Rancorous Road to Peace

So labyrinthine is the route to peace in the Middle East that even allies frequently find themselves colliding along the way. Israel is at odds with the U.S., its closest friend and its only real source of weapons. Washington considers Jerusalem intransigent, while Israelis resent U.S. attempts to pressure them into negotiating with the Arabs, most notably by withholding 50 Phantom jet fighters. The quarrel has become so abrasive that Premier Golda Meir flew to Washington last week in an effort to resolve it directly with President Nixon.

Meanwhile, relations between the Arab lands--never harmonious at best --were severely strained by the assassination of Jordanian Premier Wasfi Tell in Cairo. The United Nations was also alive with rancor as debate got under way on an Egyptian-sponsored attempt to force Israel to reopen talks under U.N. Mediator Gunnar Jarring.

The View from Washington. Mrs. Meir had ample opportunity to state her position last week. There was a three-hour luncheon with Secretary of State William Rogers and Assistant Secretary Joseph Sisco, followed by a two-hour meeting alone with Nixon in the Oval Office. Once again, she asked--in vain for the time being--for the phantom Phantoms, which Washington has refused since spring to deliver, on the grounds that the planes would upset the military balance in the Middle East.

The Israelis insist that Egypt has already upset the balance by obtaining additional Russian aircraft.

The President obtained assurances that Israel was willing to talk peace, although possibly not in the "hotel talks" that the Administration envisions. The State Department has proposed that Egypt and Israel each designate envoys and that Sisco shuttle between their rooms at some New York hotel seeking grounds for accommodation on the Suez Canal.

Nixon in return guaranteed that the Phantoms would be forthcoming--not now, but whenever the U.S. deems that they are needed. He promised further that he would make no agreements during his visits to Moscow and Peking that would compromise Israel. Afterward Mrs. Meir told newsmen: "I went away with the feeling that there is definitely better understanding of the Israeli way of looking at it. I guess that's the most one can ask of a friend." She still wanted Phantoms. "Our neighbors are much more apt to refrain from war and more inclined toward negotiations when Israel is a strong Israel."

The meeting seemed to reduce slightly the tension crackling between Israel and its principal ally. The same could hardly be said of the Arab world last week. Palestinians and their supporters greeted the news of Tell's murder by gunmen believed to be members of an offshoot of Al-Fatah, the principal guerrilla group, with jubilation. They blamed the Jordanian Premier, King Hussein's principal adviser, for the crackdown in the past year that emasculated the fedayeen as a political power. "Have you heard the good news?" an Arab called to TIME Jerusalem Correspondent Marsh Clark on the Via Dolorosa.

Sucking Blood. Tell's wife was eating lunch in a cafeteria of the Cairo-Sheraton when her husband was shot down just outside the hotel by four young men. Before security forces could drag him away, one of the assassins knelt beside Tell's body and sucked up some blood. "I drank until my thirst was quenched," he said later in a statement to Egyptian police. When Mrs. Tell heard the commotion, she dashed to the lobby to find her husband lying dead. "Are you happy, Arabs?" she cried. "Palestine is finished! Arabs are sons of bitches!" Then she fainted.

In Amman later in the week, Hussein was in tears as he followed Tell's coffin. "The tragedy is not death," he said in a eulogy, "but the degree to which cowards and subhumans will stoop." To succeed Tell the King appointed a loyal former Finance Minister, Ahmed Lawzi, 46, who is not as hard-lining or as openly anti-fedayeen as Tell was. His elevation was seen as an effort to keep Jordan and its mixed population calm. That may take some doing. At week's end, Bedouins ominously began turning their kaffiyehs, or headdresses, backward, a sign traditionally used by the fierce nomadic people to signify that a blood feud remains to be settled.

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