Half of Security Council Meetings in 1955 Dealt with “palestine Issue”

The pertinacity of the “Palestine Question” as an agenda item which continues stubbornly to come up before the Security Council was dramatically illustrated here today by data issued by the United Nations Secretariat. The data shows that, in 1955, more than half of the Council’s sessions were devoted to discussions of Israel-Arab conflicts.

There were 23 Council sessions in 1955 and, since one of the meetings was of a routine character, dealing with the body’s annual report, only 22 were devoted to substantive matters. Of these 22 meetings, various aspects of Israel-Arab conflict took up 12 sessions. Eight dealt with complaints and counter-complaints by Egypt and Israel as a result of the Gaza raid of last February; two of the sessions took up Israel’s recurrent complaints against the Egyptian blockade of the Suez Canal. The year’s final two meetings took up Syria’s complaint and Israel’s answer in connection with the attack on December 11 against Syrian gun positions which had shelled Israeli fishing and police boats on Lake Tiberias. The latter issue is still unresolved and is scheduled to come up before the Council for further discussion next week.