Constant threat of war seen in M.E.

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32663, 20 July 1971, Page 12

Constant threat of war seen in M.E.

Guerrillas in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon were using weapons manufactured in China, the chairman of the Arab Refugees’ Aid Board in New Zealand (Dr D. A. Metcalf) said in an interview in Christchurch.

Dr Metcalf has spent two months touring United Nations refugee camps in the Israeli-occupied territories; his host was the United Nations Works and Relief Agency under the sponsorship of the board. Dr Metcalf said he believed that Chinese aid to the guerrilla and Leftist Arab groups would increase if the Soviet Union did not continue to meet the demand for arms. At present the guerrilla forces were being almost solely supported by the Soviet Union. He said that next year would be a crucial year in the Middle East. The Arab states were negotiating for unity and would soon be sufficiently organised to make a united attack on Israel. It would probably be a war of international involvement and consequences. Arabs in Egypt, Libya and Syria were learning propaganda from Chinese communists; and the Russians were determined to neutralise Israel. At the same time Egypt was heavily mortgaged to Russia, and was not interested in the return of its territory so much as in removing Israel from the Middle East for ever. The return of Sinai and the Gaza Strip to the United Arab Republic would only appease the Arabs and defer the day of confrontation. At present Lebanon hung in a delicate political balance. Beirut was the headquarters of the guerrilla Palestine Liberation Organisation, and Lebanon’s government was pro-Socialist and pro-Soviet. The country was in a position to become heavily mortgaged to the Soviet Union be-

cause of its political tendencies, and a guerrilla coup could be attempted. In Lebanon the United Nations Works and Relief Agency had lost control of its refugee camps to the P.L.0., which had forbidden the agency access to its own camps although it supplied finance and food to them.

Lebanon was a convenient guerrilla gateway to the West and news channels to the West from Beirut were guer-rilla-controlled. Dr Metcalf said that the Jordanian Government was determined that guerrilla activity in Jordan would never again become the threat it had been in the past; Hussein’s troops were receiving military support from America. He could see a time soon when it would be necessary to send United Nations troops into Israel and British troops into Jordan to preserve peace, Dr Metcalf said. Speaking about the Palestinian and Arab refugees camps, Dr Metcalf said that there were almost 1.5 m refugees in U.N.W.R.A. camps, the greatest numbers being in the Gaza strip and Jordan. Almost all the Arab refugees who fled from Israel settled in the Gaza strip, where America was supplying 70 per cent of the food.

Gallery gift.—Mrs E. M. Mcllraith has given the Robert McDougall Art Gallery a watercolour by John Gully (1819-1888). Gully, described as an important painter in New Zealand towards the end of the last century, is represented by only one other work in the gallery.