop-work order, President Eisenhower announced at his press conference that "we can proceed with our arrangement for the economic help of Israel." A few hours later, Dulles approved the reinstatement of a $26 million allotment to Israel for the six months ending at year's end.

Covetous Designs? Riegelman's visit to the State Department highlighted an old flaw in U.S. foreign policy: any attempt to work out decisions for the critically strategic Middle East automatically becomes a hot issue of domestic politics. The Truman Administration zigzagged between the pleas of Pentagon strategists for the conciliation of Arab nations and the domestic pressures for strong support of Israel. When the chips were down, Harry Truman always yielded to political pressure. Generally, Eisenhower and Dulles have worked more consistently to restore Arab confidence in the U.S.

In the current crisis, the State Department suspects that Israel's controversial dam is a bargaining weapon in Israel's covetous designs on the waters of the Jordan River--at the expense of Arab neighbors. U.S. policy has tried to head off this crisis by backing a TVA-like development of the Jordan valley for the benefit of both Jews and Arabs. Last week suave Eric Johnston, onetime child prodigy of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and currently the president of the Motion Picture Association, was going from capital to capital in the Middle East as Eisenhower's personal emissary, trying to sell the TVA-type program.

"Don't Say It." Johnston got off to a bad start when the Arab press labeled him the "Zionist servant of the Jewish controlled U.S. cinema industry." The Israelis, for their part, were irritated because Johnston insisted on conferring in the old capital of Tel Aviv instead of in Jerusalem, which Israel has appropriated as a capital in violation of a U.N. resolution. But Johnston's persuasive powers served him well. In Egypt, under the tutelage of U.S.. Ambassador Jefferson Caffery, he got a word of encouragement from Egypt's President Mohammed Naguib (who is currently too busy with the British to want trouble with Israel, any way). Israeli hostility thawed somewhat when Dulles restored economic aid.

Johnston's biggest diplomatic success came in Jordan. There, during a conference at the Premier's residence, one minister wound up in a bitter emotional attack on Johnston and his plan. Instead of taking offense, Johnston calmly heard him out. But just when the minister was about to pronounce Jordan's absolute refusal to go along, Johnston politely held up his hand and said: "Don't say it." Then, persuasively, he asked Jordan to study the plan. He would come back later to discuss details and get answers. The ministers agreed, and Johnston departed in an aura of new friendship.

Charm or no, observers of the Middle Eastern scene did not give the Johnston plan much chance to succeed. Arab hatred and fear of Israel is intense, and Washington's hasty restoration of aid confirmed Arab belief that U.S. party politics is still an important factor in Middle East decisions.

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