One Step After Another

For months the world has talked as if Israeli withdrawal were the Middle East's only problem. It is not; but the U.S. has insisted that the area's real problems cannot be dealt with until the ugly debris of the Suez debacle is cleared away piece by piece. With Israel purging itself of aggression at last, the world could turn to Gamal Abdel Nasser, whose country has ignored a 1951 U.N. resolution calling for free passage of Israeli ships through the Suez Canal.

Ben-Gurion's long defiance, so strongly deplored, so anxiously debated, served a purpose. In beating it down, the U.S. has been drawn more and more deeply into a commitment of responsibility in an area and over problems (e.g., Suez) about which only six months ago Secretary of State John Foster Dulles could say that the U.S. was not "primarily" concerned. The wider commitment was plain to see in President Eisenhower's last urgent letter to Israel's Premier Ben-Gurion, urging the "utmost speed" in withdrawal but promising to work for conditions "more stable, more tranquil and more conducive to the general welfare than those which existed heretofore."

In an area like the Middle East where rancors are so intense and suspicions so deeprooted, the difficulties ahead are enormous. But by proving to such Arabs as are willing to be shown that the U.S. is prepared to be evenhanded, the U.S. has taken the first necessary step towards creating an atmosphere that could in time benefit both Arab and Israeli. The first step is progress only if followed by the second.

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