The Psychedelic Debate

From the hippy haunts of Manhattan's Greenwich Village, it is a long city mile to United Nations headquarters on the shore of the East River. But last week, as the U.N. General Assembly began its Mideast debate, it was an open question whether the hippies or some of the delegates were farther out. Most of the speeches sounded like part of an ambassadorial bein, a surreal exercise in psychediplomacy.

France's usually impeccable Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville offered an embarrassed echo of his boss, Charles de Gaulle. The real cause of the Arab-Israeli war, he suggested lamely, was U.S. involvement in Viet Nam. Foreign Minister Birame Mamadou Wane of Mauritania argued that Israel's "Zionist expansionism" was somehow connected to apartheid in South Africa. Syrian President Noureddin Attassi, who spent most of his time before the war inciting Arab armies to "wipe Israel off the face of the earth," charged that "Israeli neocolonialism is based in its essence on the total extermination of the Arab people." And Israel would not stop with the Arabs, warned Egypt's Deputy Prime Minister Mahmoud Fawzi: "In 1956, Egypt was singled out for attack. In 1967, Syria and Jordan have been brought in. Who is next? You? You? You? You in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Balkans and God knows where else?"

Open Shrines. All the inane charges could not mask the embarrassing truth that after a six-day war, Israel does indeed hold territory that the Arabs would dearly like to get back. In a rational world, Israel's terms would not seem overly harsh. What it asks in exchange for the land it has conquered is not a return to its dangerous existence before the war but a guarantee that it can live in peace. "Our watchword is not backward to belligerency, but forward to peace," explained its ever-eloquent Foreign Minister Abba Eban. Israel's prime demand, he said, is Arab acceptance of its right to exist. And Israel is pressing for direct peace talks with Egypt, Jordan and Syria, the Arab nations whose armies it defeated. It also demands the right of passage through the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Aqaba.

Defiantly rejecting the "intemperant utterance" of Russia's Aleksei Kosygin, who preceded him in the rostrum, Eban spelled out the actions of Moscow and the Arab states themselves as unassailable proof of who was responsible for the Mideast war. Rather than accept Israel's "sovereign right to existence," Eban said, the Arabs adopted a "doctrine of 'day-by-day military confrontation.' " Rather than working for peace, Russia "has for 14 years afflicted the Middle East with a headlong armaments race." Eban read off the deadly catalogue of Russian arms that had been delivered to the Arabs; he reminded Kosygin that five times Russia had used its veto to prevent the Security Council from condemning Arab aggression.

There was something else in the Russian diatribes that made Israel even angrier. "The U.S.S.R. has formulated an obscene comparison between the Israel defense forces and the Hitlerite hordes which overran Europe in the Second World War," Eban said. "There is a flagrant breach of international morality and human decency in this comparison. Our nation never compromised with Hitler Germany. It never signed a pact with it, as did the U.S.S.R. in 1939. To associate the name of Israel with the accursed tyrant who engulfed the Jewish people in a tidal wave of slaughter is to violate every canon of elementary taste and fundamental truth." While Eban was speaking, Kosygin got up from his seat and walked out of the Assembly. He had a luncheon engagement, he explained.

A formal peace treaty, Eban concluded, would be Israel's best guarantee that its Arab neighbors would cease their "design at politicide--the murder of a state." Such a treaty, he insisted, would also bring enormous benefits to the whole troubled area. Israel, for example, would give Jordan--whose only present port is on the Gulf of Aqaba--an outlet to the Mediterranean. It would promote a joint program of economic and social advancement and a regional communications system that would permit rail and road traffic between Egypt and its Arab brothers from Saudi Arabia to Lebanon.

For all the reason and reasonableness of the Israeli terms, they have thus far been rejected outright by the defeated Arabs. With the sole exception of Tunisia, whose President, Habib Bourguiba, has long argued for making peace with Israel, the Arab governments still refuse to recognize the existence of the Jewish state. At the U.N. last week, the Arab nations and their supporters seemed determined to win back by diplomacy what their armies had lost in battle.

Defensive Winner. In that forlorn effort, the Arabs were not without friends. At the head of the list were Russia and the rest of the Soviet bloc, which would like nothing better than to keep the Middle East in chaos, prevent it from supplying oil to the West, and drive the U.S. completely out of the area. There were also the nonaligned states, which regard Nasser as one of their prophets. There was India, which never loses a chance to woo Arab support for its Kashmir dispute with Moslem Pakistan. And there were some Black African nations whose leaders feel them selves bound to support Nasser in the cause of African unity. As speaker after speaker sounded off, the winner of the war in the Middle East found itself in the curious position of having to fight a defensive battle in the U.N. "Israel," said Abba Eban, "stands lonely amongst numerous and powerful adversaries."

As the week wore on, though, Israel was reminded that it was not as lonely as Eban had thought. Communist Rumania's Premier Ion Gheorghe Maurer broke publicly with the Moscow line, called for direct "negotiations and agreements" between Israel and the Arabs. He promised his government's help in reaching a settlement based on peaceful coexistence. U.S. Ambassador Arthur Goldberg spoke up for Israel on the floor of the Assembly, and U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk worked energetically in a series of private sessions with delegates from Latin America and 13 French-speaking African nations.

One of Israel's friends turned out to be a dismal disappointment. British Foreign Secretary George Brown suggested that the Israelis return the Old City of Jerusalem to Jordan, went on to propose just the sort of solution that the Israelis have said they can never again accept: a U.N.-dictated peace, with terms that would be imposed on both sides but, as in 1949 and 1956, not necessarily subscribed to by either.

When the talking in the General Assembly finally ends, the result will most likely be an impasse: a resolution so watered down as to be meaningless, or no resolution at all. Thus, with the prodding of the U.S. and the urging of Russia, the Arabs--or at least the reasonable men among them--may realize that the next best move is to sit down at a conference table with Israel.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.