Middle East Flares Up Again

Almost no one predicted the out-break of fighting which erupted in the Middle East Saturday and predictions and reports from all corners continued to conflict all week as the war spilled over the six days it took Israel to win in 1967.

First reports from the battlefields indicated that the forces of Egypt and Syria had crossed the U.N. cease-fire lines at the Suez Canal and in the Golan Heights while the Israelis were celebrating the holiday Yom Kippur.

Israeli generals almost immediately announced that their troops were being mobilized for a counterattack to repulse the Arab attackers from the territory Israel occupied in 1967 and to punish them for launching a new war.

At the same time, the Egyptians and Syrians were reporting major victories on both fronts and Egyptian officers reportedly told their soldiers that the Sinai Peninsula could and would be retaken.

By week's end, the Egyptians had not taken the Sinai and the Syrians apparently had suffered a major reversal in the Golan Heights as Israeli tank brigades broke through the Arab lines and advanced northward in the direction of Damascus.

But, the predicted Israeli counterattack in the Sinai had not produced the dramatic results the Israelis obtained in the six-day war six years ago.

Monday, Tel Aviv communiques spoke of smashing the trapped Egyptian tank forces on the East Bank of the canal. By Wednesday the Israelis admitted they had abandoned their Suez defense lines and they talked of a "war of attrition" instead of a war of retribution.

The United States and the Soviet Union have steered clear of the actual fighting thus far, although the Soviets are reportedly resupplying the Arab armies and the U.S. is considering countering with aid to Israel.

The threat of a veto from either superpower has so far stymied action in the United Nations Security Council on proposals for bringing a halt to the two-front war, the fourth in the Middle East since 1948.

The Harvard Faculty, however, has not escaped the tendency to become involved, at least on a verbal level. Nor have their predictions been notably better than those emanating from confused battlefields.

"The war-tide is turning in favor of Israel," Nadav Safran, professor of Government, said Monday. "I expect the Arab attack to be totally displaced in 24 hours."

"The battle going on right now in the Middle East will determine the outcome of the war," Safran told a Harvard forum the next night. "I do not think the Egyptians can hold out for another two days."

One concensus which emerged from the conflicting predictions of the week was the belief that neither side will benefit from the outcome of the fighting.

The Arabs do not seem likely to retake permanently the territory lost to Israel six years ago and the Israelis have suffered enormous material and physical losses in their effort to push the attackers back.

"The Israeli position will harden as a direct consequence of the loss of blood," Safran said Monday and the Arab position is likely to toughen, too, in the wake of Israeli air strikes deep into Arab territory.

Roger D. Fisher '43, professor of Law and a former negotiator in the Middle East, predicted Thursday the result will be that neither side can accept a cease-fire short of military victory or outside intervention.

The week ended with Israeli tanks and soldiers pushing down the Damascus road, Egypt claiming victory in a major tank battle in the Sinai and Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger '50 predicting that the two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States, will be able to keep out of the fighting. A lot of people were hoping Kissinger would beat the week's prediction jinx.