MIDDLE EAST: Toil & Trouble

The witches' cauldron of the Middle East boiled and bubbled last week:

¶Egypt and Syria signed a defensive military alliance directed against Israel, and set up a joint army command.

¶Five shiploads of arms from Communist countries were reported to have arrived in Alexandria, Egypt.

¶Yemen announced that it was negotiating a "friendship pact" with the U.S.S.R.

¶Israel's Premier Moshe Sharett appealed to world Jewry for funds to buy arms, raised $1,000,000 in the first week of a local Israeli campaign for donations to buy more weapons. In the Knesset, former Terrorist Leader Menachim Beigin called for a "preventive war" against Egypt.

¶In Paris, Israeli Chief of Staff Major General Moshe Dayan talked with French Chief of Staff General Augustin Guillaume. There were emphatic denials, but their subject apparently was more Mystère jets for Israel.

¶In Tel Aviv, after a new border clash, the U.N. truce chief, Canadian Major General E.L.M. Burns, said: "The irreducible minimum conditions" provide no common ground for peace talks.