An impassioned plea that the United Nations attack the basic and fundamental problems of peace-making in the Middle East now, was made in the General Assembly here today by Mrs. Golda Meir, Foreign Minister of Israel.
Addressing the Assembly in the general debate, during which representatives state the major foreign policy aims of their governments, Mrs. Meir told the UN that Israel is still waiting for a “clear, simple, binding answer” to questions she addressed to Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold on October 30 as to whether Egypt considers itself in a state of war with Israel.
Pointing out that as recently as last Sunday the Cairo radio boasted that fedayeen commandoes have decided to launch “a fierce campaign within Israel during the coming winter season,” Mrs. Meir asked the Assembly: “Can the United Nations make itself responsible for the restoration once again on our southern borders of murder and sabotage units pursuing a one-sided belligerency?”
Mrs. Meir told the Assembly that the blockade of the Gulf of Akaba, through which Egypt has been halting shipping bound for the Israeli port of Elath had been ended by Israel’s Sinai campaign. She said: “The battery of guns installed a few years-ago by the Egyptian Government on the desolate and empty shore of the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula for the sole, illegal purpose of preventing the passage into the Gulf of Israel of shipping no longer exists. Would it not be grotesque for an international body to permit the creation anew of the conditions which made that blockade possible, or to permit Egypt to perpetuate unhindered its parallel blockade in Suez. We cannot believe that is the case. To do so would constitute a distortion of the very meaning and essence of the Charter.”
REMINDS SOVIET UNION OF ITS FORMER PRAISE FOR ISRAEL
Once during her 45-minute address, Mrs. Meir mentioned openly the Soviet Union. She pointed out that in 1948, when the Security Council adopted a resolution favoring the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine, the Soviet representative to the UN praised Israel’s efforts to live peacefully with its neighbors. Mrs. Meir continued: “The truth is that since 1948 nothing has changed in Israel’s desires and intentions.”
Charging that Egypt and the other Arab states have been using the armistice agreements as “one way streets,” insisting that Israel must keep the peace while the Arab nations are entitled to the privileges of war through attacks of both regular troops and commandoes, Mrs. Meir said: “I say again neither peace nor war can be unilateral. A boundary must be respected by two sides. It cannot be open to fedayeen and closed to Jewish soldiers.”
Israel’s requirements, the Foreign Minister told the Assembly, are simple. “What does Israel want?” she asked. “We wish to be secure against threats to our territorial integrity and national independence. We wish to be left alone to pursue the work of developing our country and the building of a new society founded on social justice and individual liberty. We wish to cooperate with our neighbors for the common good of all the people of our region.”
CHALLENGES ASSEMBLY TO “RAISE VOICE” FOR BASIC PEACE SETTLEMENT
Mrs. Meir challenged the Assembly to speak out in behalf of a basic peace settlement “with the same vigor and insistence” with which it had dealt with the recent events. “Can this Assembly,” she asked, “leave this subject without raising its voice, with all the authority it carries, in a call to all the governments of the region immediately to enter into direct negotiations for the purpose of arriving at a peace settlement? We, the people of Israel, believe not only in the necessity but also in the possibility of peace.”
The Israel statesman reminded the Assembly of the blockades, boycotts, bombings and fedayeen attacks to which Israel has been subjected without halt since 1948. Then she told the delegates of 79 nations:
“It would be idle to pretend that the present situation can be discussed without regard to this background, or that the causes that precipitated Israel’s recent security action can be ignored. If this Assembly is genuinely determined to restore peace to the Middle East, it must first determine the source from which these aggressive policies derive. It will serve little purpose to isolate one link in the chain of circumstances, to thrust the weight of resolutions upon one incident without considering the total effects.
“Unless the United Nations is prepared to use its influence to prevail upon the countries of the Middle East to negotiate a fundamental solution, the Middle Eastern cauldron will continue to see the and the region will be a powder keg for others anxious to exploit its inflammable possibilities. Not only the well-being of Israel but perhaps the peace of mankind demand that the question of responsibility for unrest in this part of the world be squarely faced and the causes of tension removed,” the Israel Minister stated.
Mrs. Meir also asked that an appeal be renewed to Egypt “to desist from the shameful and disastrous policy-recently initiated of wholesale persecution of Egypt’s Jewish population.
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