Premier Menachem Begin today bitterly denounced last week’s United Nations Security Council resolution which censured Israel for its Jerusalem law and urged nations with embassies in that city to remove them. The resolution was passed by a vote of 14-0 with the United States abstaining. Begin blamed the passage of the resolution directly on the U.S.
He told reporters after the Cabinet meeting that “Israel rejects and condemns the resolution, a decision mode possible by the abstention of the representative of the United States,” a reference to Secretary of State Edmund Muskie who interrupted his vacation in Maine to attend the Council session where he criticized the resolution and the Jerusalem law and abstained.
CHARGES SURRENDER TO OIL BLACKMAIL
Begin described the resolution and the U.S. abstention as “surrender to blackmail by the oil monsters.” He also said that Israel regrets “that friendly nations have decided to transfer their embassies from Jerusalem. We regret the amazing vote which come in the wake of the speech of the Secretary of State. The vote made possible the passing of the resolution calling on a number of countries to move their embassies from Jerusalem while there are clear pressures in the U.S. to transfer the American embassy to Jerusalem.” Following the passage of the Jerusalem law last month, Venezuela, Uruguay, Ecuador and Chile have announced they will move their embassies to Tel Aviv.
The Premier reaffirmed that “the ancient nation of Israel does not need the recognition of the Security Council, or the endorsement of its members, that Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish State. Jerusalem will continue to be, as it has been for 3000 years, the capital of Israel, one city, indivisible, the center of the life of the Jewish people.”
Cabinet sources said that Begin had reported at today’s session on a tough discussion between himself and U.S. Ambassador Samuel Lewis last Friday during which the Premier compared the current appeasement of the Arabs to the European appeasement of the Nazis in 1939. Begin reportedly emphasized at the Cabinet meeting that the abstention decision had been taken by Carter personally.
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