Reports from Cairo that Egyptian diplomats were offering proposals to end 20 years of Arab self-proclaimed belligerency toward Israel were dismissed here today by Israel’s United Nations envoy as only another example of “propaganda games of words.”
Yosef Tekoah, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, declared also in a statement that the latest press reports from Cairo were “the usual meaningless smokescreen behind which Cairo hides its continued refusal to make peace with Israel and its growing intransigence.” He declared that intransigence had been shown again by Egyptian President Nasser’s “warlike statement of July 23 and similar official Egyptian announcements.”
The latest Cairo reports were to the effect that Egyptian diplomats were privately pressing a proposal for “declarations of peace” to be endorsed by the Security Council and the four major powers in Middle East affairs – the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union. The “informants” in Cairo purportedly said that Egypt viewed such a procedure as a way of getting around Israel’s insistence on signed peace treaties with the Arab countries and that Egypt had urged this approach on UN peace envoy Dr. Gunnar V. Jarring at his headquarters in Nicosia.
Mr. Tekoah said that as long as Egypt and other Arab states “adhere to the Khartoum decision of no peace, no negotiations and no recognition of Israel, there can be no progress toward peace.” He stressed that “what is required to terminate the 20-year Arab war against Israel are not verbal declarations of piety and promise but a peace agreement.” Remarking that “there is nothing more common in the past two decades than such Arab declarations,” he cited several recent examples. He noted that in January, 1967, he had helped to negotiate a declaration of non-belligerency with Syria which was published on Jan. 25, 1967 as a joint communique by the UN Truce Supervision Organization. This declaration, he added, “had no effect whatsoever on Syria’s pursuance of terror warfare which was one of the factors which brought about the June 1967 hostilities.”
More recently, the envoy added, Muhammad el-Farra, the Jordanian ambassador to the UN, made a declaration in the Security Council that his country abided by the cease-fire agreement with Israel. At the same time, Mr. Tekoah continued, “Jordan supports and participates in terror warfare carried on from its territory against Israel in violation of the cease-fire.” Since 1948, and even after June 1967, he pointed out, Israel and the Arab governments have negotiated and signed agreements. He added that when Egypt and the other Arab states “decide that they are ready for peace with Israel, they will enter into negotiations with Israel as they have done in the past, and contractual binding agreements will be concluded between the parties as has been the case in the past.”
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.
