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By Root 902 0

size and manpower, why do the Arabs not attack? Partly because from previous experience they have a rather nervous respect for Israel’s powers of retaliation; further, because of fear of one another and of internal opponents given to bloody coups d’état. Yet, since acceptance of reality does not always prevail in dealings among nations, Israel can never be sure that the Arab inundation will not roll, nor free themselves of the thought that someday—next month, next year, or tomorrow—they may wake to the sudden scream of a hostile air force in their skies. They must live and plan in that constant expectation. Meanwhile, from day to day the small pressures continue. Yellow signs proclaiming DANGER! FRONTIER mark an erratic curve through the countryside. Visitors to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, must pass through a maze of guards and precautions before entering the visitors’ gallery, and ladies must leave their handbags, presumably capable of concealing a bomb or pistol, outside. Driving down through the Negev along the new highway that skirts the bleak, eroded slopes of Jordan to the east, the chauffeur stubbornly refuses to stop for a visit to the Nabatean ruins of Avdat or other sights along the way, and when finally pressed for an explanation, admits, almost apologetically, to a desire to reach Eilat before sunset. Why? Well, in case of—the word comes reluctantly—“trouble” from over there, nodding toward the somber mountains on the left. A startled American, unused to thinking in these terms, is reminded of covered wagons and Indian ambush.

At Almagor, a hilltop settlement in northern Galilee where clashes with Syria involving machine guns, tanks, and aircraft took place during the past two summers, one looks down on a silver stream winding through a green delta to the lake. The stream is the River Jordan where it enters the Sea of Galilee (otherwise Lake Tiberias). The land on its far bank, backed by a range of hills, is Syria, with snow-capped Mount Hermon looming hugely in the distance. On one of the hills is a cluster of the Arabs’ characteristic flat-topped sandstone huts, many of them painted pale blue to ward off evil. Down on the delta black cattle graze, white egrets stand on the sand flats of the river, Arab families and farmers go about their business. The air is filled with a spring breeze and the twittering of birds, the hillside with weeds and wild flowers blossoming as profusely as a garden. Lavender thistle mixes with blue gentian, daisies with wild mustard and wild pink geranium, and scarlet poppies are scattered everywhere. A solitary young soldier sits with binoculars on a pile of stones, intently scanning the hills opposite.

Almagor is a settlement founded by Nahal, a pioneer corps in which military training and land cultivation are combined in a system Israel has developed to defend and simultaneously settle the frontier. The young recruit points to a long straight scar on the side of the hill opposite and says it is the track of the Arabs’ attempted diversion of the headwaters of the Jordan. Involving seventy-five miles of open ditch, the scheme could hardly be carried out secretly, and is not an operation that Israel could idly watch. After the Syrians started shooting in August 1965, the Israelis’ answering fire, according to their communiqué, damaged “tractors at work in Syria on the diversion of the Jordan headwaters,” after which the work “appeared to cease for the time being.” When I was there in March before last summer’s battle, the hillside scar, from what anyone could tell through binoculars, was quiescent.

Down on the lake, which is wholly Israeli territory, two fishing boats were moving out from the Syrian shore. The soldier remarked without heat that last year Syrian guns in the hills fired on an Israeli fishing boat and a cruising police patrol boat. Handing me the binoculars, he pointed to two black dots far out in the center of the lake. Slowly moving into vision, they took shape as Israeli police boats. The Syrians kept on fishing, and the patrols approaching. Gripping the binoculars,