Arab Defeat at U. N. Analyzed by Bean; Israel’s View Explained

The political defeats suffered by the Arab states at the United Nations General Assembly session which just concluded may well mean the end of the perennial Arab attempt to place the Palestine issue before the United Nations, Abba Eban, Israel’s chief delegate to the U. N. declared here yesterday.

Reviewing Palestine developments at the U. N., Ambassador Eban told a press conference that though the resolution calling for direct peace talks between the Israelis and the Arabs had been defeated, the debate in committee and the fact of the situation had “created a great volume of opinion for direct settlement.” He added that the “vacuum created by U. N. inaction” is expected to be filled by the powers interested in the Middle East.

He also expressed the opinion that on the whole the U. N. session could be termed “successful from Israel’s point of view” despite the defeat of the direct talks proposal. He noted that the fate of this resolution was of less significance to Israel than the defeat of a Philippine resolution which would have again placed the U. N. on record as favoring the internationalization of Jerusalem.

The Arab attempt at raising the internationalization issue was a failure, he said, asserting that the general sentiment in the U. N. was to find an effective way of securing accessibility to the Holy Places. There was also a wave of opinion in the U. N., he stressed, for resettling the Arab refugees in the Arab countries.

Speaking of Israel’s tactics in the U. N. vis-a-vis the Arabs, he said that Israel had originally planned to remain on the defensive, but when the Arabs indicated clearly that they would pursue an aggressive course, Israel diplomacy went on the offensive. While he would not say that the Palestine Conciliation Commission was virtually extinct, Ambassador Eban said that the General Assembly’s failure to enlarge or give the Commission new instructions showed the trend.