Israel told the Security Council today that “there was no bloodshed in Israel or in the territories administered by Israel because the government of Israel has been and is determined not to allow a second Lebanon to develop in the areas under Israeli control.”
Addressing the second meeting of the Security Council’s debate on the situation in the occupied territories and the “explosive situation in Hebron,” Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Chaim Herzog, warned that the current debate can serve only Arab extremists for the purpose of “fomenting hatred between Arabs and Jews.”
Noting that Egypt requested the meeting more than two weeks ago and that she is using the Council as “an instrument to solve the internal problems” of the Arab countries, Herzog said that life returned to normal in Hebron after the Yom Kippur desecration incidents “and Jews and Moslems pray today side by side peacefully in the Tomb of the Patriarchs.”
Asking why Egypt and the Security Council did not take any action over the desecration of holy places in Lebanon in the last one-and-a-half years, the Israeli envoy declared: “Am I to understand that if a mosque is allegedly desecrated in Hebron one convenes the Security Council, but if hundreds of churches and mosques are burned and razed to the ground and desecrated in Lebanon the Security Council remains silent?”
NOTES IRONY OF CRITICISM
Referring to accusations by Jordan in the first session of the Council that seven Palestinians were killed in “cold blood” by an Israeli civilian in Halhul, a village near Hebron, Herzog said that no one was killed during the events in Hebron and that the representative of Jordan simply lied. Only one person was injured and the matter is being investigated by police, Herzog said.
Herzog noted that it is “ironical” that Israel is criticized on the way she handles the holy places, because, he said, all during the period that they were under Moslem jurisdiction Jews were not allowed access to them, while today every person, regardless of his religion, is allowed to worship there.
Declaring that debates like the current one are “barren and useless,” Herzog called on the Arabs to start the “negotiating process” with Israel “As long as you refuse to talk to us it means that you don’t recognize our right to exist,” Herzog said.
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