ISRAEL: Uneasy Borders

Until last fortnight there had been many incidents but no serious outbreaks on Israel's borders since U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold won his cease-fire last April. At that point, however, Hammarskjold, the usually quiet Swede, felt impelled to make a loud protest. He announced that he would demand that the Jordan government "punish the transgressors" who killed four Israeli bus passengers a few nights earlier. He had no sooner fired off his warning shot than another flare-up occurred on Israel's touchier border with Egypt.

After two minor attacks on Israelis in the Negev desert, two parties of Israelis carried out separate ambushes inside the Gaza Strip in which nine Egyptian soldiers were killed. Usually this kind of outbreak rouses the anger of Egypt's Dictator Nasser and the fury of the Cairo press. Both were too busy with the Suez last week, and played down the incident. But Dag Hammarskjold was not looking the other way. He told Israel: "What I said in my [earlier] statement applies with equal strength to these new incidents."