In Search of a Policy for Now

As the Arab-Israeli conflict reverted to a war of words, Washington set out belatedly to formulate U.S. policy for a Middle East that had been transformed almost beyond recognition in a week of fighting. No fewer than four official panels, including a Cabinet-level subcommittee of the National Security Council, met daily to study the issues. To an astonishing degree, they were breaking fresh ground. For the fact is that until the crisis erupted, the U.S. had no Mideastern policy or contingency plan worthy of the name.

For six crucial months, beginning last October, the post of Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs was unfilled. During the three months immediately preceding the war, not one U.S. official spoke with United Arab Republic President Gamal Abdel Nasser. U.S. Charge d'Affaires David G. Nes reported from Cairo that trouble was brewing, but later complained that Washington ignored his warnings and branded him an alarmist. Top-level responsibility for the Middle East was bucked from official to official. Nicholas Katzenbach looked into Washington's policy when he became Under Secretary last September, quickly passed the problem to Newcomer Eugene Rostow, Under Secretary for Political Affairs, who thereupon turned it over to a newer comer, his deputy, Foy Kohler.

The Administration hotly denied having been caught with its policy down. "Any inference that the U.S. regarded the situation in the Middle East as anything other than a very grave one is erroneous," insisted a Foggy Bottom spokesman. "The Middle East," President Johnson told a news conference, "has occupied a good deal of our thoughts, our attention, and the time of some of the ablest leaders in our Government ever since I came into the executive branch in 1961. It still does." As the new diplomatic phase opened, the effects of all that attention were not readily evident.

Hashish & Hubris. In any event, Washington's efforts to chart a policy may well be frustrated by the arabesque of politics in the Middle East, where the losers, sounding as if they were inspired by hashish as well as hubris, managed to talk like winners. Even in the past, Washington had limited leverage in the region. Now, in the face of Israeli distrust and Arab hatred--fanned by Nasser's face-saving lie about U.S. and British intervention on Israel's behalf--its influence is virtually nonexistent.

In the U.S., sympathy for Israel was strong.* Of 438 Congressmen who replied to an Associated Press poll, an overwhelming 364 urged that Israel be given assurances of national security and access to the Gulf of Aqaba and the Suez Canal before withdrawing its troops from occupied Arab lands. The other 74 qualified their answers or refused to state a position, but not one urged Israel to withdraw without guarantees. U.S. officials--at least in private--also sympathize with Israel's demands for recognition by the Arab nations and a territorial realignment giving Israel defensible borders.

Beyond encouraging direct Arab-Israeli negotiations and resisting Russia's attempts to brand Israel the aggressor and strip away all of its gains, U.S. policymakers are looking toward the future--far into the future. Lyndon Johnson characteristically visualizes a TVA-style project for the Jordan River basin. White House Aide Walt Rostow, in a commencement address at Vermont's Middlebury College, proposed a regional economic program. But no long-range plan can work, as Johnson conceded at a weekend fund-raising dinner in Austin, unless each nation in the area accepts "the right of its neighbors to stable and secure existence." Only then, he added, can they "count upon the friendly help of the United States." Said the President earlier in the week: "To day in the Middle East--as in Viet Nam and America--we are faced with a task of rebuilding, of putting together a human equation, where men can live as the prophet Micah said, 'Every man under his vine and fig tree; and none shall make them afraid.' "

Swords in Scabbards. That may be an elusive vision. The problem for U.S. policymakers is that the Arabs see no room for Israeli fig trees anywhere in the Middle East; they remain committed to destroying the little country. For their part, the Israelis have no intention of following the advice of Micah and another favorite Johnsonian prophet--Isaiah--and beating their swords into plowshares. "Return your swords to your scabbards," said Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan last week, "but keep them ever ready, for the time has not yet come when you can beat them into plowshares."

Given those attitudes on the part of the belligerents, the U.S. search for a policy for now is every bit as crucial as it is complicated.

*Despite the Israeli attack on the U.S. communications ship Liberty that cost 34 dead, 75 wounded. One officer of the stricken vessel, which was strafed and torpedoed some 15 miles off the Sinai coast, said: "To put it bluntly, she was there to spy for us. We moved in close to monitor the communications of both Egypt and Israel. We have to. We must be informed of what's going on in a matter of minutes." Some of the crew maintained that the attack was deliberate, though Israel denied it.

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