Israel Bids Jordan to Direct Talks at United Nations Headquarters

Israel urged the United Nations Security Council today to press for a peace settlement in Palestine and officially proposed an immediate meeting of Israel and Jordan political and military authorities at U.N. headquarters here to iron out armistice enforcement problems, particularly prevention of border incidents and maintenance of border security.

The Israeli proposals came as Abba S. Eban, head of the Israel delegation, addressed the Security Council this afternoon when it resumed consideration of the Palestine security situation. In a major statement of policy, the Israeli spokesman warned that “if this Council wants security, it must enunciate the need for peace.”

He announced that he had been empowered by the Israel Government, “with the assistance of senior political and military advisors,” to represent Israel in direct talks with Jordan representatives at the UN headquarters here.

“The presence of Jordan representatives at UN headquarters, as well as the presence of the Chief of Staff of the U.N. truce supervision organization would suggest the U.N. headquarters an appropriate venue for these talks,” Ambassador Eban declared. “It may be that we could bring agreed conclusion to the Security Council for preventing violent incidents at the border.”

EBAN EXPRESSES REGRET OVER KIBYA INCIDENT

Referring to the Kibya incident, Mr. Eban said that “the mood and the background” of the Kibya incident can only be understood in the light of the atmosphere in which Israel’s “hard struggle for security and peace” is conducted. The Israel Government, he said, “regards the loss of innocent life at Kibya with profound and unreserved regret.”

This, he said, “was a most unfortunate explosion of pent up feeling and tragic breakdown of restraint after the provocation of brutal attacks such as the cold-blooded murder of a mother and her children in their sleep.” He declared the circumstances of the incident were precisely as outlined in Premier David Ben Gurion’s statement of October 19. He pledged “the cooperation of my government…for any purposeful attempt to eliminate the conditions in which bloodshed can occur and to put the whole sorry sequence of violence behind us.”

Mr. Eban recounted that between May, 1950 and August, 1953, 421 Israelis had been killed and wounded on the Jordan frontier, that there were 128 cases of sabotage or mining, 866 clashes with armed marauders in Israel territory, 122 armed robberies. and 3, 263 thefts and burglaries. He pointedly noted that Britain, which is bound by a military alliance with Jordan, could have been “a very active factor in preventing the original invasion of Israel in 1948.”

OFFERS PROGRAM FOR DEALING WITH COMPLAINT

Mr. Eban presented a six-point program for dealing with the complaint now before the Council:

1. The tension should be diagnosed as a threat to security arising from the absence of peaceful relations between Israel and the Arab States. To this primary cause the Security Council should ascribe the whole sequence of violence which has come to its notice; and it should remind the parties of their duty, under the charter, to harmonize their efforts for the establishment of peace.

2. Attention should be drawn to the fact that the main objective of the armistice agreements, the transition to permanent peace, has not been complied with and that the fulfillment of this armistice provision has a clear priority and urgency over all subsidiary provisions.

3. Attention should be drawn to the fact that the Security Council’s own past resolutions on peace and security, especially its resolution against blockades and belligerency adopted Sept. 1, 1951, have not been implemented. The Council should also refer to the absence of any effort to implement Article Eight of the Israel-Jordan armistice agreements, notwithstanding the text of that agreement itself, and of the Security Council injunction of Nov. 17, 1950.

4. The Security Council should take note of the only conclusion agreed to by Israel and by the Arab authorities and indicated by Gen. Bennike’s report, namely that the most specific source of current tension is infiltration or marauding into Israel territory especially from Jordan.

In expressing its deep concern at all acts of violence, the Security Council would surely be entitled to express special concern over the movement of infiltration and it should urge special attention to Article Four of the armistice pact which requires restraint of illegal border crossings.

5. The Chief of Staff and the chairman of the Mixed Armistice Commission should be asked to pursue their high objectives for international peace in assisting the operation of the armistice agreements but the Council should also request the UN representatives in the area to devote their special attention to those provisions of the armistice agreement and Council resolutions which have not yet been implemented, especially those provisions for a transition to permanent peace.

6. Signatories of each armistice agreement should be called upon to enter into direct negotiations with a view to replacement of the armistice agreements by final peace settlements.

ASKS COUNCIL TO ISSUE PEACE CALL

Mr. Eban told the Council that “while it would be wrong to promise that a call for peace by the Security Council would immediately improve the situation, the absence of such a call would assuredly have the gravest repercussions.” This, he said, would indicate that the Council no longer wished to see the main purposes of the armistice agreements, “namely, an urgent transition to permanent peace settlements,” fulfilled. “There are but two alternatives,” the Israeli representative said.

Mr. Eban charged that the tensions on Israel’s frontier were due to “an unexampled policy of political, economic and military siege,” conducted by the Arab states. “The attacks on Israel’s life, property and communications under cover of armistice agreements are purposeful and deliberate,” he said. “They lead inevitably to counteractions, some of which, such as the Kibya incident, cause a loss of innocent life which Israel deeply regrets and unreservedly deplores.

“The continuation of incursions is bound to cause constant deterioration of frontier security since Israel cannot suffer the constant murder of its citizens,” he insisted. “The solution lies in the first place in the conclusion of peace agreements, which would eliminate these tensions at their source.”

Mr. Eban charged that the armistice agreements “have existed too long and have lost their effectiveness.” He said that these agreements had been “inoperative for four years in two further vital respects”–access to Mt. Scopus and continual blockade practices at the Suez Canal.

Mr. Eban declared that the main purpose of the armistice agreements, that of being a “swift transition to permanent peace,” was unilaterally repudiated by the Arab signatories. “This is the only area of the world,” Mr. Eban said, in which governments refuse as a matter of principle to seek agreements with a neighboring state.”

Dr. Charles Malik, of the Lebanon, who insisted on being heard immediately after Mr. Eban, accused him of attempting to “drown the recent aggression by Israel at Kibya in a generalized debate on all sorts of aspects of the Palestine question.”

Dr. Malik indicated that the Arabs would request the Security Council to “pronounce a condemnation” of Israel and to ask Israel: to take all necessary measures “to bring to justice the perpetrators” of the Kibya raid; to ensure adequate compensation for loss of life and damage to property caused during the raid: to refrain “from such acts of aggression” in the future, and to make a general request that no military or economic assistance be given Israel without proper guarantees that Israel will refrain from such acts as the raid.