Jewish Community Relations Council, Boston, Massachusetts

              Israel's 'Little War'
01 the Borders
Here is a report of what happens when Arab
'infiltrators' violate the Israeli frontier.
By DANA ADAMS SCHMIDT
Tel Aviv.
MORE than five years after its
declaration of independence
Israel la still fighting a war—
"the little war," the battle of the borders. Since becoming a nation she has
never known an extended period of
quiet on all her borders at the .same
time. Always there have been "infiltrators" who slip across the Israeli
frontier whenever Uie moon is down.
They come in greatest numbers when
the nights are long and rainstorms
lash the land, but every night they
come.
It has become obvious that the armistices signed between Israel and her
neighbors—Egypt. Jordan. Lebanon
and Syria—are fragile instruments. So
acute has the frontier problem grown
that it was one of the pressing reasons
for Secretary of State Dulles' recent
tour of Middle Eastern trouble spots,
after which he urged an "impartial"
approach by the United States to help
ease the Israeli-Arab tensions. Until
there is a change in the "atmosphere
of hate." as Mr. Dulles put it, there
can be no real progress toward building
a Middle East defense structure.
The Israeli frontier is 775 miles
long, stretching In a ragged line from
the Mediterranean, at the southern end
of Lebanon, down to the Red Sea. and
then back up to the Mediterranean
again, at the edge of Egypt. It runs
mosUy through the desert land which
is typical of this part of the world, and
it is full of potenUal—and actual-
trouble spots. In divided Jerusalem
there are places where Israelis live
within a few yards of the ancient city
walls of the Jordan-held Old City of
Jerusalem. From these walls the Arab
Legion's machine-guns dominate all of
Israel's New City.
J\
X, along the frontier of this young
country are Arab refugees who once
lived in the lands that now are Israel.
They get just enough relief from the
United Nations Relief and Works Administration to keep them alive and
nourish their deep resentment of the
Israelis across the border. A quarter
million such refugees crowd the narrow
Gaza strip in the Negev, occupied by
the Egyptian army. Several hundred
thousand more are in Jordanian-occupied Palestine, most of them within a
few thousand yards of Israel's borders.
These sullen refugees languish in tents
and shacks in the stony hills overlooking the fertile plains from which they
fled or were driven in 1948 and 1949.
It Is this part of the Israeli frontier
—the border opposite that section of
Palestine now included in Jordan—
which is the worst trouble spot. Hero
the line, drawn on a feverish night in
Rhodes, where the armistice with Jordan was signed on April 3, 1949, la entirely artificial. It follows no geographical or economical divisions; it cuts
through some Arab villages and separates others from their lands or their
wells. Everyone agrees — kibbutzniks,
army and police officers and United
Nations observers—that this makeshift demarcation cannot remain forever as it is today.
On the Israeli side of the frontiers,
settlements have been turned into
armed camps. Barbed wire encircles
barns and living quarters, and a few
of the richer kibbutzim have constructed a ring of floodlights around
their buildings. All keep guards on
duty every night. They strain their
eyes and ears for signs of hostile movement, of the coming of the infiltrators.
w,
THAT happens in the "war of in-
filtraUon"? Infiltration means many
things:
A 25-year-old mother in a settlement
in Samaria puts her daughter to bed
and sits sewing and reading. About
midnight she hears a noise outside and
walks into the kitchen. She turns on
the light. As the light goes on a Sten
gun rattles angrily in the yard outside,
spraying the kitchen window with lead
and sending glass flying in al) direc-
LOOKING TOWARD SYRIA—Raid-, by Arab "infiltrators-' have bred a war-like tension
all along  Israeli's 775-mile frontier.   This is an Israeli patrol station on the Syn'an border.
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