The Arab and Israeli spokesmen at the United Nations presented their points of view on the Syrian complaint against Israel’s hydroelectric project at Bnot Yaacov in a verbal duel before the Security Council this afternoon as the Council resumed consideration of the question.
Ambassador Abba Eban of Israel urged the Council to dismiss the Syrian complaint and thus endorse the principle of social and economic progress underlying the Israeli works. Mr. Eban stressed that the project “touches the very essence of Israel’s political freedom and economic independence.” He insisted that the works prejudiced no interests–international, national, regional or private–and that to no state other than Israel is the matter of the “same vital interest or concern.”
Dr. Charles Malik of The Lebanon, sole Arab representative on the Council, demanded that the Council not permit Israel to resume its work in the demilitarized zone between Israel and Syria until it reaches an agreement with the Arab state. He insisted that by working in the demilitarized zone Israel violated the Israel-Syrian armistice pact.
The Lebanese delegate took the position that the ultimate territorial status of the demilitarized zone had not yet been decided. The Israeli project establishes a defacto situation which prejudges the issue in favor of one of the two parties concerned, he maintained.
EBAN DENIES SYRIAN RIGHT TO DEMILITARIZED ZONE
On this very point, Mr. Eban pointed out that none of the territory in the demilitarized zone is Syrian and that the armistice agreement required the withdrawal of Syrian forces to the established frontiers of Syria. “Indeed, it was for the precise and exclusive purpose of securing Syria’s unqualified exclusion from any area west of the frontier that the demilitarized zone was established,”the Israeli representative emphasized.
He also denied that the Jordan was an international river in the region in dispute, despite Syria’s “lame conclusion that the River Jordan is not very far from the territory of Syria.” In his “final summary” of Israel’s case, Mr. Eban declared:
“Here are water sources which do not flow though Syria at any single point; which are unavailable for Syrian use by every consideration of geography, history, topography and law; but which do flow through Israel and represent Israel’s sole source of natural power.
“The United Nations–the symbol and instrument of international cooperation–is requested by Syria to withhold these water sources from Israel’s peaceful economic development, merely because they pass for a small part of their course in a demilitarized zone, well outside Syria’s territory, notwithstanding the fact that the armistice agreement contains not a single word which has been or can be quoted to justify such an arbitrary impediment. All this happens three years after the Security Council, in a case of similar effect in the same area, rejected the alleged right of Syrian veto, and confirmed its policy of facilitating economic development projects depending upon work in the demilitarized zone.”
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