Victor Without Spoils

Reporting to his fellow Israeli Parliamentarians last week, former Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett was full of the snubs he and two colleagues had received at a recent meeting of the Interparliamentary Union at Bangkok. "An atmosphere of isolation such as I have never experienced at any international conference surrounded the Israeli delegation," said Sharett. Not only the Arabs and neutralist Asians but U.S. and European delegates gave him the cold shoulder, said Sharett. One Norwegian told him: "I'm sympathetic to your problems, but we Norwegians don't want atom bombs dropping on us because of you. You brought us close to war."

In the aftermath of the "glorious" invasion, Israel found itself ingloriously alone. It could boast of but one steadfast friend these days: France. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion warned of "difficult political struggles" ahead, not so much with "our enemies" as with "peoples who do not hate Israel." Other Israelis noted glumly that some $30 million in U.S. grants-in-aid and a $75 million U.S. Export-Import Bank loan, both approved long before Israel's invasion of Egypt, had not been released since.

Without & Within. Though isolated by the disapproval without, the country showed no signs of deep soul-searchings or critical postmortems. Nobody except the inconsequential Communists had even mildly suggested that the whole invasion might have been a ghastly error for which Israel might be a long time paying.

Unrepentant and unhurrying to the end, the Israelis finally agreed to pull their troops out of the Sinai desert this week, under threat of still another U.N. censure vote. By an overwhelming 74-to-2 vote (France was the other nay), the General Assembly called on Israel to withdraw within five days behind the 1949 armistice line. Both Britain and the U.S. first worked to avoid an outright condemnation of Israel, and then supported the resolution. Though agreeing to withdraw, Israel attached conditions. It insisted that Egypt must never return to Gaza, which was in fact a part of the old Palestine mandate and had never been Egyptian soil since the days of Rameses the Great, 3,500 years before. The Israelis also demanded guaranties of free navigation through the Red Sea's Gulf of Aqaba before withdrawing from Sharm el Sheikh and Tiran, the strongholds from which Nasser had blocked their access to the gulf and the port of Elath.

Bypassing Suez. The Israelis stood a chance to salvage one gain from their spoilsless victory. They have sent two frigates to patrol the Gulf of Aqaba and have placed four chartered merchant vessels in service between Elath and East African ports. Turning even the Suez blockage to advantage, the enterprising Israelis are already offering all comers overland transport by truck and rail to the Mediterranean. This week some 500 tons of Ethiopian hides and coffee are scheduled to be transshipped to Europe over this route, which, while costlier than the Suez passage, can compete with transport around the Cape of Good Hope.

Washington is swinging round to the view that the U.N. Emergency Force in Sinai should occupy the Aqaba strongpoints as the Israelis withdraw, and stay until a settlement can be negotiated, to assure Israeli ships continued free passage to the Red Sea and the markets of Asia.

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