When I returned from my trip to the Middle East last spring, I reported to my colleagues on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Middle East urgently needed a regional development agency. I felt that such an agency might work a revolution in this disturbed and distressed area--a revolution which would strike a hard blow at the region's worst enemy, poverty, and thus help to ward off the threat of Communism.
Events in Syria during the last few months have again underlined this urgent necessity. Because the West lacks such an instrument for cooperation and progress, we have stood helplessly on the side lines, watching Syria arrange for large loans and other economic favors, as well as the acquisition of weapons, from the Soviet Union.
The Eisenhower Administration has not found an effective reply to Syria's pro-Kremlin course. It is floundering in the search for a positive and effective solution because it does not understand the needs and hopes of the peoples in the Middle East and is therefore unable to respond to them.
Last spring, I wrote in my formal report: "To put it bluntly, our policy has concerned itself too much with kings and oil, too little with people and water." It is because of this preoccupation with monarchs and material wealth that the Administration has been unable to anticipate and avert the Syrian alignment with Moscow.
Once more it has shown itself incapable of effective response. It resorts to inadequate and feeble gestures which may only make conditions worse. Communism cannot subvert or dominate a healthy society. But the Middle East is not a healthy society. It suffers from economic and political ailments which have created imbalance and instability, and have rendered the region extremely vulnerable to Communist penetration.
These abnormalities can be listed:
1. The terrible poverty of the great mass of peasants and workers, as contrasted with the enormous wealth of the landlords and kings.
2. A similar disparity in wealth between the oil producing states and the "have-not" states which lie between the oil producers and their markets.
3. The mass homelessness of the Palestinian Arabs.
4. The inability of middle class and educated Arabs to find useful occupations and careers in a stagnant society.
These four economic disabilities combine to make for political instability. Because economic independence lagged behind political advance, because sovereignty in itself did not bring sustenance, representative democracy and the political institutions cherished in Western society have failed to attract the Arab peoples.
Governments have belonged to kings or military juntas, who have held power by repressive force, whipped up exaggerated nationalism, and incited the hungry and the dispossessed to blame their misery on foreigners. There has been no lack of scapegoats--many of them with a legitimate share of responsibility.
There were the retreating British and the French. We Americans have inherited much of the enmity formerly directed at them. Last, but not least, there are the Israelis who have twice bested the Arabs in battle.
In addition to poverty and political instability, the Middle East is tormented by intra-regional conflicts. There are the family feuds and interstate rivalries within the Arab world. Overshadowing these is the continuing war against Israel. These conflicts have led to a disastrous arms race, which is consuming the energies and impairing the development of both the Arab peoples and Israel. To this arms race both the United States and the Soviet Union are contributing recklessly.
Finally, the region is desperately afraid of involvement in the Cold War. Thus, it suffers from two kinds of insecurity: the psychological insecurity which arises from the frustrations of environment; and the military insecurity which results from the proximity of powerful nations capable of swallowing up the entire area.
Here, then, is a sick society afflicted with a whole complex of serious ailments: poverty, refugee homelessness, the Arab-Israel conflict, an arms race, and the direct threat of invasion. We must find answers to each of these problems, if we can.
There is no easy way to make poor people richer, particularly if they live in barren countries. There are few areas in the world where people produce and earn as little as do the poverty-stricken masses in the Arab states. Even in the wealthy oil-producing areas the tremendous royalties are reserved for the rulers and little reaches the ruled.
Here is a situation made to order for the Communists. The oil-producing countries are naturally aligned with the West because we provide them a market. But the oil flows through the territory of the neighboring "have-not" countries. Oil pipelines from Iraq and Saudi Arabia pass through Syria. Oil tankers from Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf must go through the Suez Canal in Egyptian territory. The "have-not" nations receive a relatively modest sum for transit fees. The contrast in income is huge. No one has precise figures but it has been estimated that the 10 million people who live in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the Persian Gulf states have a total oil income of close to $1 billion a year.
The "have-not" nations of the Arab world, with about 30 million people, take in only about $30 million. This disparity is exploited by Moscow, which has made headway in the Middle East because it understands that the greatest weakness in the area is the tremendous gulf between the "haves" and the "have-nots."
The Soviet Union doesn't need Middle East oil, but if it can exercise control over the flow of oil to Europe, it can shake the economies and undermine the defenses of the Continent. Little wonder the Soviet Union has applied itself so assiduously to the courtship of Egypt and Syria. It isn't necessary to use epithets to measure the current ideological temperatures in these countries.
One doesn't have to say that they have become satellites in order to assess the extent of the danger which has arisen because of their close association with. Moscow.
I am sure that both Syria and Egypt will stoutly deny that they are agents of the Kremlin. I did not reach Syria on my trip. But I did have a long talk with Colonel Nasser in Cairo and from what I saw and heard, 1 am sure that Nasser is not a Communist. I am equally sure that he is unduly naive about the menace of Communism both inside Egypt and in, the entire Middle Eastern area.
Like Syria, Egypt is prepared to align itself with the Soviet Union whenever it will serve temporary advantage. But apparently neither country is aware of the fact that the Soviet Union may be using it rather than vice-versa. It may be too late to win these countries away from their present Soviet orientation. They may not be redeemable until they have learned the hard lessons of life with the Kremlin.
Yet I for one still believe that the situation is redeemable, particularly if we would use our influence and capacity as well as the prestige of the U.N. to create the Middle East Development Agency to which I have referred.
Divided though the Middle East may be by the personal animosities and ambitions of rulers, and torn though it may be by the dissensions inherent in the East-West struggle, it may begin to prosper if it transforms itself into a working- cooperating -community.
A Middle East Development Agency as I see it would consist of the nations of the region, and, in addition, other nations which want to contribute their capital and skill. It could undertake and manage development projects itself. It could carry on scientific research, basic engineering surveys, draw up overall regional development plans, and provide long term technical assistance.
This instrument would be a means by which the wealthy oil states could help their neighbors and thus put oil revenue into productive uses which would benefit the entire area rather than pander to private pleasure. It could make the most of the region's precious water resources, work out a solution to the Arab refugee problem by promoting the Jordan River development plan, and help farmers settle on new land that would become available under other irrigation schemes involving the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Nile.
A regional agency is essential because the major rivers, like the oil lines, cross state boundaries.
One of the reasons why the Aswan Dam project could not go forward as originally projected was the fact the waters flow through several countries--not just Egypt. Intra-regional conflicts and boycotts now hamper free trade and impede the prospects of development throughout the Middle East. Were such an agency to be established, all nations could assist it. The young and sensitive sovereignties of the Middle East would not feel that they are deprived of their new independence.
Moreover, establishment of such an agency would be far more significant in repelling the current Communist offensive than the melodramatic flight of Globemasters and Boxcars carrying rifles and jeeps for the arms race.
A Middle East Development Agency would also be available to help work out a solution to the Arab refugee problem. We can no longer afford to temporize with the plight of these hapless people who live on bare subsistence levels in wretched camps maintained by the U.N., rootless, jobless, disillusioned, and embittered. These refugee camps have become hotbeds of political intrigue, deliberately fomented by Communists and anti-Western agitators.
A dispassionate review of the history of the Palestine conflict must lead to the observation that there would not have been a single refugee if the Arab states had accepted the U.N. partition resolution of 1947 and had agreed to the establishment of an independent Arab state as well as the state of Israel.
Up to now Arab leaders have done little or nothing to assist their fellow Arabs in the refugee camps, lest they lose political leverage over Israel.
Today the United States is increasingly blamed for the plight of these unfortunate refugees in an obvious effort to exonerate others from their own responsibility. Actually, America has done far more than anyone else to alleviate misery and has been most generous in offering to help both the Arab states and Israel to bring about refugee resettlement. But recriminations over the past will not solve the problem.
We need a new effort to bring about the resettlement of the Arab refugees in lands where there is, room and opportunity for them. Nothing is more absurd and harmful to the refugees themselves than to continue to insist that Israel should repatriate a large number of immigrants whose whole indoctrination for the past ten years has been one of hatred for the Jewish state.
Moreover, from my visit to the refugee camps, I am convinced that any large scale repatriation to Israel would be against the best interests of the Arab refugees themselves. Half of them are now under 15 years of age. This means that despite the professional Arab insistence on repatriation, half of the refugees have no roots in Palestine at all, and probably have little interest in going there. Israel should be prepared to take back a token number of Arab refugees--she already has close to 200,000 Arabs within her borders--and to pay compensation for abandoned Arab lands.
But the major hope for resettlement of any substantial number lies in Iraq, which desperately needs people and which has the land and the water and the oil to feed them and to put them to work.
Syria also has land available if she could be induced to recognize that the refugees would be an asset. But the most critical area is Jordan, where many of the refugees are now concentrated. They are a continuing threat to the stability of that country--a threat far more serious than the possibility of an attack by Syria.
We have been aiding Jordan, but I believe that we have been aiding Jordan in the wrong way. Shipments of arms, however dramatic and impressive and however they may please Jordanian soldiers and officers, will not bring about the stability that Jordan needs, because arms do not solve the real problems. One of these is to resettle the refugees.
Apart from those that can be moved to Iraq, there are some 200,000 Palestinian Arabs who could be settled in the Jordan Valley if we could induce Jordan to go ahead with the imaginative Jordan Valley development proposal upon which Ambassador Eric Johnston has labored so capably in recent years.
Bear in mind that technical and engineering agreements for the sharing of the resources of the Jordan River were reached by Ambassador Johnston in his negotiations with both Israel and the Arab states. That agreement, unfortunately, was vetoed at the last minute by Syria at a meeting of the Arab League in Cairo two years ago, when the Russians first began their arms shipments to Egypt. It is tragic waste to stand still.
We know the problem and we know the solution. Only political expediency stands in the way.
Instead of appropriating large sums of money every other year to pay for relief which simply perpetuates the miserable status quo of the refugee camps, we should begin to insist on the resettlement of a large number of these refugees in a logical and humane way. For this we need a new U.N. Good Offices Commission which could deal with this problem effectively.
We have lived with the Arab-Israel conflict for so long that we have come to take it for granted.
From my talks with both Israelis and Arabs I believe there is not a single problem between them that could not be reconciled if the parties seriously sat down across the conference table in direct negotiations.
The experience of U.N. mediator Ralph Bunche in negotiating the Armistice Agreements at Rhodes in 1949 demonstrated that agreements can be reached, and that Israel and the Arab states can put their signatures to the same piece of paper.
But in recent years the Administration has taken the position that we should not try to push the Arab states into negotiations for a settlement. We have bowed to the Arab position that the Arab states may continue to be belligerents and remain openly and officially at war with Israel, despite their obligations under the U.N. Charter to settle their disputes peacefully.
The Arab strategy has always been clear. Conceding that they could not defeat Israel in battle, they have felt that they might strangle Israel economically. They have persisted in a boycott and a blockade and have refused any kind of negotiation.
Unfortunately, the Arab states have come to believe that the present boundaries between them and Israel are temporary, and that if they hold out long enough they can secure territorial concessions.
We ought to make it clear as a matter of basic policy that the 1949 U.N. armistice boundaries constitute inviolable political boundaries, subject to change only by the joint agreement of the states concerned.
If we can, at the same time, disabuse Arab leaders of the notion that they may some day pour hundreds of thousands of Arab refugees back into Israel, they may come to recognize that continued hostility to Israel is inimical to them as well as to world peace.
Negotiations looking towards a peace settlement should be instituted as quickly as possible. The good offices of other Mediterranean nations might be useful--particularly Greece and Italy.
Meanwhile we should try to maintain the present calm on Israel's frontiers by continuing the life and functions of the U.N. Emergency Force. The UNEF has worked a revolution--in a way highly gratifying to every friend of the U.N. It is established on the Gaza strip. It has deterred the activities of the fedayeen who used to cross the frontier to commit acts of sabotage and terror.
Another unit, stationed at Sharm-el-Sheikh on the Straits of Tiran, has guaranteed the international character of that waterway, and ships have been going through the Gulf of Aqaba linking Israel's expanding port of Elath with the coast of East Africa and the Orient.
As a result, the West has an alternative route across Israel which can by-pass the Suez Canal if and when it should become necessary to do so. Obviously, the UNEF has been a force for peace, and it would be tragic if it were dismantled or its effectiveness impaired in any way during the present session of the U.N.
I hope that all parties will accept a continuation of the UNEF in its present positions without disturbance and debate.
If Egypt insists on the withdrawal of UNEF, then we may be in for a new round of conflict in the Middle East.
Naturally, when we see the Soviet Union pouring arms into the Middle East, we are tempted to demonstrate to our friends that we can do as well as the Kremlin. But is it really in the best interests of the people of Jordan to rush rifles and guns and ammunition to their army? Is it in the best interests of the free world?
Jordan is vulnerable to Syrian intrigue because it lacks stability. We should be taking measures to stabilize the economy and the regime by removing the causes of instability: poverty, the homelessness of Arab refugees, and the failure to exploit properly what little resources there are.
We should not be drawn into an arms race with the Soviet Union in the Middle East because the masters of the Kremlin have large amounts of surplus equipment, and they aren't particular where they put them since their purpose is disorder. They will dispose of these arms wherever they are best calculated to create tension and conflict. We are in a far better position to compete with the Soviet Union in a program to furnish economic assistance and to stimulate economic development.
As the wealthiest and most productive power in the world, we can win that kind of race, and, if we choose this weapon, we will be using our own resources to the best advantage. It is tragic to feel we have to keep shipping arms to the Arab states even from the standpoint of the Arabs themselves--because it diverts them from economic development and peace. Certainly, it is tragic too from the standpoint of Israel.
I had a long visit with Prime Minister Ben-Gurion during my journey. He is typical of his country. He is a man of courage, religion, intelligence, and determination, and he has a sense of humor. He expresses no fear of his neighbors, but he believes that Israel cannot realize her potential until there is peace.
On the basis of the past record, there is no immediate danger that the arms we ship to the Arab countries will be used against Israel tomorrow. But, if the Soviet Union keeps on sending arms into Egypt and Syria and if we continue to arm Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia, we are forcing Israel to put the brakes on its own spectacular development program and expend large sums to buy weapons.
We must somehow halt this arms race. The situation is so dangerous in the Middle East that we should make an attempt to persuade the Soviet Union and other powers to join with us in a genuine arms embargo in this critical area.
Even if we fail, we should not, as a consequence, feel that we are compelled to imitate the Soviet Union. If the Soviet Union persists in shipping arms to Egypt and Syria, these countries will be the victims and will pay a heavy price because none of these underdeveloped states can minister to the economic needs of their people and simultaneously finance a military program. If we send no arms, would we then leave these countries defenseless? Would we be giving the Soviet Union the green light for expansion? By no means.
That leads me to my last point. I doubt greatly whether the arms we send to these countries would make an iota of difference in resisting external aggression if that should come. The only effective deterrent to Communist aggression, and to the more immediate menace of subversion, is to reassure, in meaningful ways, all the countries of the Middle East that want to remain a part of the free world that we are determined to assist them in resistance to Communism.
What the Middle East needs is a firm security guarantee from our own country which will contain none of the ambiguities and semantic qualifications of the Eisenhower Doctrine. Let the Russians understand that we mean business. We shall work for peace. But we shall fight to defend it, wherever it may be threatened.
I talked to many Arabs on my journey and I am convinced that thoughtful Arabs are not impressed by the image of America which we have created by our past policy. If they fail to recognize the implications of the struggle between tyranny and freedom as we understand them, it is partly because we have failed to give them a true picture of America's greatness, its humanity, its understanding, its love of liberty.
Too many people in the Middle East have come to think of America as a colossus, fighting desperately to maintain its position against international Communism, a giant on the defensive, using its resources not in constructive programs for economic development and human betterment, but in the rental of advance military bases and the hiring of poorly paid foreign troops.
This distorted image of America is one that we should seek to dispel by a constructive and progressive foreign policy which offers our friends food and fiber and a true partnership in democracy. We have far too long pursued a policy of drift and improvisation. We have alienated our friends and we have not retarded our enemies. It is later than we realize in the Middle East.
If we are to maintain any influence, if we are to hold our friends, and if we are to recapture the initiative and gain new friends, expanding the forces of freedom and mobilizing men and women everywhere in democracy's cause, we must formulate and implement a policy which truly comprehends the dimensions of our interests in the Middle East and responds realistically to the needs and aspirations of the region's peoples.
At time of publication, SENATOR HUBERT H. HUMPHREY, Minnesota Democrat, recently traveled extensively in the Middle East as a representative of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on which he served.