Israeli officials said today that any hope for international action to combat the wave of hijackings and international terrorism was effectively buried by the resolution adopted Monday by the United Nations General Assembly’s Legal Committee. The resolution called for a 40-nation study group to investigate the root causes of terrorism and report back within a year.
Israeli officials said that this resolution, following on the heels of another Arab-inspired resolution adopted by the Assembly last week, has “put a sad end” to prospects that the UN would contribute anything to the advancement of peace in the Middle East.
Israelis said the large majority by which the resolution in the Legal Committee was passed was explainable in part by the efforts of the Arab states and their supporters and in part by the fear of many African states that effective action against terrorism might be turned against various legitimate national liberation movements.
SURRENDER TO TERRORISTS PROTECTORS
Speaking today in the Knesset, Minister-Without-Portfolio Israel Galili said that the terrorism resolution indicated “the moral and political bankruptcy of the United Nations,” was “a mockery of the hopes of so many people in the UN–at least in the realm of protecting human life,” and represented “an avoidance of responsibility…a surrender to political forces which protect the terror groups.”
Galili also assailed the Assembly’s recent pro-Arab resolution on the Middle East as “damaging to peace” and pledged that Israeli policy would not be influenced by the UN “horse trading” but would continue to be based on “peace, action and security.” He reiterated Israel’s belief that an interim agreement to reopen the Suez Canal was the best means toward an overall peace.
Speaking in place of Foreign Minister Abba Eban, who did not return to Israel until later in the day, Galili turned back a charge by MK Haim Landau of Gahal’s Herut branch that Eban had threatened Israeli dissociation from Security Council Resolution 242 should the General Assembly upset its balanced language.
It would have been better, Landau said, for Eban to have said nothing than to have made threats and then withdrawn from them. Galili replied that Eban’s threat applied only to a reinterpretation of Resolution 242, which he said was not now the case although last week’s measure endorsed an advance Israeli commitment to total withdrawal and contained “a hint of sanctions.” The Knesset debate was then moved to the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee.
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.
