Peace in a Smoke-Filled Room

Beneath a huge mural showing the temptation of Adam by Eve, tall, husky Dr. Ralph Bunche, acting U.N. mediator for Palestine, sat impassively at the head of the table, with a cigarette dangling, as usual, from his lips. Bushy-haired Dr. Walter Eytan of Israel's Foreign Office smoked a pipe. Both of the colonels from Egypt puffed cigarettes.

Dr. Eytan and Colonel Yigal Yadin, Israeli Chief of Operations, signed the 5,000-word armistice agreement. Colonels Seif edDin and Mohamed Rahmani signed for Egypt. Thus, in a smoke-filled salon of the Hotel des Roses on the island of Rhodes, peace--tentative but perhaps durable--came to the Middle East.

Correspondents knew what to expect when, on the day before the signing, Greek porters unloaded cartons and crates of Arabic goodies, obviously for a celebration, from a DC-3 that had flown in from Cairo. Historic Beersheba, crossroads of the Negeb desert, had been the last stumbling block. By dint of arms, the Jews had Beersheba, and they believed it indispensable as a base for their desert reclamation projects. Before Seif edDin would give it up formally, he had to fly to Cairo for his government's consent. If he got consent, he told the correspondents, he would bring back a little something for a party.

"I Always Swore . . ." The armistice agreement was in large part due to the immense ability, patience, tact and unflagging good humor of Ralph Bunche, Negro social scientist (A.B., University of California at Los Angeles; Ph.D., Harvard) who had taken over the role of martyred Count Folke Bernadotte. Several times during the seven weeks of negotiations, agreement had seemed hopeless. Each time Dr. Bunche had thought of something to keep the talks alive. By last week, the negotiators on both sides had come to regard him as a new colossus of Rhodes.

His labors, said Walter Eytan, had been "superhuman." Said Seif edDin: "One of the world's greatest men." A somewhat backhanded tribute also came from a young U.S. Army officer, a Southerner, who is a member of Bundle's staff: "I always swore I'd never work for a Nigra. Well, Dr. Bunche is a real man. His color just happens to be a little different."

President Truman expressed himself as "immensely gratified." Trygve Lie put in a sorely needed plug for the U.N. Israel's Foreign Minister Moshe Shertok voiced a rather astonishing accolade to Egypt's sybaritic King Farouk: "Tribute must be paid to the realism and courage of the Egyptian monarch and government, their breadth of vision and . . . bold statesmanship . . ."

Shertok's praise was explicable on two counts: i) Israel could afford to be generous with words, having got most of what it wanted; 2) Israel might, just possibly, want to make common cause with Egypt against a resurgence of British "imperialism" in the Middle East.

"During Business Hours." What Israel wanted most was the Negeb, and it got that. The Arabs, however, got a 20-mile strip of coast around Gaza, and Israel agreed to a semi-demilitarization (only small defensive forces, no airplanes) of the Israeli-Egyptian border. Egypt was allowed to withdraw from the famed Fa-luja pocket, and last week her half-starved troops, who had been marooned in the pocket for 20 weeks, began a joyful exodus, heads held high.

The thorny questions of Jerusalem's status and the disposition of 500,000 Arab refugees* still had to be settled. Israel's other Arab neighbors, Syria, Lebanon and Transjordan, must be satisfied, and Syria, in particular, was showing signs of unabated bitterness. But the confident Israeli were not expecting trouble from anyone. A quip going the rounds of Tel Aviv last week: "Armistice applications accepted only during business hours."

On Rhodes, amid beaming good will, the delicacies from Cairo were consumed--jellied turkey, mixed vegetables, meat balls, chocolates, assorted liquors. The negotiators parted with smiles and handshakes. Doughty Dr. Bunche took ship for the Holy Land, to see with his own eyes how the armistice worked out.

* For whose subsistence the U.N. has authorized a grant of $32 million.

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