By IDRIS COX

e

Britain, U.S. exploit tension
in Middle East for own ends

ERIOUS armed clashes are

taking place near the bord-
ers of Egypt and Israel.

But to find the real culprits
ultimately responsible for these
crimes we must look elsewhere
than the Middle East.

U.S. Secretary of State John
Foster Dulles and British Prime

_ Minister Sir Anthony Eden
know very well that the Gen-
eva spirit is likely to spread to
that part of the world, and that
opposition to imperialist war
pacts is growing.

The deliberate aim of British
and U.S. policy is to sharpen
tension between the Israeli gov-
ernment and the Arab nations,
and to exploit this tension to
extend their domination in the
Middle East.

As the London Observer re-
cently pointed out:

“Qur governments (Britain
and U.S.) have given priority

to the building of alliances
against the imaginary danger
of a Russian military attack—
without first making a serious
effort to achieve a_ political
settlement of its internal con-
flicts.” (October 2, 1955.)

This is only part of the truth.
The “internal conflicts” were
created by British and USS.
policy.

The Israeli government is be-
Ing encouraged in further mili-

By JOSEPH NORTH

tary adventures so that Dulles
and Eden, in the guise of “peace-
ful mediators,’ can extend the
grip of foreign imperialism in
the Middle East.

Even the London Times, -in
a recent editorial, had to admit:

“Hitherto, the Western Pow-
ers have been the sole guard-
jans and arbiters in the Middle
East. Their strategic : needs,
the wealth of oil which they
possess in the region, their
authority in the Arab lands
after the First World War,
their more recent care to keep
an uneasy balance between Is-
rael and the Arabs — every-
thing has combined to make
the Western Powers regard the

Middle East as their sphere

(October
Sa tee Ss

In August this year, as soon
as the Geneva Conference: was
over, Dulles offered to guaran-
tee the existing frontiers of Is-
rael and to.make a loan to the
Israel government to assist the
Arab refugees from their homes
in Palestine.

This was bound to arouse
strong opposition from the gov-
ernments of the Arab nations,
who refuse to recognise the ex-
isting frontiers of Israel and
are extremely critical of the
failure of the Israeli govern-

of influence.” 12:

1955.)

ment to fulfil its responsibility
toward the Arab refugees.

Under the guise of ‘media-
tor,” Dulles aims at increasing
the tension between Israel and
the Arab nations.

What is. new in the Middle
East is not the Israeli-Arab con-
flicts, but the fact that Dulles
and Eden are no longer able to
dictate to some of the govern-
ments of the Arab nations.

The evacuation of the Suez:

Canal Zone and withdrawal of
British troops last year gave fur-
ther impetus to the movement
for national independence which
was already growing in the
Middle. East.

After the forthright declara-
tions at the Bandung Conference
in April this year, Egypt, Syria’
and other Arab nations have
increased their opposition to
imperialist war alliances.

This is the real reason why

Dulles and Eden are so scared.

about the situation in the Middle
East. They failed to blackmail

Egypt into their war alliances.,

Even now they. are prepared
to send far more armaments to
Egypt than it is likely to get
from Czechoslovakia — but only
if the Egyptian government will
become a partner in their war
plans. :

xt $e) bog
Behind the scare headlines in

‘PREMIER BEN-GURION
the daily press, giving the pic-
ture of Israel being threatened
by superior armed forces, the
real truth leaks out on oeca-
sions.

Long before the news of the
Egyptian-Czech agreement, the
London Times correspondent in
Israel reported a statement by
John Jernegan (deputy assist-
ant-secretary of the U.S. Near
East Department) that: “.
Israel is in no great danger Beas
indeed, she was probably in less
danger of attack than any other
nation in the region.’ (March
9, 1955.) '

\

A new--and overduetook i in Nobel prizes

I rejoiced when the ticker
printed the news that the
Icelandic novelist, Halldor Lax-
ness, had won the Nobel Prize
for literature this year. I be-
lieved he merited the award
ee pe back as I wrote in
years when he was “nosed
ae as the accounts had it, by
Winston Churchill and by
Ernest Hemingway.

For Laxness is described as a
“leftist” by the current accounts,
which would not surprise any-
body who read his book In-
dependent People, published by
Knopf in 1946.

The award came this year
because, the judges said with
refreshing candor, there has

been a thaw in world relations. -

Now they could give Laxness the
prize that some of them felt he
should have received years ago,
which is, oné might say, con-
firmation of the Marxist truism
that judgements on literature
are not sacrosanct, are not im-
mune from the pressure of
politics.
x bes tt

Independent People, Laxness’
only novel in English which I
have laid hands on, is a mag-
nificent story, told in. that
brooding, muted eloquence that
seems characteristic of the best
of the Norse story-tellers.

It describes the life of an Ice-
lander peasant whose. over-
riding passion was to own a
piece of land. He had worked
18 years for a man he despised
in order to lay up the capital to
get his acres which he called
Summerhouses.

“Independence,” Bjartur lec-
tured his wife who longed for

a few of the creature comforts

she had ‘seen in the big house
where she worked as a servant
girl, “is the most important

thing of all in life. I say for

my own part that a man lives
in vain until he becomes inde-
pendent.”

To become “independent” he |
toiled with a backbreaking zeal

that was heroic. Arctic storm,
incessant hunger, Homeric hard-
ships inconceivable to most city

folk were his lot. He was proto-
type of all who worked the
land.

Laxness never glorifies his
hero. He has the man down in
all his grandeur and his petti-
ness, a human being of today.
There was much about Bjartur
that was unlovely, qualities
moulded in him by the rigors
of his life and by his demoniac
determination to be indepen-
dent that veritably destroyed
his loved ones.

_Nobody can forget how he
wrestled with the lordly rein-
deer during the gale, rode the
beast through the Arctic blasts,
fearful of nothing and nobody
in his simple desire to bring
home some reindeer steak. Nor
is it possible to forget his
anguish as his sheep came down,
with lungworm in the blizzards
and his infinite care for each
lamb.

Yet he harnessed his wife
and his children to his single-
minded goal, because he was—
this man of strength, endurance,

HALLDOR LAXNESS

intelligence and poetry—a tyrant
within his hamshackle home-
stead.

And when, after his years of
enormous effort his farm is
sold from under him and he
walks across the icy plain to
the seaport, hungry, without a
crust of bread or coin in his
pocket, he walks undefeated.

* beg m-

The closing pages of the book
describe his encounter with a
group of striking dockers who

- take him into their quarters,

share with him their loaf and
their pot of coffee, asking no
questions and calling him com-

rade.
But he is still the stubborn

peasant who must go it alone.

His own hard hand and his own
harsh acres can sustain him
against all. of life and all.of men.

“What had he, the free man,
or his children, in common with
such a crew ?” But was it pos-
sible, Laxness has the suspicious
peasant ask in his bewilder-

ment; “that these were the just:

men ? if such was the case, they
were the only just men he had
ever met.”

Mt was no easy problem to
solve in the space of one. short
night he met them, and he bit-

terly regretted having accepted.

the invitation to come in. Yet
as he stared at the sleeping
strikers who might be shot down
the next morning when they re-
turned to their picketline, “he
felt in reality such men deserved
to own the land and govern it.”

But the politically untutored
peasant could not quite reconcile
his quandaries: the naked pull
of the land, the obsessive hunger
for his own corner of soil which
spelled independence, mastered
him. He could not, not yet,
identify his own lot with that
of the dockers who wanted no
piece of earth to till. That he
could not understand.

Laxness was true to the ‘con-
clusions his story demanded,
for the time was not yet at hand,
in Iceland, at the close of the

a

First World War, for the peas-
ant to see that. Yet Bijartur
relished the talk of the strikers,

about the distant Tsar who was

toppled from power.

Overwhelmingly, the novel
says, the peasant, alone, can-
not win, cannot by himself,
achieve independence.

Yes, he could breast the. sea-
sons, ride the storm as he rode
the reindeer, could endue ice
and hunger and every devilish
misery nature threw at him,
but he could not beat the tax
collector. Capitalism decreed
the price he would get for his
beloved sheep and when the
bottom fell out of the market his
acres were snatched from his
hand.

Though he lost his holdings,
Laxness tells us he retained his
manhood, his belief in himself,
his conviction that he was as
good a man—and better than.
the grand folk who live in the
big houses and who set the tax
rate. And there is an afterglow
of the novel which bespeaks
better times to come.

xt $e o

That, briefly, is the stuff of
Independent People.

Its author was awarded the
International Peace Prize Lau-
reate in 1953. He has been the
chairman of the Icelandic USSR,
Society since its birth in 1950.

Now 53, he came to promi-
nence in 1932 with his novel,
Salkavalla, which described
TIceland’s working-class move-
ment. Independent People was
finished in 1935.

He has written many novels
since then, as well as accounts
of ‘his travels in the Soviet

Union which depict the struggle

to construct a new society and
the part the Communist party
played in that struggle.

So, you can see, it is a mat-
ter of extraordinary ‘moment
when this novelist receives the
Nobel prize, a red-letter day
in literature as well as a triumph
of reason over nuclear insanity.

’

_ these countries panes a

PREMIER NASSER

Before the Egyptian-Czech
agreement, the Lendon “he é
emphasised that Israel
“built up the strongest Leva?
tine force outside “Turkey.”
(August 29.)

After the Egyptian -
agreement there was
mission that the Egyptiat
Minister Nasser was said
certainly right when he
that Israel has recently —
arming more efter
Egype.”’ (October 3 ay tie

Only last week the Geneve
correspondent of the Manche
Guardian declared that
British view appears to Te
that Israel was a stronge
‘tary force in the Middle
than her Arab ieee A
the Egyptian-Czec arms
and that it is unlikely that ne
deal will substantially alter

position.” -
2 xt Lome

Against the interests ©
Jews and Arabs, the Traeli

the ad-

ernment has transforme: us: ie

into a bridgehead for
perialism. :

It is propped up by us
eign investments and ha
ceived lavish loans and mili ider-
aid from the U.S., and ‘ain &
able supplies from Britait
France.

The Israeli governmen
repeatedly expressed its
to join the Iraqi- ish
pact, to which Britain 15 4
natory, and which Iran
has a 1,000-mile frontier
the Soviet Union) has now J°
ed.

t are not.

f Te-

(w Sieh
with

Czech arms for EgyP
the real issue in the Mid
What Dulles and Eden fear

is that the Soviet Union is

able to offer economic 4 ie
transform the backward eco
omies of the Middle East.

This increases the prospec

e dom-

free themselves from th t ice pig

ination and intrigues 0:
foreignegil trusts, and to 4
national independence.

A solution will be fo lic
the Israeli-Arab cont
‘through a common fight for
tional independence and acts:
‘sition to imperialist wat si

itis partion urge?
advance this struggl ke
as well as in the
tries.

coun

in its recent declaration’, ;
this clear in stressing |
solution consists in the
- mental change in Israel’ an ence
—from the policy of dePé rd a8

on America running towe?y.

litary

ot of

Be

- Czech
epee :
“almost

~

und f for

ty
The Israeli oben porte e ('

ae

0)
deal,
f it bat

Ji gov"

tae
joi

East. _
ee 4
we

chieve e

pass

policy a

anti-Soviet war pact—to 4 ‘pom ;

cy of independence an?

adherence to war pacts
It is the responsibil

peace-loving people e eon par

to support this strugs! 0°
tional independence ee ee
sition to war pacts, S0 re jadle

can,be guaranteed in
East. | a

=!

bility, Of
yer €

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — NOVEMBER 18, 1955 — PAG