Abba Eban

When the last issue of Foreign Affairs went to press in late August, few readers can have believed that by early fall Egypt and Israel would be negotiating a peace treaty. The only sure way of predicting the future is to have the power to shape it, and here the actors in the field have a great advantage over even the most learned commentators. The army of pundits and experts that marches in the procession of international affairs is becoming very much like the chorus in Greek tragedy, whose vocation was to express musical consternation at events that it was powerless to control.

SINCE early March the Arab world has been shaken by an angry clash of views about its relations with Israel. Arab thinking on this subject had long been governed by what Whitehead once called "inert ideas"-that is to say, ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilized or tested or thrown into fresh combinations. This inertia was suddenly broken by two closely related events. The Federal Republic of Germany sought the establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel, in conscious rejection of Arab pressure. And the President of Tunisia challenged the official Arab dogma about Israel's place in the Middle East. In statements which had a broad international resonance, Mr. Bourguiba indicated that Israel was a solid and entrenched reality with which the Arab nations would have to come to terms. To dream of sweeping Israel away in a torrent of violence was, in his view, sheer delusion.