The Middle East Situation

The brief visits to Israel, Egypt and Jordan by US Secretary of State George Shultz (which had just begun at MEES press time) were his first for two years, a period during which US diplomacy in the Middle East has been increasingly inert. On his last tour, he helped negotiate the ill-fated 17 May 1983 Israel-Lebanon withdrawal accord, which Syria torpedoed, and Damascus is now pledging to sabotage any new US-backed Middle East peace moves which may emerge from the...