“The prospects of peace in the Near East depend on the degree to which the principal powers in the United Nations use their influence in favor of direct and unfettered peace negotiations and enable Israel to develop its defenses in proportion to the threat created by Arab rearmament.”
This statement was made today by Aubrey S. Eban, Israel’s permanent delegate to the United Nations, at a luncheon tendered by the United Nations Correspondents Association at which he reviewed various aspects of Israel’s position regarding peace with the Arabs and the role played by those powers in the U.N. which are supplying arms to the Arabs.
Fointing out that “for nearly two years the majority of the Arab states have been busily occupied in evading any process of real negotiation or contact with Israel,” Mr. Eban declared: “Certain Arab states not only refuse to make peace themselves; they also pounce indignantly on any of their neighbors which may show a tendency to roach a peace settlement. Resolute peacelessness still remains the dominant tendency in the Arab League, as its current proceedings show.
“By complex and obsoure maneuvers around the Conciliation Commission these states seek to conceal a simple and unvarnished truth: Israel in bent on the establishment of peace and stability throughout the Middle East. The Arab states, for the most part, are bent on preventing that result,”
It is against this background that the “question of arms supplies becomes especially acute and disquieting,” Mr. Ebam said. “There is nothing complicated about this question. The Arab states, which but recently sought to destoy Israel are rearming lavishly with weapons denied to Israel. Israel which is willing to negotiate a peace settlement is denied arms which are made plentifully available to the Arab states which refuse a peace settlement.
“Thus, the military balance in the Near East threatens to become distorted in favor ofthe very elements which oppose peace and conciliation. It is no answer to say that these states have no intention of renewing their onslaught. Opportunities will breed intentions. You cannot create a senme of Arab military superiority and seriously hope for stability and peace. The Powers most intimately concerned with the maintenance of stability in the Near East will be destroying that stability with their own hands so long as they persist in concerting this extraordinary policy of one-sided rearmament,” he stated.
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