Digging Out of Trouble

Just north of the Sea of Galilee, where the headwaters of the Jordan River used to fan out into a four-mile swamp called Lake Huleh, the Israelis last month began to dig another of the drainage canals that have already reclaimed some 15,000 acres on the Syrian border for new settlers. The Syrians protested to the U.N. Truce Supervision Organization that the Israelis were digging into the demilitarized zone on their side. They opened fire, and the Israelis shot back. One Israeli, one Syrian, and one Egyptian officer of the new United Arab Republic army were killed before Swedish Major General Carl Carlsson von Horn (the U.N.'s new Palestine truce chief) arranged a cease-fire and an impartial U.N. land survey. Fearing that Egypt's Nasser might feel moved to a bombastic defense of his new Syrian subdivision, the U.S. State Department put pressure on Israel to accept. Last week, after U.N. surveyors found that the Israelis were indeed digging into the demilitarized zone, the Israeli diggers duly shifted a few yards to the west and sank their bulldozer blades into indubitably Israeli dirt. The first border row between Israel and Nasser's United Arab Republic had been peaceably settled.

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