The Unlove Feast

With a burst of furious energy, Egyptian workmen last week completed a three-story, air-conditioned hotel in Alexandria. They raised some 12,000 flags over lampposts and public squares, built 200 triumphal arches, and draped buildings with hundreds of banners car rying slogans of Arab solidarity. As special beach cabins went up on the golden sands of the Mediterranean shore, other workmen dusted and polished furniture and chandeliers in the vast Muntazah Palace and tended 325 acres of gardens.

Pledged Lives. All was finally ready for the second Arab summit conference, which Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser hopes will be an even greater triumph than the first, held at Cairo last January (TIME, Jan. 24). But some top faces will be absent. Pleading illness, Tunisia's President Habib Bourguiba retired to a Swiss clinic and sent his Premier in his place. Morocco's King Hassan II did not even botherwith excuses, and dispatched his younger brother, Prince Abdallah. Saudi Arabia's Prince Feisal grumbled that Arab Kings and Presidents "need to stay home and attend to more serious matters," but finally agreed to put in an appearance.

The main item on the agenda is the pious wish to "establish relations among the Arab countries on the sound basis of love and genuine cooperation." But in the Arab world, love is a many-splintered thing, what with 40,000 Egyptian troops fighting a bloody guerrilla war with royalist tribesmen in Yemen, Morocco and Algeria still squabbling over their disputed border, and jails in almost every state jammed with Arab dissenters.

Last January all the Arab nations enthusiastically agreed to shelve their own disputes and gang up on Israel.

They pledged their fortunes, honor and lives to prevent Israel's using the water of the Jordan to irrigate the Negev desert. Yet last week Israel's $150 million diversion project was routinely at work, and the Arab states' counterprojects, intended to cut off the head waters of the Jordan, had not even begun building.

One good reason: Israel has warned that any such counterdiversion would be cause for war, and the Arab states are unlikely to invite attack while fully a third of Egypt's armed forces are tied down in Yemen. The United Nations last week wearily gave up its 14-month Observation Mission in Yemen because both Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which have been bankrolling the operation, cut off funds, and Egypt had also gone back on its many promises to withdraw its troops.

Purposeful Arms. Prince Feisal will probably try to keep the Yemen issue off the Arab summit's agenda and may be supported by the more or less conservative Arab states of Sudan, Libya, Tunisia and Morocco. Nasser's effort to get Arab backing for his Yemen stand against "the British imperialists and Saudi infiltrators" may be backed by Algeria, Kuwait, and his new-found bosom friend, King Hussein of Jordan. Syria, whose Baathist rulers detest Nasser, and Lebanon, which hates quarrels, will probably stay on the sidelines.

Despite the festive flags and floodlights, the summit meeting in Alexandria may bring more joy to Israel than to any of the associated Arab states. Almost as if anticipating failure, Egypt's press and radio have again been attacking Nasser's pet targets: 1) the Baathist regime in Syria, 2) Saudi Arabia, and 3) Lebanon, which is castigated as being too pusillanimous "even to accept proffered armaments." Retorted a Lebanese paper: "The arms which Cairo has acquired have not served any purpose so far except to kill other Arabs."

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