The Travelers

Hopes for peace in Palestine centered largely on two men of royal blood who hurried by plane through the Middle East airlanes last week. One was earnest, Godfearing Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte; the other, mercurial King Abdullah of Transjordan, who was trying to unite the Arab world behind him to treat with--or fight--the Jews of Palestine.

Bernadotte put out his first long-term peace feelers to Jews and Arabs. The gist of his "suggestions": reshuffling of U.N.'s crazy-quilt boundaries, so as to favor Israel in the north, Arabs in the south; merger of the Arab areas with Transjordan; unlimited Jewish immigration for two years; an economic union of the two states. Neither Arab nor Jew accepted these first proposals. But neither did they reject them outright, and Bernadotte was ready to follow up with more suggestions. Said he: "I will carry on with the discussions as long as may prove necessary and fruitful." He began sounding out both sides on an extension of the U.N. truce, due to expire this week.

The Arab answer to Bernadotte would depend, in the long run, on the outcome of King Abdullah's trip. Abdullah visited his old enemy, King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia, for the first time since Ibn Saud kicked Abdullah's family off the throne of the Hejaz in 1924.

For three days, in the palaces of Ibn Saud's capital, Riyadh, they ceremoniously entertained each other. After dinner one night, Ibn Saud's court poet intoned a piece written for the occasion. Sample:

"The House of Saud and the lion cubs of Hussein [Abdullah's father] are one hand whose bonds in Allah will never be dissevered . . . They are the roaring lions and the suns at forenoon . . . Palestine is a bloody finger whose illness may be cured by resolution . . . Neither the Security Council nor falling bombs nor fire nor steel can dissuade us . . . We shield ourselves with Allah and the Koran."

The kings issued a joint statement in the same vein: no compromise. But on the next leg of his journey, to visit his nephew Regent Abdul Illah of Iraq, Abdullah dropped a hint to the Arab press to stop the chest-thumping which makes compromise impossible. Said Abdullah: "The significant feature of the situation is not so much a matter of the Arab states being against the Jews but rather against the supporters of world Jewry in the international sphere. Therefore, I wish to advise the Arab press not to be too optimistic . . . not too pessimistic . . .

"Time marches on . . ."

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