The United Nations Security Council took up today the Syrian complaint against Israeli construction of a new bridge in the demilitarized zone of the Huleh area and, after hearing the representatives of Syria and Israel, decided to adjourn until next Tuesday, to give the members of the Council an opportunity to study both statements.
Rafik Asha, Syria’s permanent representative, started the proceedings at the morning meeting with a 10, 000-word harangue on Israel which culminated in the nine specific requests, including two requests for the condemnation of Israel for alleged violations of the Syrian-Israeli armistice agreement and of Security Council resolutions. Mr. Asha also demanded that the Council order Israel to remove “without delays” a new Bailey bridge built by Israel across swamp lands at the southern end of Lake Huleh.
Mordecai R. Kidron, Israel’s deputy permanent representative here, said the Council voted as far back as 1951 that Syria had no case whatever against Israel in the demilitarized zone around Lake Huleh. He pointed out that the Syrian grievance is “not a complaint against Israel at all, but substantially a quarrel with the Chief of the Staff of the UN Truce Supervision Organization. ” The latter, Col. Byron V. Leary, ruled last month that the bridge erected by Israel is not a military thoroughfare. Col. Leary refused to heed the Syrian request to order Israel to dismantle the bridge.
This is the third time in the six years, Mr. Kidron stressed, that the Council has had to deal with the problem of Syrian interference in the Lake Huleh demilitarized zone. “One can only guess, ” he said, “at the motives which have led the Government of Syria to occupy the Council once again with its grumblings and discontents.”
ISRAEL REPRESENTATIVE EXPLAINS THE NEED FOR THE BRIDGE
Explaining the need for the bridge, Mr. Kidron described Israel’s vast reclamation project in the Lake Huleh area which has already converted a “fetid swamp into smiling farmlands.” Malaria has been eliminated from the area, the Israel diplomat said, and the agricultural life of the Huley valley has already been enriched.
All that remained to be done to complete the project was the deepening of two channels at the southern end of the lake. In order to get machinery close to the shore, Israel needed the bridge which Mr, Kidron described as a “modest affair, a little over 100 feet in length, 12 and a half feet in width and with a capacity of 12 tons.”
“This bridge has one purpose and one purpose alone, ” Mr. Kidron added, “and that is to serve as a carriage way for the transport of land-based earth-moving and dredging machinery. ” He revealed to the Council that the bridge actually was put in use Tuesday and that the United Nations observers were on hand to see the bridge being used in its peaceful manner.
The Israel representative detailed the various steps Syria has taken since 1951 in an effort to “frustrate the draining of the Huleh marshes of which the bridge is a part. ” He pointed out that the Council has rejected Syria’s claims as they have cone along since 1951 and concluded by urging the Council to drop the entire matter that the Huleh reclamation project may “now be completed without further interference.”
(Dr. Abraham Granott, chairman of the board of directors of the Jewish National Fund in Jerusalem, warned in a cable today that any ban on construction of a new bridge over the Huleh Basin in northern Israel would have the effect of sealing off from cultivation thousands of acres of fertile land just reclaimed from what was once malarial swamp. The JNF has been engaged in the Huleh drainage project since 1952. The cable was sent to American JNF headquarters in New York. It said that the bridge was “essential” if ploughmen are to have access to newly drained lands which, until recently, were part of the bed of Lake Huleh. He indicated that the entire multi-million dollar Huleh drainage, irrigation and flood control project would be jeopardized without the bridge.)
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