Going to Jerusalem

Diplomacy in Israel last week had a sort of Gilbert & Sullivan air about it. The Foreign Ministry was in Jerusalem, the ambassadors were in Tel Aviv, and neither side would visit the other. If Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett wanted to impart important information to Britain or the U.S., he bypassed their emissaries 40 miles away and sent word halfway around the world to his ambassadors to go see the Foreign Office or the State Department. The only direct, official link between the foreign minister and the diplomats was a lone assistant protocol officer left behind in Tel Aviv, and even he disappeared for four days last week to take his law examination.

The trouble began three weeks ago when Foreign Minister Sharett announced that he would join his fellow cabinet ministers in the Holy City, Israel's capital. Would the diplomats please pack up and come along?

They would not. Led by Britain and the U.S., the diplomats sat firmly in Tel Aviv, contending that the 1949 U.N. resolution recommending Jerusalem's internationalization prevented them from doing anything that would acknowledge Jerusalem as Israel's capital. The French ambassador, who much prefers Jerusalem's cool heights to raucous Tel Aviv, longed to transfer, but to his request Paris replied: "Coordinate your actions with the U.S. and Britain." The Italian charge d'affaires responded to Sharett's invitation by offering to buy the Foreign Minister's Tel Aviv house now that Sharett was moving. Upshot: of the 25 emissaries accredited to Israel, only one--the Netherlands minister --is now in Jerusalem, and he has lived there all along.

By last week the Israelis were wondering whether they had not been hasty, and got confirmation when Secretary of State Dulles publicly charged that Israel "embarrassed" the U.N. with an "inopportune" act.

Besides, two could play at the ancient game of Going to Jerusalem. Two C-47s landed on the Arab side of divided Jerusalem, bearing Premier Fawzi Mulki and the entire Jordan cabinet. After a three-hour session in Government House, only 700 yards from the armistice line, the ministers announced that henceforth Jordan's cabinet would split their session between Amman and Jerusalem. Cried Premier Mulki: "From this day on, Jerusalem has become the second capital of Jordan."

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