Israel Determined to Exhaust Every Prospect to Make Jarring Mission Work

Israel said today that it was determined “to exhaust every prospect, however slight, to make the Jarring mission work despite the two abortive efforts of the past.” That statement was contained in a policy background paper issued by the Israel Embassy here as indirect peace negotiations were resumed yesterday in New York under the auspices of United Nations envoy Gunnar V. Jarring. The background paper reviewed the course of the Jarring mission from its inception in Dec. 1967 until last summer when Israel, Egypt and Jordan accepted the United States’ Middle East peace initiative establishing a cease-fire which created the climate for the Jarring talks to begin. The paper said that Israel had serious reservations over the intentions of Egypt and its Soviet backers to establish a genuine peace but agreed to the Jarring talks in the hope that they “would at least serve as an avenue to a more genuine direct negotiation out of which a peace settlement might emerge.”

The paper stated, “It may be said in retrospect that no other party did as much and risked as much in order to assure the start of the Jarring talks as did Israel in August, 1970.” It noted that Israel made unilateral concessions by agreeing to the procedure of indirect negotiations, by agreeing to a limited cease-fire, and accepting New York as the site of the talks and by not making an issue of the Arab refusal to delegate their foreign ministers to the talks as Jarring had requested. Noting that the stand-still aspects of the Aug. 7 cease-fire was violated by Egypt from the start and still is not rectified, the paper declared: “That Israel has agreed now to make a third attempt to talk peace with its neighbors through Jarring, despite all that has occurred, is a reflection of its continuing resolve to leave no stone unturned in its quest to test to the end the prospects of peace.” The paper concluded by stating that “The Arab-Israel conflict can be ended only by contractual binding peace agreements. Until this is achieved and defensible borders agreed upon, Israel will maintain the cease-fire lines on all fronts without withdrawal.”