The United Nations Emergency Force “has lost all effectiveness along the border” between the Gaza Strip and Israel, according to Joseph Tekoah, head of the armistice affairs division of the Israel Foreign Ministry.
In one of the sharpest, direct attacks yet voiced by a high Israeli official, Mr. Tekoah today warned that “if there is no change very soon in the policy of UNEF, its subservience to Nasser will make it a complete instrument of the Egyptian dictator.” In some respects, said Mr. Tekoah, UNEF seems to be now “entirely under the boot” of Nasser.
Mr. Tekoah disclosed that there had been definite agreements on certain procedures between Israel and Maj. Gen. E. L. M. Burns, commander of UNEF, and declared that some of those agreements have been shunted aside under Nasser’s influence.
The UNEF command, said Mr. Tekoah, would not permit UNEF personnel on leave to visit Israel for their Easter holiday, or even to use Israel as a transit route for visiting Christian holy places in Jordan. UNEF, said Mr. Tekoah, had agreed to return to Israel persons who had crossed the border inadvertently. The armistice chief cited the case of one Israeli, who had escaped from a mental institution and had wandered across the Gaza border. This man has not yet been returned by UNEF, as requested.
Mr. Tekoah took issue with a report made to United Nations headquarters last week by Gen. Burns in which the latter stated that he had called the attention of the Cairo Government to two illegal crossings of the Israeli border. In fact, said Mr. Tekoah, there had been 40 such illegal crossings, not merely two. The armistice chief also charged UNEF with bowing to the will of Egypt’s dictator by accepting the latter’s view about a barbed-wire fence along the Gaza-Israel border.
UNEF realizes, the Israeli official declared, that such a fence should be built along the entire border, while Israel would like to see erected a double fence, mined in the center. However, said Mr. Tekoab, Nasser objects to such a fence, and now UNEF has accepted Nasser’s thesis that the fence should shield only part of the border, leaving the rest exposed to infiltration.
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