Israeli Ambassador Yosef Tekoah reaffirmed to the General Assembly today that “Israel does not seek to freeze the existing situation or to perpetuate the cease-fire lines but to replace them in peace with secure and agreed boundaries to be established through negotiation with each of its Arab neighbors.” He urged “a new approach” to the Middle East deadlock, “based on consultation and agreement, on dialogue and common interest,” and said that as long as Egypt rejects “a dialogue” Israel “can have no faith in Egyptian claims that its goal is peace with Israel.”
Tekoah spoke immediately after Egypt’s Foreign Minister Dr. Mohamed H. el-Zayyat opened the Assembly’s Middle East debate this morning. The Egyptian diplomat asserted that Israeli “aggression” and “psychological terrorism” must be stopped by the United Nations–by expulsion from the world organization if necessary. He said the UN had the authority and the “special responsibility” to do this. (See separate story.)
Tekoah asked the Assembly to reject “new elements of contention and friction which could only reinforce the present stalemate.” The term “new elements” has been used by Israel to mean, primarily, changes in the delicate balance of Security Council Resolution 242 of Nov. 22, 1967. “Controversial, one-sided resolutions” only “multiply differences and heighten tension,” Tekoah declared, and have “little in common with the merits of the issues, with the realities of the situation, or with Israel’s right and determination to continue to defend its legitimate interests.”
The Arab governments “appear to have always looked upon debates in United Nations organs as a substitute for and an escape from the need for negotiation,” Tekoah said, calling this trend “ominous.” He noted that Zionism “has been calumnied and abused” by Arab governments that are “backing terrorist organizations whose avowed objective is to eliminate Israel and uproot its people.”
MAIN OBSTACLES TO PEACE OUTLINED
The “primary issue,” Tekoah contended, is that “the Arab governments are still after our blood, our life,” and “The main obstacle to peace is still the Arab governments’ fundamental attitude towards Israel, their apparent longing for Israel’s downfall, their resort to and identification with means, even such as savage terrorism, that envisage Israel’s ultimate destruction and the indiscriminate slaughter of its people.” There is, the envoy asserted, “no justification for Arab governments to begrudge the Jewish people the very rights of self-determination and liberty in the land of its fathers that the Arab nation has attained in 18 sovereign Arab States, including the Palestinian State of Jordan.”
It is “obvious,” Tekoah said, “that pressure and imposition are hardly the way to reach a settlement with Israel,” since “a people subjected to war, bloodshed, terrorist outrages for 25 years has seen the worst and cannot be swayed by duress.” The envoy added: “The exertion of outside pressure is the road to collision, not agreement. The Egyptian government must choose between the two. It cannot have both at the same time.”
PEACE WITHOUT ANY PRECONDITIONS
Israel, Tekoah said, “is ready to negotiate peace without any preconditions,” “is prepared to engage in proximity talks on an agreement to reopen the Suez Canal” and has no “ultimative maps delineating the peace boundaries.” This attitude, he said, “offers the possibility of an honorable and meaningful negotiation between Israel and Egypt.”
The “bellicose statements of Arab governments and their representatives”–among whom Tekoah listed the Black September and El Fatah terrorist groups–“do not reflect (the) views or (the) aspirations” of “the Palestinian Arabs,” the ambassador said. Noting a “historic transformation in relations between Arabs and Israelis in the Israel-administered areas that has been the most significant development in the last few years,” Tekoah added: “This change which has taken place…is the most hopeful sign that peaceful coexistence in the region is possible. It must be guarded and nurtured as one of the foundations of peace.”
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.
