Israel Will Not Participate in Security Council Discussion on Report Dealing with Palestinians

Chaim Herzog, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, said today that Israel will not participate in the meeting of the Security Council which opened this afternoon to discuss the report of the “Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.” In a statement issued here prior to the meeting, Herzog stated: “Israel does not recognize this committee, which merely echoes the policy of the PLO, an organization committed to the destruction of Israel, and will not cooperate with it in any way, and will therefore not participate in the meeting of the Security Council today.”

The report of the committee and its recommendations were endorsed by the General Assembly last year. The recommendations set a time-table for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories and called for the return of the Palestinians to their homes and the establishment of a Palestinian entity.

In his statement today, Herzog said that “The report’s recommendations are nothing but a prescription for the dismemberment of the State of Israel. . . . These recommendations. . . are simply a re-casting of the PLO’s statement before the committee.” Pointing out that 19 of the 23 members of the committee have no diplomatic relations with Israel, the Israeli envoy declared:

“The recommendations conflict with Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, and are designed to by-pass these resolutions which form the only agreed basis for the solution of the Arab-Israel conflict in all its aspects, including the question of the Palestinian Arabs. In fact, nowhere in the entire report, including the recommendations, are Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 mentioned even in passing.”