Ambassador Abba Eban, head of the Israel delegation to the United Nations, today said in a press statement that he was satisfied with the Progress being made at the U.N. Security Council on the Syrian complaint against the hydroelectric project started by Israel on the Jordan River.
Mr. Eban’s statement was issued following an attack made on this project last night by Syrian Ambassador Dr. Farid Zeineddine, who told the U.N. Security Council that if the United Nations does not stop “Zionist expansion into the demilitarized zone and beyond,” the war between the Arab states and Israel may be renewed.
The statement issued by Mr. Eban asserts that the speech delivered by the Syrian representative proved conclusively that no obstacle in law or in fact stood in the way of the Jordan River project. He emphasized that the claim that 99 percent of the land in the demilitarized zone was Arab owned was a “grotesque falsehood and a complete contradiction to the documents” on the case.
As to the problem of the water, Mr. Eban asserted, that the Syrian representative only claimed that two percent of it was being used on Syrian land. Therefore, Mr. Eban said, the issue is whether Israel’s rights to use 98 percent of the water for constructive purposes should be “throttled in favor of an interest affecting at most two percent.”
On the question of military advantage, Mr. Eban stated that the military effect of the works was to increase the obstacle to invasion from either side. In view of the weakness of the Syrian arguments, Mr. Eban expressed the hope that the Security Council would remove the obstacles to Israeli completion of the project.
SYRIA CHARGES PROJECT IS “DESTROYING” ARMISTICE AGREEMENT
The Syrian representative charged that the diversion of the Jordan River for the Israeli hydroelectric development scheme “destroyed the fundamental part” of the armistice agreement–the demilitarized zone. In a long speech at the Security Council he indicated that his government would not have brought this complaint if the diversion of the Jordan had not been in the demilitarized zone.
Dr. Zeineddine expressed misgivings about United States policy on the Israeli project. He declared the United States took an active interest in the area and said the United States might “seek to denature our present complaint, based on the armistice agreement, so as to bring into the picture economic interests not based on the armistice agreement, to cause investigations of an economic nature to take place, or to try to bring about a decision where by the security Council would substitute itself for the parties concerned and thus render unnecessary their prior consent in dealing with the issue.”
“Such interests of the United States do not fall within the purview of the present issue and should not be allowed to influence it beyond measure,” he added.
The Syrian representative charged that Israel had not stopped work on the canal as it had promised to do. He said “up to the eighth of November, according to our information, those works continued in the demilitarized zone.” He declared that the diversion of the Jordan River and the “drying up of its water” would mean a military advantage to Israel and would permit tanks to cross this natural obstacle.
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.
