In his second letter in two days to Security Council president Armand Berard of France, Israel’s Ambassador Yosef Tekoah today drew the Council’s “urgent attention” to a “mounting series of new attacks” by Egyptian forces in the Suez Canal area.
Asserting that Egyptian troops have fired repeatedly on Israeli forces on the Canal’s East Bank since Feb, 5 and that 18 mines were discovered today at various points along the waterway, Mr. Tekoah charged Egypt with endangering security and undermining Mideast peace efforts.
He cited reports by Lt. Gen. Bull which he said testified to the “total restraint” of Israeli forces in the face of the attacks, especially “grave and prolonged” ones on Feb. 10 and 11. He noted that a mine exploded on the East Bank near Kantara yesterday and that sniping continued today.
The Israeli envoy asserted that the military actions were a “deliberate and planned attempt to disrupt the relative tranquility which has prevailed for some time in the Suez sector and to generate a situation of tension.” He said the snipings, minings and recent incursions into Sinai by Arab terrorists followed “warlike declarations” by Egyptian President Nasser in which he emphasized Egyptian intentions to pursue terrorism and approved rejection by terrorists of the Security Council’s Nov. 22, 1967 resolution laying the groundwork for a Mideast settlement.
Israel charged here yesterday that Egypt had “come out openly in full support” of Arab guerrilla operations, asserting that it created and is directing them. Mr. Tekoah charged in a letter to Mr. Berard that Egypt, Jordan and Syria were providing training areas, instructors and arms for the commandos. He claimed the weapons included the Klatchnikov automatic rifle and the Katyusha anti-tank and anti-personnel rocket. These items, he said, were made in the Soviet Union and given to the commandos by the Egyptian and Syrian Governments, which had received them from Russia.
Members of irregular forces captured recently in Sinai “are openly recruited in Egypt and dispatched by intelligence officers to carry out sabotage operations behind the cease-fire lines to be described later by the Egyptian propaganda machinery as actions of the ‘Arab Sinai Organization.’ Mr. Tekoah said.
Israeli statistics claim that between June 6, 1967 and Dec. 31, 1968 there were 1,288 acts of sabotage and border incidents. Of these, 920 took place in the West Bank, with 166 in the Egyptian sector, 37 in the Syrian region, 35 near Lebanon and 130 in the Gaza Strip. Israel puts its losses for the period at 234 soldiers and 47 civilians killed, 765 soldiers and 330 civilians wounded. The State lost nearly 800 men during the Arab-Israel war of 1967.
The Tekoah letters came against a background of growing Western concern over the increasing guerrilla campaign. The Big Four are believed to see the guerrillas as a major problem in the attempt to bring about a Mideast settlement. U.S. representative Charles W. Yost said on television Tuesday that the guerrilla action was “perhaps the most difficult aspect” of the Mideast crisis–one he termed “urgent and dangerous.”
He said the Arab Governments might lose control over the guerrillas, making peace efforts “infinitely more difficult.” This situation could come about, he said, unless there is important progress toward peace in the next few months.
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