MIDDLE EAST: Reunion for Trouble

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In Cairo last week a freckled, pug-nosed Arab soldier-adventurer basked in glory. The Arab press hailed him as a hero. The exiled Mufti of Jerusalem, grey-bearded Haj Amin El-Husseini, received him warmly. The Lebanese Legation gave a reception for him. He granted interviews in his suite at the Hotel Continental, talked cheerfully about starting an Arab war against both British and Jews in Palestine.

The name of the 49-year-old man in a well-cut blue-grey suit was Fawzi Kawukji. To thousands of Arabs in the Middle East the name carried a ring of romantic derring-do. To hundreds of Arabs in Palestine, as to all of Palestine's Jews, the name was a synonym for terror. To the British it spelled trouble.

Fawzi (rhymes with frowzy) and the wily Mufti had made plenty of it for Britain before and during World War II. They had plotted and carried out antiBritish riots and killings in Palestine a decade ago. Early in 1941, when Britain's war fortunes were at lowest ebb, they had sparked revolt in Iraq. A slippery guerrilla, Fawzi harassed the British for months with desert forays against their vital oil pipelines. When British fortunes turned, the Mufti and Fawzi got away separately to Germany.

Two Men, Two "Armies." Now they had their heads together again. Each had managed somehow to "escape" postwar Germany and to get airplane bookings from Paris into their Arab sphere. Fawzi chuckled as he told how he and his tall, 26-year-old German wife had almost been in British hands in Palestine, where there is a £2,000 price on his head. Their Paris-to-Cairo plane made an unscheduled, hour-long stop at the Lydda airport, surrounded by British cops. Their names were on the flight list, their baggage plainly marked. But no Briton came near the plane as they sat inside.

Last week the Mufti was busy with plans in which his old pal Fawzi would be very handy. The Mufti came up with a tax on Palestine Arabs to raise $900,000 to fight Zionism. Part of the money would go to two Arab "scout armies" called Futuwa and Najada (together they number about 10,000). Among their avowed purposes is persuasion of Palestine Arabs not to sell land to Jews. The Mufti had his picture taken as he reviewed a visiting Najada detachment. The picture turned out remarkably like the one he had taken in 1943, while reviewing a detachment of Bosnian Moslems he organized in Yugoslavia for the Nazis (see cuts).

Blustery Fawzi, who had organized other armies for the Mufti, assigned himself a leading role. Said he: "I'm ready to go back [to Palestine] when the time is ripe. The Arabs will fight rather than accept partition and I am ready to lead that fight."