Rougher Road for Israel in the U.N. Predicted by Ambassador Comay

“Israel’s position in the United Nations now faces new tests and challenges, and the road ahead is likely to be rougher than it has been for several years,” Ambassador Michael S. Comay, head of the Israel delegation to the United Nations, declared here today.

Addressing 500 participants in the annual Seminar of the Zionist Organization of America, held at the UN headquarters, Mr. Comay pointed out that the United Nations is now in a state of flux because of the influx of new African countries, the Soviet attack on the present UN structure, and the involvement of the UN in the Congo.

“The rapidly changing United Nations holds for Israel both opportunities and dangers,” Ambassador Comay stated. “On the one hand, the United Nations is the world’s meeting place, and we must there foster our relationships both with our traditional friends and with the new friends we have made in Asia and Africa. On the other hand, there are many signs that the Arab states want to develop a new diplomatic offensive at the United Nations against Israel, and to drag the so-called Palestine question into the forefront of UN concern once more.”

Ambassador Comay sees one of the reasons for this greater belligerence in the tensions within the Arab world itself, and the tendency to cover them over by a collective crusade against Israel. “But maybe the main motive for renewed Arab activity against Israel at the United Nations is the desire to influence the new African countries and to disrupt their ties with Israel,” he added. “However silly the charge of Israel colonialism may be, it should not be ignored. The turmoil in Africa produces Arab African groupings, which the Arabs do their best to exploit against Israel as recent events have shown.

“I am not pessimistic about the outcome,” Mr. Comay continued. “For most of the African countries have direct and positive contact with Israel, are suspicious of Nasser’s ambitions in Africa, and in any case are reluctant to be involved in the conflicts of others. But we may have some disappointments in this field and must remain constantly vigilant.” The Israel representative stressed the following points:

“1. As the new United States Administration has emphasized, the United Nations should be regarded as a forum for reconciling differences and not for inflaming them by sterile controversy. This applies to the Israel-Arab conflict as strongly as it does to the Cold War.

“2. The United Nations should refrain from tampering with resolutions, and writing into them what might appear to be minor concessions to Arab demands. It must be understood that these demands are not made in the interests of a solution of the refugee problem, but in the interests of political warfare against Israel, in the hope of undermining our position and eventually trying to settle accounts again with Israel. In the long run, therefore, such gestures of appeasements are destructive.

“3. The true role of the United Nations is to go on insisting on a settlement of outstanding issues between Israel and the Arab states by negotiation. Even if the Arab Governments-refuse to negotiate, they should be discouraged from believing that in a changing and expanding United Nations, they can gain ground at Israel’s expense. Here the United States has a vital stabilizing role to play.

Ambassador Comay concluded his address with the warning that the friends of Israel “must be fully aware of these dangers, while not exaggerating them.” He emphasized that Israel has many friends in the world and at the United Nations, but the shifting battle lines of bloc politics at the UN may not always produce the kind of resolutions which are helpful or constructive.