ABSTRACT
With the failure of efforts for peace the Western Powers felt impelled to try at least to contain the Arab-Israeli dispute. Western arms supplies to Israel's most dangerous adversary, Egypt, were strictly limited, but France began secretly to supply arms to Israel in 1952 as a quid pro quo for Egyptian aid to Algerian rebels. The guarantee of the Armistice lines in the Declaration was partly intended to prevent any Arab attack on Jordan, which had annexed Arab-held central and west Palestine. The Arab world was stunned by the Gaza raid carried out by Israel in February 1955. In the wake of the Tripartite Declaration initiatives by Dulles and Eden to find some formula for the solution of the ArabIsraeli problem completely failed. These new Western attempts at a solution were made the more urgent by the new factor in the situation which we now document-the re-entry of Russia into the Middle East in 1955.
