Yehuda Blum, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, claimed today that the Arabs of Palestine “achieved their statehood as early as 1946, on 80 percent of mandated Palestine, ” with the establishment of ” the kingdom of Transjordan. In this way, they preceded by two years the establishment of an independent Jewish State in Palestine,” the Israeli envoy declared.
Addressing the General Assembly debate on the Question of Palestine which opened here yesterday Blum asserted that while the state of the Palestinians was established on 80 percent of the territory of Palestine “the Palestinian Jews founded their State (Israel) on less, than 20 percent of the area of the former (British) Mandate.”
Furthermore, Blum declared, “This development was also accompanied by a de facto exchange of populations. A large number of Arabs, who had been resident in the part of Palestine that became Israel, left their homes and settled in the neighboring Arab states (predominantly in the Palestinian Arab state of Jordan). An even greater number of Jews, who had been resident in the Arab states, left their countries of origin and made their way almost without exception to Israel — the Palestinian Jewish State.”
Noting that the “core” of the Mideast conflict is the refusal of the Arabs to accept the State of Israel and not the Palestinian question, Blum said, however, that the only solution to the question of the Palestinian Arabs is in the autonomy plan of the Camp David framework.
AUTONOMY PLAN OFFERS OPPORTUNITIES
“This framework invites the Palestinian Arab residents of Judaea, Samaria and the Gaza district to play an active role in shaping their future by calling on them to participate in all aspects of the negotiations,” Blum said, adding that never in their history had the Palestinian Arabs been offered better opportunities to govern themselves than those offered by the autonomy plan.
Blum said that despite the efforts of the Arab “rejectionist front,” led by the Palestine Liberation Organization, “the current negotiations (on autonomy) will continue and we are confident that they will reach a successful conclusion, thus carrying us another step further towards the achievement of an overall peace in the entire region.”
The Palestine debate continued to be obscured today by the ongoing crisis in Iran and the United Nations efforts to convene a Security Council meeting to deal with the tense situation as a result of the 49 hostages being held in the American Embassy in Teheran. Attention of the press and diplomats here was completely focused on the Iranian crisis and observers here noted that the PLO and its supporters, which in previous years used the debate to make inroads in American and international public opinion, cannot expect the same results this time.
Meanwhile, in a report to the Security Council, Secretary General Kurt Waldheim today recommended a further six-month extension of the mandate of the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UND OF) on the Golan Heights. The current mandate expires at the end of this month. He said he considered the continued presence of UNDOF to be essential.
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