Yehuda Blum, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, warned today that the “rejectionists’ Eastern Front” — combining the armed forces of Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia — is “the most ominous threat to peace in the Middle East.”
Addressing the General Assembly’s debate on the Situation in the Mideast, which opened here yesterday, Blum stated: “The vast quantities of the latest and most sophisticated weapons in the possession of these states will undoubtedly be augmented in time of war from the enormous arsenals available to them among the remaining rejectionist Arab states.”
The Arab states. “have today 500,000 more men under arms than has NATO and three times the artillery of the combined NATO forces, ” Blum said, adding, “They also have 3000 more tanks and several hundred more combat aircraft than NATO.”
According to Blum, the Eastern Front alone is contently equivalent to NATO in manpower and tanks and already has twice as much artillery. The Israeli envoy also claimed that “in terms of airpower, the Arab states, by 1980, will equal the combined Warsaw Pact forces and will be double that of NATO or three times that of the People’s Republic of China. In terms of ground forces the Arab states have today almost as many tanks as the United States of America and more artillery than it.”
Blum charged that the massive build-up of arms on the Eastern Front “has been accompanied by a diplomatic offensive here at the United Nations to secure Judaea and Samaria as a forward base from which the rejectionist states and the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) might be able to realize their dream, a war of annihilation against Israel. “Israel, Blum. said, is aware of the threats to its security and therefore will not risk its own existence by agreeing to the establishment of a PLO state.
He said that while the Arab states are engaged in verbal polemics at the UN, Israel and Egypt are negotiating the principle of autonomy for the Palestinians In the West Bank and Gaza: “We have every confidence that these negotiations will be concluded successfully in accordance with the timetable laid down in the Camp David framework, ” Blum declared.
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