Phantoms for Israel

If there was ever hope for a limit to the arms race in the Middle East, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko quashed it during his visit to the U.S. He was simply uninterested. Accordingly, last week President Johnson responded to a year-old Israeli request for 50 U.S. F-4 Phantom fighter-bombers to match the growing supersonic strength of the Arab air forces. He ordered the State Department to begin negotiations with Israel about the sale of the jets--thereby making possible continued Israeli superiority in the air.

Since the Phantoms will not be delivered until next year at the earliest, the chief immediate effect was political. The Israelis welcomed Johnson's move as a symbol of U.S. support in the face of a buildup of Arab forces. For the same reason, the Arabs reacted with fury. Still to be determined was how the sale would affect what a U.S. diplomat called a "small but precious momentum for peace" that has been building up at the United Nations.

Diplomatic Pressure. It was largely a manufactured momentum, reinforced by the fact that the foreign ministers of the hostile parties were attending the U.N. General Assembly. Arabs and Israelis felt the diplomatic pressure to the extent of revealing the negotiating positions that they had disclosed privately to Gunnar Jarring, the U.N.'s Middle East mediator.

Enunciating Israel's "principles of peace," Foreign Minister Abba Eban made the small but key concession that Israel would not demand face-to-face discussions with the Arabs, until now an Israeli precondition for negotiations. But, insisted Eban, any agreement would have to be signed by all parties. Egypt's Foreign Minister Mahmoud Riad revealed that he would be willing to negotiate with Jarring a "timetable" to put into effect the U.N. Middle East resolution passed last November. In effect, it called for both Israeli troop withdrawals and Arab recognition of the right of every state in the area "to live in peace." The Egyptians also said that once a settlement was achieved, Israeli ships would be permitted the use of the Suez Canal.

Hardened Opinion. Such concessions only served to expose how far apart the two sides remain on the core issues. The Israelis, for example, have no intention of giving up Jerusalem, while the Arabs insist on the return of "every inch" of occupied soil. In the year that Jarring has been trying to bridge such gaps, Israeli opinion has only hardened against any return to the prewar boundaries. At the same time, any Arab government that tried to sign a peace treaty now would have to answer to the increasingly powerful and hard-lining Palestinian commandos. Given continued Soviet lack of interest in a settlement, any peace remains a remote prospect.

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