Ticking Bomb

Amid the coups and near coups, the troop landings and the summit thunderclaps that have rocked the Middle East, Israel has kept extremely quiet. Yet the potentially hottest spot in the whole area remains Israel's eastern frontier. If the British should pull out of Jordan, and Hussein's kingdom should fall into the hands of Nasserites, war could break out between Arabs and Jews over Jordan. Israel long ago said it would not "look indifferently at the dismemberment of Jordan." In such a situation, Israel might strike for the west bank of the Jordan River to give itself a more easily defended border. A single incident last week brought sharp reminder of this ticking bomb: 66 Arab prisoners in Israel, nearly all of them terrorists captured infiltrating the country from Jordan in the past, seized guns from their prison armory, killed two guards (eleven prisoners also were killed) and escaped toward the border in the most spectacular jailbreak in Israel's history.

Israel's Premier David Ben-Gurion broke his silence last week to warn that Israel would listen to what a U.N. summit conference might say about Middle East problems but would not be bound by U.N. summit decisions adopted without its participation. News of another Ben-Gurion diplomatic deed came out of Jerusalem last week. On the day Israel's Cabinet voted to give Britain permission to overfly Israel to bring troops and supplies to hard-pressed King Hussein, Ben-Gurion received the Soviet ambassador, told him that if Russia was really interested in peace, it might usefully arrange a meeting between its friend President Nasser and Ben-Gurion himself to settle Arab-Israel differences.

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