The necessity for “replacing the truce in Palestine “by a peace settlement between Israel and the belligerent Arab states” was I emphasized here today by and spokesman for the Israeli mission as the U.N, Security I tell was considering the Arab wrecking of the Latrun water pumping station.
“The Provisional Government of Israel cannot contemplate the indefinite duration of a truce in the absence of any peace negotiations,” the Israeli spokesman said. The Provisional Government of Israel, therefore, urges as an incentive to early peace, a fixing of an early time limit for the present truce by which either peace must be concluded, or invading armies leave on the understanding that the Provisional Government of Israel would thereafter be free to seek a way out of the impasse by its own action. “
The responsibility for the wrecking of the Latrun station was placed on U.N. Palestine mediator Count Folke Bernsdotte at the Security Council in a statement made by Israeli representative Aubrey S. Eban. He said that Arab denial of water for Jerusalem was a breach of the truce with which the mediator was apparently unable to cope. He warred that, under the circumstances, Israel would be entitled to take its own action to safeguard the water supply for Jerusalem.
Speaking for the Arabs, Faris El Khouri confessed that the Arabs were holding the water supply as hostage for Jewish acceptance of the demilitarization of Jerusalem. Eban countered with the assertion that demilitarization was not mandatory but only an objective to be negotiated by the mediator with both parties.
The Security Council voted eight to one for a Soviet resolution urging the U.N. mediator to exert His efforts for resumption of the water supply to inhabitants of Jerusalem
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
