The United Nations Security Council today started a discussion on charges brought against Israel by Egypt and counter-charges presented by Israel against Egypt and Jordan.
Addressing the Council, Mahmoud Fawzi Bey of Egypt said that Israel is conducting “systematic and ruthless aggression against Arabs and the United Nations.” The Egyptian representative on the Council claimed that a long series of “swift-moving adventures by Israel armed forces” have resulted in the forcible expulsion of more than 6,000 Palestinian Arabs from Israel into Egyptian territory.
Dramatizing his account, Mahmoud Fawzi Bey told the Council that he had received this morning a further complaint from his government that more than 500 Arabs had been compelled to cross the Israel border at the end of last week. He charged that in all cases the expelled group had been compelled to sign affidavits that they had “voluntarily chosen to leave Israel and gave up all claims to their property there.”
He said his government asked three things of the Council: 1. That the U.N. intervene in the situation without delay; 2. That immediate and effective aid be extended to the new refugees, and, 3. That the U.N. works agency in the Near East accept responsibility for them. It was his government’s conviction, he said, that the purpose of the expulsion was to rid Israel of its entire Arab population, to make room for “the motley horde of invaders from abroad.”
Israel representative Abba Eban accused Egypt of “gross international misconduct” in bringing utterly false charges before the Security Council. He said the Egyptians evaded the established and proper procedure of the mixed armistice commission, which not only threw suspicion on the charges but in itself constituted non-compliance with the armistice agreement.
Demolishing one by one the Egyptian accusations against Israel, Mr. Eban asserted that there is no substantiation to the charge that Israel violated Egyptian borders or the El Auja demilitarized area, declared that the Bedouins expelled from Israel had been established as infiltrators by the head of the Israel-Egyptian armistice commission and that the two tribes against which action had been taken were advocates of violence who had rendered life intolerable along the sensitive demilitarized border. On the other hand, he said, 7,500 peaceful Bedouins had been permitted to cross into Israel.
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.
