Separation of Jerusalem from Israel Would Mean Its “economic Death,” Eban Warns U.N.

Jerusalem cannot exist economically as a separate body and its forced separation from Israel would mean its “economic death,” Aubrey S. Eban, Israel delegate to the United Nations, declared today in the course of a 15-minute statement made before the U.N. Trusteeship Council. The Council is currently considering an international statute for Jerusalem.

After Mr. Eban spoke, he was violently attacked by the representatives of Iraq and Syria. The latter compared Israel’s economic planning in Jerusalem with Hitler’s planning for a Nazi-ruled Europe. After a sharp protest by the Israel representative, Council President Roger Garreau rebuked the Arabs, expressing regret that he had allowed them to raise political questions at this time and to use “inappropriate language.”

Reviewing the program that Israel undertook in Jerusalem in order to revive a city badly disrupted by war, Mr. Eban declared: “The task of rehabilitation which my government undertook in Autumn, 1948, and thereafter to this day was formidable and complete. Buildings were repaired, the water and transport systems were restored and improved and its economic life, then at a standstill, had to be stimulated.” He cited statistics demonstrating that of the current 34,000,000-pound ($95,000,000) city budget, 28,000,000 pounds came from Israel, and asked how this expenditure could be met under an international regime as envisioned in the statute.

“If Jerusalem is not made part of an infinitely more productive unit,” the Israel diplomat warned, “its economic autonomy will be a veil for a permanent decline.” He added that the “very word ‘corpus separatum’ becomes a euphemism for economic death.”

The people of Jerusalem and the Israel Parliament, in their behalf, have recognized the unique spiritual interests located in the city and acknowledge the responsibility of the United Nations in that regard, Mr. Eban stated. To what extent can the Trusteeship Council, in the name of spiritual interests, cast aside the wishes of Jerusalem’s citizens in respect to the organization of their seculr life? he asked.

ARGUES AGAINST CONVERSION OF JERUSALEM INTO ECONOMICALLY BACKWARD AREA

“In previous articles of the statute you have hypothetically liquidated their political institutions, repudiated their security agreements, subverted their attachments, boiled down their plans, dismissed their trust, questioned their allegiance and isolated them from kith and kin,” Mr. Eban charged. He continued:

“Now you propose to decide in the name of religious and spiritual interests how they should run their banks, their export licenses and income tax. And this is to be done by inflicting an economic siege upon Jerusalem and converting it into an economically backward area — a kind of a ‘Point Four’ in reverse — the economic counterpart of retrogression from major independence to servile tutelage. To us, this appears very strange, very ill-spirited. It cannot be final, international wisdom,” he concluded.