Position As Arabs See It

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31880, 7 January 1969, Page 11

Position As Arabs See It

l (N.Z.P.A.-Reuter— Copyright) CAIRO, Jan. 6. “Our nation no longer needs talk,” President Gamal Abdel Nasser of the United Arab Republic proclaimed this week. “It needs more than talk, especially with an enemy who cannot be repulsed by talk and will not give up what he has usurped out of mere generosity.”

These words in a message to King Hussein, of Jordan, reI fleeted the Arab mood after I the Israeli raid on what President Nasser called “dear, brotherly Lebanon,” writes Eric Pace, of the New York Times News Service. The raid reinforced the conviction of Arab militants that the way to proceed against the enemy now, as in the time of the prophets, is on the field of battle. One of President Nasser’s closest confidants, Mr Mohammed Hassanein Heykal, wrote in the Cairo newspaper, “Al Ahram”: “A peaceful solution (to the Middle East crisis) does not exist now. . . . There is only what can be gained by Arab power.” Mr Yet Heykal, who is editor. of the paper, gave a caution that to talk now of resolving the crisis through war was “premature, and a kind of diversion, or distraction.” In this reservation many Arab moderates see the only hope for establishing even a semblance of neace in the Middle East. They hope that a settlement can be reached before the Arab leaders persuade themselves that “Arab power” has become sufficient, at last, to push the Israelis back from the Sinai Peninsula and other occunied Arab territories, and to dismember the Israeli State. Can such a settlement be reached? The official Egyntian view now appears to be that a peace settlement is imnos. sible. Mr Mohammed El-Zay-yat. the official Government spokesman, nut it this way at his press conference: “It is evident that the ruling circles in Israel and world Zionism do not only sneer at world miblic opinion. they also disdain international organisations and conventions. Israel is concerned onlv with the financial resources and armaments in her hand, bv which she believes that she can imnose her existence and her dftmination over hundreds of mil[lions of Arabs who, in her

concept, are not among the chosen people or even among those people who have the God-given right to live.” Privately, however, Egyptian officials do hold out hope for a settlement. Ideally, many of them would like to see one imposed by the great Powers. In that way the Arab leaders could tell their people they had been forced to enter into whatever accommodation emerged. This, it is hoped, would protect them against criticism from extreme Arab militants at home and elsewhere in the Arab world.

This question of political protection is particularly important for Kin? Hussein, whose nowers have been shaky for years. Rut the growth of the Arab commando movement, and its popularity in the Arab world, make it likely that there would be powerful onnosition to any peaceful solution, no matter how it is achieved. A spokesman for the nrindnal commando group. El Fatah, made this clear at a meeting called to celebrate the fifth anniversary of El. Fatah’s first raid behind Israeli lines. Identified only as “Akram.” the spokesman bluntly denounced “defeatists" who contemnlate a coinnrom’se solution and nraised the attack on the F.l Al airliner at Athens Airport last week by members of another commando croup, despite the fact that it brought »n Israeli renrisal attack on Beirut Airport. The Cairo press has been full of denunciations of the deal by which the United 'States ’’ tn nrov de Israel .with Phantom jets. The I gesture is interpreted here as enconrae’ng Israel to adhere to what the Arabs consider to he an impossihly-intransigent line. Cairn and other Arab Governments still insist they cannot how tn Israeli demand’ that a settlement he nreceded hv direct neentiatinns. or set down in some sort of document that would amount tn a neace treaty. That. "Al Ahram” thundered, would be

declaration of surrender.” There is widespread feeling that the Arabs should try to overwhelm Israel in a surprise attack in the coming months before Israel acquires its Phantoms.

Yet the hope lingers among Egyptian moderates that a solution may emerge from the conferences now going on between the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and France. There is also some feeling here that the Administration of the new United States President (Mr Richard Nixon) may give more support to the Arab world than the Johnson regime has done.

Pacific Earthquake. —An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.3 on the Richter scale was recorded today in the vicinity of the Solomon Islands. No damage has been reported. —Pasadena, California, January 6.