The Longest Truce
As the General Assembly this week continues debating Russia's refusal to pay its share of peace-keeping costs, one of the policing operations at issue marks a memorable anniversary. Fifteen years ago, the U.N. arranged its first cease-fire in the Arab-Jewish Pales tine War. Today the U.N. is still there.
Like U.N. missions in Korea and in the Congo, the Palestine operation has tak en quasi-permanent root, preserving not peace but a kind of frozen war.
Talking with Guns. Along Israel's 600 miles of frontier with its hostile neighbors of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, there are still great stretches of no man's land. From foxholes and trenches now well ensconced in olive groves, Jew and Arab stare bitterly at one another, firing on anything that moves. Would-be infiltrators cause few diplomatic headaches, a U.N. media tor wryly explains, because "we simply repatriate the corpses." Bisecting the city of Jerusalem is a grim buffer zone of tangled barbed wire and antitank dragon's feet, flanked by concrete pill boxes and rusting "DANGER" signs.
More than 10,000 lives have been lost in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and sporadic shooting continues, with about 15 incidents reported each month. But al ways the tense armistice is restored.
Last week, near the Sea of Galilee, Syrian border guards opened fire on two Israeli farms. Speedily, U.N. head quarters protested to Damascus and snuffed out the trouble. Says a U.N.
aide: "The belligerents speak to each other only through guns or through us." Star & Wall. In addition to policing the borders, the U.N. must also feed, clothe and house or educate 1,075,000 Palestine Arab refugees crowded into the 25-mile-long Gaza Strip separating Israel and Egypt and neighboring Arab countries. In all, 18,740 U.N. personnel from a dozen countries are engaged in the area, and the operation now costs more than $60 million annually. Strung out in two-man teams in remote posts for 15 days at a stretch, the observers face daily risks, plus a bewildering variety of complaints.
Jordan recently protested furiously when Israel hoisted a Goliath-sized, illuminated Star of David on Jerusalem's demilitarized Mount Scopus; Israelis complain that, under the armistice, they should not be barred from Arab Jerusalem's historic Wailing Wall. At last count, the backlog of unsettled disputes totaled a staggering 37,340. One of the few Arab-Israeli compromises: agreement to let a lonely Roman Catholic Trappist monk, one Father Marcel, continue cultivating his vineyards in the no man's land near Tel Aviv.
Bull in Charge. Assigned for two-year hitches, U.N. soldiers rarely volunteer for more. Recently Palestine's fourth Chief of Staff of the U.N. Truce Supervision Organization, General Carl von Horn of Sweden, pulled out, roundly accused by the Israelis of being pro-Arab.-Into Jerusalem last week to succeed him flew a Norwegian air force general with the head-snapping name of Odd Bull ("Odd is a very common Norwegian surname, and Bull is a very old Anglo-Saxon family name"). Bull, who led a U.N. observer team in Lebanon in 1958, seemed to be heading into renewed crisis.
Most immediate threat to the truce is Israel's projected plan to start diverting Jordanian waters from the Sea of Galilee next year. Arabs have long threatened to fight the minute Israel opens the taps. On the other hand, Israel has threatened to march into Jordan if King Hussein succumbs to a Nasser takeover. Asked how long the U.N. might have to stay, a veteran U.N. observer shrugged and said: "Fifteen more years-or 50."
* Von Horn's next assignment: to head a new 200-man U.N. peace-keeping force in Yemen, designed to get Egypt and Saudi Arabia out of the Yemeni civil war. No sooner had Secretary-General U Thant announced the project than the Soviet Union called for a Security Council meeting this week, in an evident attempt to bring the Yemeni mission within range of the Russian veto.
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