Word: arabism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Along the Middle East's frontiers, bristling with weaponry, rolled a drumfire of incidents, any one of which could spark a new war. Israeli and Jordanian artillery dueled across the Jordan valley. Arab fedayeen guerrillas mortared a copper mine and three Israeli settlements, killing an 18-year-old army girl. In reprisal, Israelis strafed fedayeen positions, and jet-escorted helicopters blasted a Jordanian police car, killing three security men. From Lebanon, long the most peaceable of Israel's neighbors, Arab guerrillas rained rocket shells on the town of Qiryat Shemona and a nearby kibbutz, killing two civilians...
...aftermath of the reprisal raid on Beirut airport by Israeli commandos, the Middle East last week seemed closer to war than at any time since all-out hostilities formally ceased 19 months ago. Jordan mobilized 17-year-olds, and King Hussein urgently called for an Arab summit conference. Diplomats of the U.S., Russia, Britain and France met in three capitals to discuss the crisis. In Washington, officials judged the Middle East the one place right now where a confrontation with the Russians could occur, and a White House aide reported that the turbulent region is uppermost in President Johnson...
Certainly the provocation had been severe: an Arab terrorist strike at El Al, Israel's vital air link with the rest of the world. The pair of Palestinian terrorists who shot up an El Al Boeing 707 about to take off from Athens airport had also killed one passenger-and might well have killed everyone aboard if one of their incendiary grenades had ignited the liner's loaded fuel tanks. Israel accused Lebanon, which had served as the gunmen's point of departure, of harboring the terrorists. At a meeting in Jerusalem, senior cabinet ministers split over...
...Israeli commandos had expected to find only half a dozen Arab planes on the ground; instead, they found and destroyed 13. Israel also miscalculated the raid's explosive effect on world opinion, despite the commandos' care not to take a life for the one lost in Athens. President Johnson publicly termed the raid "serious and unwise" and used considerably stronger language in private. In the United Nations, the U.S. joined the other 14 members of the Security Council in unanimously condemning Israel in the harshest of diplomatic terms for its "premeditated military action in violation of its obligations...
Phantom Timing. The latest round of provocation and reprisal indicated that if there is ever to be a break in the Middle East's deadly cycle, it is unlikely to be accomplished by the Arabs and Israelis alone. The mounting hostilities hold the threat of involving the U.S. and Russia, as protector-states of the combatants. The conflict has already drawn the superpowers into a renewed buildup in the area. Russia has refurbished the Arab armies at a cost of more than $1 billion. Early last week, to redress the balance, the U.S. concluded negotiations to sell...