Where history began, History Today is made anew in lands once fabled and mysterious, yet as sharply real as a headline, the lands of the middle east. The maps of the middle ages used to show this region as the center of the world because of its inclusion of the holy land. Already then it was a cultural area rich in history. Western civilization began in the valleys of the nile, euphrates, and tigris rivers. Here men learned to domesticate animals, to write and make laws, and to worship one god. For three of the worlds great religions originated here. Christianity, judaism, and islam. Through 5000 years of conflict kingdoms and empires rose and fell. The monuments of their lost glory and faded power are left as the marks of a historical legacy to enrich the landscape. Now today, once again, there is a stirring here, and world attention focuses once more on this region of the globe. Our nation takes a deep interest in the countries covered in this report, including israel. Egypt, syria, jordan, lebanon, saudi arabia, kuwait, iraq oman, and aden. This has been abundantly clear ever since the american document of 1957 held off the assurance of u. S. Military assistance when requested to any middle eastern country threatened by aggression from the forces of communism. Under its terms, United States forces in 1958 responded to an urgent appeal for help from lebanon. Why this interest in the middle east . One reason is its location. It is a world crossroads, a sea, land, and air bridge. Connecting the three continents of europe, asia, and africa. Then there is the areas immense supply of oils. From this supply it furnishes 3 4 of europes oil needs and almost all those of the far east. In World Affairs too, the states are playing an increasingly significant role. They frequently take a united stand on issues and exert a powerful influence on other states. Thus the majority of nations in this area making up the arab bloc can have considerable impact on world attitudes and decisions. The area which for all these reasons figure so importantly in the course of world History Today is not one solid entity. There are divisions, some of them deep and ancient, some born of the troubled present, which pit nations and groups of nations and groups within nations against each other. Their governments range from republic to monarchy to sheikdom, from forwardlooking to feudal, and no two are of the same form. The people themselves differ quite as much as do their forms of government. The most explosive issue of all is the existence of the state of israel. Israel was born amid turbulence and bloodshed. Following u. N. Partition, it became a separate nation after the british, who had exercised a mandate since the end of world war i, withdrew from palestine in 1948. It was immediately attacked by its neighboring arab states, who resented the new nation and considered its creation to be illegal. Israel successfully beat off the attacks and a series of honest disagreements worked out by the United Nations brought an end to organized warfare in 1949. Since then, israel has worked a fever pitch and with the tough and Pioneering Spirit to make a selfsufficient nation within its borders. Jewish immigrants bringing with them the varied languages, skills, and customs of the countries of their birth have been absorbed and provided with shelter, food, and jobs. Barren and eroding land has been cultivated. Determined efforts in irrigation and specialized projects with cattle have promoted and Agricultural Program which today produces a plentiful supply of basic food. Even industry, despite serious limitations in Raw Materials has grown rapidly. At variance with this picture are the camps outside israels borders, where more than one million arab refugees maintain a miserable existence and demand the right to return to the homes in palestine from which they say they were dispossessed during the war. Israel says it would be impossible to readmit them. It has offered to discuss compensation. But the arab states, supporting the refugees demands, refuse to acknowledge israels star and it will not accept any conditions at all. Existence and do not accept any conditions at all. The plight of those people symbolizes not only the divisiveness that scars the middle east, but also strangely enough, its opposite. The arab nations surrounding israel, although divided on many issues, are united in their opposition to israel. Not only their opposition to israel, but other factors too, provide a unity which binds together most of the arab lands of the middle east. For the arabs of every country share a common culture which spills across the borders of nations and is apparent throughout the arab world. From the architecture of its buildings to the customs of its daily life. Much of this cultural unity stems from the arab language the tongue most commonly used in the area. It is something more than a bond uniting the arab world. It reflects the tradition and customs of that world. An arab speaking arabic, wherever he may be, speaks on the basis of judgments and assumptions and values, shared by all other arabs. Religion is another socially cohesive force. There are christian groups particularly in lebanon, and to a lesser extent in egypt. And there are, of course, the jews in israel, but the overwhelmingly dominant faith in the middle east is islam. The powerful faith founded by the prophet mohammed 1400 years ago. Five times a day a call from the minarets atop the mosque, which is the center of Community Life in every city, summons the faithful to prayer. Inhome and mosque and field muslims kneel and face mecca the holy city and saudi arabia where mohammed was born. It is a common sight for islam is the faith that pervades the daily lives of the people. And its bible, the koran, spells out with precision the details which form the basis of their law and culture. It is a faith buildup on the acknowledgment of one god, whose name in arabic is allah. Throughout the muslim world, it teaches a unifying peace through submission to allahs will. Even its physical appearance gives a unity to the middle east. Most of the middle east is a desert, an extension of that great, dry world which extends from the Sahara Desert in the west to the gobi desert in central asia. The sun burns down unremittingly, with a searing heat through most of the year. Water is scarce. Annual rainfall throughout the area is less than 10 inches. High winds bring frequent sandstorms, so severe that they block vision. The land and climate dictate the most severe of the regions problems. The inhospitable desert is uninhabitable except for nomadic tribesmen. Who camp around oases where there cattle can graze. Most of the people live by farming the narrow, crucial bands of fertile land which stretch along the few rivers. Most of these farmers are sharecroppers, heavily indebted to the wealthy landlords who own the good land, tilling the reluctant earth with methods unchanged in a 1000 years or more. For them and for the thousands who flock to the cities in a hopeless effort to find something better, life is a primitive existence ridden with poverty, illiteracy, and disease. But if poverty is a common condition of the arab world, so too is the yearning to change this condition, to break out of the prison of the past and reach for the promise of a better life. The urge towards change is not peculiar to the middle east. The 20th century has heard its challenging cry around the globe, but nowhere more insistently than in this part of the world. The manifestations of change are everywhere. In the quiet modification of customs and social patterns centuries old, in savage street demonstrations which defy the old authorities and create new ones overnight. Most important of all in the application of new methods to ancient problems. Some of the countries of the middle east have seized upon industrialization as the answer to all their troubles and the fastest path to the Promised Land of tomorrow. In the countryside, land reforms and introduction of better farming methods are in many places combining to improve the lot of the farmer and increases output. The most ambitious and hopefully regarded projects are those which endeavor to make more land productive through irrigation and develop waterpower for industry. The most widely known such project is egypts construction of the answar high dam on the nile. It completed construction in 1964. Construction of the dam was begun with help by the soviet union. It was not russias first foothold in the strategic middle east. Egypts president nasser had provided back by turning to the ussr for military assistance and equipment. Neither was it the last. The influence of the communist world has been widely felt. In an application of propaganda technique which the communists have used in every part of the world, they have worked here to exploit the peoples natural grievances to their own advantage and stir up antagonism towards the west by playing on the peoples fears and resentments of former colonialism. However dead colonialism may be in actuality, the fears and resentments of it are real and are still alive in the National Memories of those who have experienced. In much of the middle east, the tradition of outside controls stretches back to the days of greece and rome. This came to after Egypts Nasser nationalized the suez canal. Great britain and france, whose interests had jointly controlled the canal, were fearful of a disruption in the delivery of their oil supplies. They sent in troops, ostensibly to bring an end to warfare between egypt and israel, which had come with israels earlier invasion of the sinai peninsula. But they quickly moved to create a buffer zone around the canal. Withdrawal of these forces was finally achieved. A residue was left behind of new bitterness towards western policies in the middle east. The stand most of the middle Eastern Countries have taken in the cold where is the attachment. Detachment. Sometimes it seems to us more like opportunistic politics. Leaders insist their policy is neutrality. If the voice of the middle east sounds with more vigor and insistence in the world today than it ever has before, it is a in great part because of nationalism which has swept through the middle east. Governments, then empire outposts, have toppled in the wake of that raging spirit. Nations have been born, and new and powerful leaders have risen to eminence. A distinctive feature of the nationalism of the middle east is that it spills across the borders of individual nations and embraces the dream of a pan arab world in the middle east. But it is a dream which up to now has been made of stuff too fragile to translate into political reality in the face of national rivalries. The most ambitious attempt, the union of egypt and syria in a single state, the united arab republic, lasted for 3 years until syria withdrew in 1961 complaining of egyptian domination. But the dream of arab unity endures, as evidenced by summit conferences which are held frequently among middle eastern heads of state to discuss and attempt Practical Solutions to their problems. There are problems aplenty problems left from the long and bitter past, problems such as the ever present and explosive deadlock with israel woven into the violent fabric of the present, bubbling from which the course of the future depends. Notably, the challenge to tame the desert. And make its rich oil deposits work for the benefit of all the people instead of the relatively few who enjoy those rewards now. As it moves to meet these problems, the world feels the stirring as centuries ago, men felt the stir of great events in the desert lands were history began. Here are some of our featured programs for this weekend on the cspan networks. On cspan tonight at 10 00, on book tvs afterwards, Bret Stephens argue our enemies and competitors are taking advantage of our situations abroad. Democratic representative from new york steve israel about his novel about a salesman and a topsecret government surveillance program. Tonight at 8 00 eastern, on lectures in history, George Mason University fsa john tunrner on the mormons and their creek attempt to create a new zion in western america. Nine from little rock, a film about