Middle East Conflicts

Report Outline
Tension Between Arab States and Israel
Divisions Over Middle East Defense
Western Efforts to Resolve Conflicts

Tension Between Arab States and Israel

Conflicts of interest and ambition among nations of the Middle East are hampering efforts to safeguard the peace and strengthen the defenses of that strategic region. Recurrent border clashes between Israel and the Arab states, with new manifestations of old rivalries among the Arab countries themselves, have threatened the six-year-old Palestine armistice and raised formidable barriers to needed regional security arrangements and development projects.

The recent censure of Israel by the United Nations Security Council for a particularly flagrant act of frontier violence has been followed both by continued outbreaks of border trouble and by fresh efforts to reduce Arab-Israeli tensions. Proposals have been advanced to strengthen the truce supervision machinery of the United Nations as a means of clamping down on frontier incidents. And new attempts are under way to eliminate as many as possible of the underlying causes of mutual suspicion that have prevented a peace settlement since the Arab-Jewish war ended in 1949.

Failure to solve the Palestine problem has been the main obstacle to building up Middle East defenses against Communist aggression. With Israel and the Arab states not on speaking terms, it has been impossible even to discuss an all-embracing defense plan, while dissension among the Arab nations themselves has complicated cooperative action by Turkey, Pakistan, and Iraq to bolster the defenses of Middle East countries closest to the Soviet Union. Egypt, bitterly opposing Iraq's conclusion of a defense pact with Turkey, has been trying to promote a new Arab alignment in competition with the western-oriented grouping.