Middle East: The Arabs' New Arms

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MIDDLE EAST

Just how much arms and equipment has Russia sent the blitzkrieged Arabs since Israel's June victory? Israel Premier Levi Eshkol raised the question himself last week—and gave his own answer. Russia, he claimed, has replaced 80% of the heavy weapons—warplanes, tanks and artillery—lost by Egypt during the fighting and has almost completely restocked Syria's prewar arsenal. "This influx of weapons has again upset the balance of power in the Middle East," said Eshkol. "It has made our position more precarious—and made it all the more important that the Western powers permit us to buy the weapons we need to defend ourselves."

It is only natural that Israel, surrounded by enemies who still declare their undying hostility four months after the war, is making a big point of Arab rearmament and its own pleas for the resumption of arms supplies pinched off by the U.S. and Britain. The fact is, however, that Russia has restored more like 60% of the arms and equipment lost by the Arabs, that it has more or less stuck to defensive weapons and that it has been slowing down its shipments of arms.

Incapable of Attack. Moscow has indeed sent replacements for two-thirds of the 255 jet fighters—mostly MIG-15s and MIG-17s—that were destroyed in Egypt and Syria during the war, but MIGs are defensive weapons designed primarily to shoot down enemy planes, and the Russians have been notably unhurried in supplying either country with the weapons of modern offense. Western intelligence reports indicate that Russia has replaced only a third of Egypt's 700 lost tanks, only half of its 50 bombed-out bombers and almost none of its heavy guns. Russia, moreover, has long since stopped its emergency postwar airlift of weapons to Cairo. The Syrians, whom Moscow distrusts, have received even fewer offensive arms. Jordan has so far been unable to beg or borrow a single weapon for its hard-hit army, and its air force, destroyed during the war, is still without a single plane.

Russia thus shows every sign of giving the Arabs enough to defend themselves but not enough to launch an attack. Even the Israelis admit that the Arabs are incapable of attacking now. More than 5,000 Egyptian officers alone are in Israeli P.O.W. camps, and the ever active Tel Aviv intelligence corps figures that it will take Nasser at least three years to rebuild his army into a unit of fighting men. Despite their occasional verbal attacks against Israel, the Arabs have also lost their taste for war. Throughout the Arab world, generals who once talked of driving Israel into the sea are now devoting their energies to matters closer to home: how to defend their own capitals.