A FRESH APPROACH T HE withdrawal from Port Said announced by
the Foreign Secretary ends one phase of British history in the Middle East. The question now is what can be done to save something from this extensively devastated area of policy. From the point of view of Britain and, indeed, of the whole of Western Europe the most urgent task is to get the oil flowing once again down the pipe-lines and through the Suez Canal. The Canal should be cleared at once, and there should be no delays caused by Colonel Nasser's objections to the use of British salvage vessels, but it must be recognised that the Egyptian nationalisation will now have to be accepted, and that we shall be lucky if we get even the Indian proposals at the London conference on Suez as a basis for negotiation. The British Government should show its readiness to compromise by accepting these in advance, since the Canal Users' Associa- tion is now dead beyond hope of resuscitation. As regards the oilfields themselves, the companies may have to reach new agreements with the governments concerned, and a wave of rationalisations is quite on the cards. These will also have to be accepted with as good a grace as possible, provided that some kind of trading agreement can be reached. What should be aimed at is the type of arrangement reached between Britain and Iran. A distinction must, in fact, be drawn between owning the oil wells, which is not so essential, and continuing to buy oil which is absolutely vital for the survival of this country and of Western Europe.
* * * Then there is Israel. It risks emerging from its Sinai victories as the forgotten man of any future conference. Whatever British and French policy may have been, Israel had very sound moral and practical reasons for her offensive against Egypt; this should never be forgotten. The feud between Israel and her Arab neighbours would have ended in a decisive Israel victory at any time during the past eight years if it had not been for the intervention of the UN; they are therefore under a moral obligation to take this opportunity of bringing about a nego- tiated peace between the two sides to the dispute. Merely to put the whole question into cold storage would be heavily to Israel's disadvantage; and it would raise grave doubts of UN impartiality. Any settlement in the Middle East must deal with freedom of navigation for Israeli shipping in the Canal, the blockading of the port of Elath by Egyptian guns, the demili- tarisation of the Sinai peninsula, the future of the Gaza strip, and the fate of Arab refugees there and elsewhere. There is a Strong geographical case for turning the Gaza strip over to Israel entirely, but it would have to remain under UN super- vision until the future of the refugees there could be decided.
All these are points which Britain could and should put forward at any future Middle Eastern conference or in New York. The case against Colonel Nasser is at its strongest over Israel. The fedayeen raids, the blockading of Elath and the Canal—all these were breaches of international law. The UN should have done something to remedy them, but did not. The UN forces in Egypt will now have a chance to implement the Security Council's resolution on free Israeli navigation of the Canal. They should certainly be asked to do so.
Taking a longer view of Middle Eastern problems, there is still a great deal to be said for a closer association between Britain and Israel. The need to give the Israelis some kind of assurance about their frontiers is as pressing as ever, and such an assurance would make it quite clear to the Arabs that there is no future in their refusal to admit Israel's very existence. From the British point of view, Israel is a reliable ally, whose military worth has just been decisively proved, and, since the Arab States now hold out less hope than ever of being sound foundations on which to erect a policy, the wisest thing would surely be to rely in future on those countries whose friendship is certain.
With regard to British policy towards the Arab States them- selves predictions are peculiarly difficult at the moment. The wisest thing might be to lie low and say nuffin'—like Brer Fox and Tar Baby—since suspicion of Britain's motives, already strong before the Suez expedition, has now reached such heights as to hamstring any positive action before it starts. What we must not do is revert to the old pattern of treating the Arabs as though they were children, alternately to be spoilt or cuffed. To make relations between ourselves and the Arab States the normal ones between friendly States may seem far off at the moment, but it should be the main aim of British policy in the Middle East.
However, there is one sphere in which the Arabs cannot be left alone. The Middle East is now a power vacuum, as Mr. Nehru pointed out recently, and neither Western Europe nor the USA could afford to see it fall under Sqviet domination. The various Arab regimes (and Turkey and Iran) must be propped up against Russian influence and infiltration, and for this game Britain holds very few cards in her own hand. The prop originally conceived for the purpose was the Baghdad Pact, but, inasmuch as it was directed against Russia, Britain's connection with it probably tends to make its task more difficult —to say nothing of the rivalry between Iraq and her allies on the one hand and Egypt an the other. But the support of a great power is obviously needed if the pact is to be effective, and there is a strong case for America's taking over leadership in an alliance to which it is already a party, and to whose sup- port it has had to come in the last fortnight. The first condition for stability in the Middle East is American readiness to under- take responsibilities in that area commensurate with the posi- tion of the USA in the world. For, if Britain and France cannot go it alone there, neither can America afford to leave it alone. The alternative to an American lead in the Middle East is a Soviet lead and it is one that at the moment seems all too likely, as events in Syria show.
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