MIDDLE EAST: Seeking a Settlement

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Having won peaceful assurances from the leading Middle East antagonists, Egypt and Israel, U.N. Peacemaker Dag Hammarskjold continued his circling of Israel's troubled borders. Discreet in public utterance, candid in private negotiation, he sought to win cease-fire agreements from Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. As he flew to Cairo at week's end for further talk with Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, it appeared that an armistice may be the best that Hammarskjold can get, though a settlement is what he hopes for, with a stable peace a more-distant dream.

Led by Syria, Israel's northern and eastern neighbors insisted on qualifying their armistice pledge: if Israel carries out its oft-announced intention of diverting Jordan River waters to irrigate its coastal plain, they will go to war. In talking the three Arab states into joining in a flat commitment to restore the 1949 armistice conditions, Hammarskjold won timely help from Israel's Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett, who, though he did not mention the Jordan waters, told the 24th Zionist Congress in Jerusalem last week: "Israel will not precipitate any major crisis."