Still a Fever

Even as the Arabs worked out their first, tentative compromise with Israel, and Jordanian refugees began returning to occupied territory, the Arabs continued to demonstrate their inability to face up to the problems of negotiating a peace. In a week of frenzied activity, Iraq's President Abdel Rahman Aref flew off to Syria, then to Jordan, then back home again to receive Syrian Head of State Noureddin Attassi on a return call. After receiving Aref in Amman, Jordan's King Hussein took off on a whirlwind visit to nine other Middle Eastern and Arab countries that would last ten days. Kuwait Prime Minister Jaber Al-Ahmed Es-Sabah dropped in on the Shah of Iran. Yugoslavia's President Josip Broz Tito wound up a three day visit in Cairo, went on to Syria for a day, Iraq for two more days and then back to Egypt for more talks with Gamal Abdel Nasser. The mileage covered was impressive, but the cause of "peace" gained precious little ground. "The situation at present," lamented a sad Tito in Alexandria, "is an impasse." Tito had come to the Middle East with a compromise proposal calling for the Arabs to recognize Israel's right to exist as a nation and for Israel, in turn, to pull out of all its "new territories." As Tito might have expected, the idea got nowhere. Nasser refused to compromise because "such a move would encourage future aggression to get further concessions." In Damascus, Tito heard the same. "Imperialist machinery," trumpeted the Baathist Party's daily Al Baath, "is conspiring to produce peace. The Arab answer is: never." In Iraq, Aref told his Yugoslav guest that Israel would first have to with draw unconditionally from Arab soil, then there could be peace—maybe. By week's end Tito had shelved his proposals, and was leaking word to newsmen that he had not really come with "concrete proposals" at all; he was "simply taking the Arab temperature." The mercury was still well over the fever line.

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