Britain is particularly interested in Israel-Jordan border tension because Britain has a treaty of alliance with Jordan and because Britain is a party to the Tripartite Declaration of 1950 guaranteeing the borders of the Middle East states, Anthony Eden, British Foreign Secretary, today told Commons.
Mr. Eden, who appealed to the whole House to join with the government in “deploring” the events at Kibya on October 14-15m warned Israel that “outrages” of this sort can only “obstruct any chance of peace which Israel assures us she is anxious to obtain.” He admitted that the Kibya incident must be viewed against the background of constant infiltration across the border and said that the only hope for ending the infiltration situation was to solve the refugee problem.
The Secretary expressed the hope that the United Nations truce supervision organization in Palestine would be strengthened “because if the policy of reprisal is to be allowed to continue we shall never get peace negotiations at all.” He asserted that Jordan had not connived at assisting infiltration but, on the contrary, had energetically sought to halt it.
Mr. Eden claimed some Arabs crossed the border for “quite innocent purposes” while others took part in armed robberies and “most of them had a background of bitterness and destitution.”
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