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If Egyptians were more given to revolting, they would find abundant cause in Nasser's brand of socialism, which has put one of the world's largest, most inept bureaucracies in charge of the day-to-day functioning of Egypt's economy. Its mismanagement is to blame for epidemic shortages, nonexistent planning and, ultimately, that Egypt's average income per person has gone up only from $120 a year in 1952 to $170 today. Much of even that modest improvement is swallowed up by increased taxes and inflation. By contrast, nearby Lebanon, which has far fewer resources but a policy of free-wheeling private enterprise, has a per-capita income of $450 a year.
Bureaucratic Mismanagement
Egypt's bureaucrats have probably done more damage to its economy than has Israel. As compensation for lost revenues from Suez, Egypt receives a total of $266 million a year from oil-rich Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Libya, $46 million more than the Suez Canal produced in its last year of operation. Egypt has also benefited in the postwar years from the fact that world prices of its principal import—wheat—have fallen, while prices of its exports—mainly cotton, rice, sugar, onions and potatoes —have all risen.
Egypt's hopes for the future rest largely with Allah, oil and Aswan. The Israelis hold Egypt's Sinai fields, but Pan American, a U.S. subsidiary of Standard Oil (Indiana), has brought in an offshore field in the Gulf of Suez; its reserves are estimated at 1 billion bbl. Phillips Petroleum is pumping 40,000 bbl. a day at El Alamein, and Egypt's daily production of oil is expected to be 450,000 bbl. by next year.
Egyptians consider the Aswan High Dam, built with Soviet aid, to be Nasser's most signal accomplishment. Now 95% complete, it rises 364 feet above the flat Nile plain 560 miles south of Cairo, and behind it Lake Nasser is gradually filling up. Aswan will supply electricity to Cairo at less than the cost in New York, but there are no plans yet to use the mineral and petroleum resources of the region to build an industrial complex. Aswan, as its most immediate benefit, will widen the narrow ribbon of fertile acreage along the Nile by 1.5 million acres, and allow double-cropping on another 4,000,000 acres. Even so, Egypt's ratio of land to people will be the same as when work on the dam began nine years ago. Underlying and aggravating all of Egypt's other woes is a runaway birth rate. During Nasser's term alone, Egypt's population has jumped from 21 million to 33.5 million; by 1980, at the current growth rate, it will be 50 million.
For the masses of the Arab world, an emotional alternative to Nasserism is provided by the Palestinian fedayeen. So far, they have failed in their primary goal of rousing the population of the occupied West Bank to revolt, and militarily they amount to no more than an irritation to Israel. But they are so inundated with volunteers that they claim to have higher recruitment standards than the Arab armies.
In their growing power, the fedayeen are potentially more of a threat to Arab governments than to the Israelis—a fact of which every Arab ruler is well aware. Syria trains commandos within its borders, but mostly sends them to attack Israel from Jordan or Lebanon. Iraq stations army units around their camps