Mrs. Golda Meir, Israel’s Foreign Minister, declared in Parliament today that Israel was continuing its efforts to obtain the release of Israelis still held in Syria as prisoners. She spoke in reply to a Herut-Liberal Party faction motion for debate charging the Government with inadequate action in the problem.
Yaacov Meridor of Herut asserted in the debate that there were still at least four Israelis in Syrian prisons. Mrs. Moir said that the United Nations, the International Red Cross and other agencies had been approached in the effort to obtain release of the Israelis but that so far the efforts had been fruitless. She denounced Syria’s “cruel and inhuman behavior” in the matter.
Mr. Meridor proposed that a delegation of Israelis who were freed by the Syrians last year in an exchange of prisoners should go to the United Nations to meet with Secretary General U Thant on the problem. Most of the 11 prisoners who returned to Israel under the exchange agreement, arranged through the United Nations, were half-crazed from tortures suffered in the Syrian prisons. Syria claimed at the time there were no remaining Israelis in Syrian prisons.
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