The Arab states, faced with a United Nations call for direct peace negotiations with Israel, moved today to cancel the whole Palestine debate by withdrawing the item which they had originally submitted to the agenda of the seventh General Assembly. The U. N. Special Political Committee adjourned today’s session, including a scheduled vote on the eighth power appeal for direct talks, until tomorrow to give the Arab states an opportunity to present a formal motion to wipe the Palestine debate off the record.
Dr. Fadil al Jamali of Iraq, after attacking the revised eight power resolution, told the committee that it would be better to have no resolution at all than this resolution. The Iraqi delegate, in answer to a question by the Australian delegate, said he wanted to withdraw the Arab item from the agenda. The chairman said there must be a motion to this effect and that such a motion must be carried by a majority. If carried, the motion would recommend to the Assembly that the Arab item be dropped from the agenda.
Ambassador Abba Eban of Israel fought the move. He said that it would be a “fantastic event” in international life if a resolution had to be satisfactory to the Iraqi representative or else must be withdrawn.
The “firm conviction” of the Government of Israel, he declared, was that “this item, once having been accepted by the United Nations and the views of the majority having been crystallized in a mild resolution, calling for direct negotiations,” it would be regarded throughout the Middle East as bad for the prestige of the United Nations if this committee should now throw it out. Mr. Eban said that if no resolution had been adopted except one satisfactory to the Arabs there would not have been an armistice in Palestine at all.
However, Mr. Eban did not receive much support. The Mexican delegate said that he was convinced that in order to have a resolution with any chance of success it must be acceptable to both sides — otherwise it would be an “evil resolution.” Finn Moe of Norway, who introduced and revised the eight power proposal, declared that he would have to discuss the situation with the other sponsors.
RESPONSE TO ISRAEL PEACE PLAN “GRATIFYING,” EBAN SAYS
In reply to the recurrent Arab allegations that Israel would not accept U. N. resolutions. Mr. Eban quoted the Egyptian delegate as saying that Egypt had the right not to comply with U. N. resolutions. He pointed out that Egypt had refused to abide by a Security Council resolution forbidding a blockade of Israel-bound shipping in the Suez Canal.
In the course of his statement to the committee, Mr. Eban pointed out that there had been a “gratifying response” to the Israeli peace plan which he outlined to the committee last week. The plan had been published widely in the Arabic press, especially in Jordan and Egypt, without criticism, he underlined. He also stressed that on the problem of territory, refugees and a Jerusalem settlement the Israel plan “conforms with the objectives of the United Nations.
Before he made the request that the Arab item be stricken from the agenda, Mr. Jamali said that the eight power resolution was ‘totally unacceptable” to the Arab states and that it “leaves in the air the main rights remaining to the Arab of Palestine.” He asserted that the resolution “increases the suspicion of the Arabs.”
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