Recent weeks have seen a considerable change in Israel’s diplomatic position and world opinion is focussed on policies of Arab hostility rather than upon Israel’s reaction to that hostility, Abba Eban, Israel’s chief delegate to the United Nations, today declared here. Mr. Eban spoke at a luncheon given in his honor by the Zionist labor movement in conjunction with the Greater New York Committee for State of Israel Bonds.
In a review of the Israel situation vis-a-vis the Arab states, Mr. Eban declared that “wherever we look throughout our region we see our neighbors retreating from their agreements and obligations towards concepts of belligerency and war.” In this connection he cited the Egyptian extension of blockade against Israel to articles of food and declared that Israel tomorrow will bring to the attention of the world the “oppressive enactments” passed by Egypt to bolster her anti-Israel blockade.
He also listed Syrian attacks on Israel in relation to the hydroelectric project, Jordan’s attempt to evade provisions of the armistice pact, the Saudi Arabian king’s call for destruction of Israel and Iraq’s imprisonment of Israelis forced down on its territory.
He predicted that the second half of Israel’s first decade “will continue to be stormy” on the international front, but that “Israel’s solid reliability will increasingly impress itself upon the free world as an asset not to be sacrificed for the unsteady and uncertain desire of the Arab nationalists.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
