Behind-the-scenes Talks on Jordan-israel Issue Intensified at U.N.

Behind-the-scenes negotiations on the text of a resolution to be adopted by the United Nations Security Council on Jordan’s complaint against Israel’s raid on November 13 continued today. To bring these negotiations to an acceptable conclusion, the Security Council postponed its session today until tomorrow afternoon.

Some members of the Security Council are insisting on a sharply-worded resolution against Israel, while others suggest that the resolution should be “balanced” to take into account the causes that provoked Israel to make its raid into Jordanian territory from where Arab saboteurs infiltrate into Israel.

Meanwhile major American Jewish organizations continued today to voice demands that the Security Council take into consideration the Arab terrorist activities against Israel instead of adopting a one-sided condemnation of the Israeli reprisal raid. The organizations included the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, which represents 20 national Jewish agencies and two rabbinical organizations — the Rabbinical Council of America and the Rabbinical Alliance of America.

JEWISH GROUPS WARN SECURITY COUNCIL AGAINST ONE-SIDED RESOLUTION

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations warned today that any “one-sided condemnation” of Israel by the U.N. Security Council would “encourage the Arab aggressors to continue their campaign of terror” in the Middle East. At a news conference, Dr. Joachim Prinz, of Newark, chairman of the Presidents’ Conference, called today for “direct negotiations among the parties that alone can bring about a permanent peace” between Israel and the Arab states.

“The refusal of the United Nations to act on Israel’s appeal for an end to ever mounting terrorist incursions from Arab lands and the failure of the Security Council to deter Arab aggression,” Dr. Prinz said, “have served to encourage more sabotage, more terror, more murder. It is against this background that Israel’s expedition into Jordan must be seen — an expedition whose purpose was neither retaliation nor reprisal but rather a warning that Jordan must assume responsibility, as must any sovereign state, for the terrorists that have found shelter on her soil and for the attacks launched from her territory.”

In his statement, Dr. Prinz voiced “deep concern at the prospect that the Security Council may adopt a statement on the Middle East that condemns the victim of aggression rather than the perpetrator of it; that rewards provocation and punishes restraint; and that fails to confront the root cause of Arab-Israel tension.” He said: “There can be no double standard in the United Nations. Only when the international community examines the situation in its true and total perspective; only when the Security Council recognizes who is the aggressor and who the victim of aggression, can peace and justice return to the troubled Middle East.”