Failure of Frontier Talks with Jordan Seen As Blow to Israel

The failure of the Israel-Jordan talks on ratification of the frontier is a blow to Israeli hopes of persuading other Arab states to enter into direct negotiations, the Times of London reported from Tel Aviv.

The dispatch stated that Israel had hoped that completion of an agreement with Amman would convince Syria to enter into direct negotiations on mutual frontier problems. By these talks Israel had expected to convince the Arab states of the advantages of direct negotiation over third-party mediation. To these ends, Israel had made what she believed to be important concessions in order to assure the success of the negotiations, the Times correspondent said.

Throughout, the talks were of an informal character and a complete agreement had been reached between the delegates of the two nations on territorial exchanges which were “roughly on a dunam for dunam basis” when the Jordan Premier, Tewfik Abdul Houda, turned thumbs down in a public statement Saturday. The Times concluded that “Israel would naturally have profited considerably by obtaining the use of the Latrun section of the main road from Jerusalem to the coast and by the restoration of its source of water to the potash works at Sdom; but the Arabs, too, would have benefited immeasurably by the reunion of villages and land separated as a result of the Rhodes decision on the frontier, and both sides would have gained from the removal of serious causes of frontier incidents.”