Chief U.N. observer in Palestine Brig. Gen. William Riley conferred all day today on problems concerning the Palestine truce with Israeli Army Chief of Staff Yigal Yadin and Reuven Shiloah, official of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. The meeting took place in the Foreign Ministry offices. No details of the conference were revealed.
Meanwhile, the Israeli Government has notified Gen. Riley that it will permit one supply convoy with a non-military cargo to cross its lines into the encircled Faluja pocket in the Negev.
The government made it clear to Gen. Riley that the passage of this convoy will not serve as a precedent and that consent to let the supplies through at this time is based on the hope that armistice negotiations with the Egyptians will thus be speeded up. Otherwise, it was emphasized, the Israeli attitude toward the Egyptian brigade trapped at Faluja will be shaped by the Egyptians’ attitude toward the negotiations.
U.N. PARTITION DECISION ENFORCED SOLELY BY JEWISH ARMY, BEN GURION SAYS
Israel’s forces alone are responsible for the enforcement of the United Nations partition decision of last year, Premier David Ben Gurion stressed in an address here last night at an affair arranged by members of the Hebrew press to mark the first anniversary of the U.N. decision.
Ben Gurion pointed out that although it might have been expected that the United Nations itself would enforce its decision, this did not happen. “Neither American, Russian nor other soldiers enforced partition, but our own Jewish army,” he added.
Tomorrow may bring peace, he stated, but the danger will remain for years to come. “Not always will 700,000 be able to withstand 30,000,000,” he warned, “there-fare large immigration is needed” in order to “populate Galilee and the Negev.” Pointing out that the Jews established 300 settlements in the last 70 years, he insisted that “we shall not wait another 70 years for another 300 settlements.”
An official spokesman today declared that “the version published abroad of the State Council’s secret session (on the Negev withdrawal and armistice negotiations) was completely unauthorized.”
U.N. headquarters here, in a decision just published of the arrest of two U.N. observers by Israeli military police near Iraq Suweidan, in the Negev, November 9, calls the Israeli action a “flagrant truce violation.”
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