The United Nations Security Council today adopted a British resolution calling on the Israelis and Egyptians to put into effect a new cease-fire in the Negev and to implement without further delay the Council’s November 4 resolution calling for the withdrawal of both Arab and Jewish forces from the Negev to positions held on October 14.
The vote on the British resolution as a whole was eight to zero, with three abstentions–the United States, the Soviet Union and the Ukraine. On the preamble, which Soviet delegate Yacov Malik supported, only the United States abstained. The original resolution submitted by the British yesterday was amended at the suggestion of France and Egypt before the final text was adopted. The resolution provides for the Security Council to do the following:
1. Call on the governments concerned in the Negev fighting to order an immediate cease-fire, and to implement without further delay the Council resolution of November 4 and the instructions issued by the acting mediator in accordance with that resolution.
2. Urge the governments concerned to allow and facilitate complete supervision of the truce by United Nations observers.
3. Instruct the seven-nation Council sub-committee, which was appointed on November 4 to aid the mediator in implementing the Negev withdrawal order, to meet on January 7 at Lake Success to consider the situation in southern Palestine. The sub-committee will also report to the Council on the extent to which the governments concerned have by that date complied with the present resolution as well as the resolutions of November 4 and 16–the last named being the order to all belligerents in Palestine to negotiate an armistice.
The resolution also invited Cuba and Norway to serve on the seven-nation subcommittee since two of its present members–Belgium and Colombia–leave the Council at the end of this year. It expressed the hope that members of the three-nation Palestine Conciliation Commission will nominate their representatives on that body and establish it with as little delay as possible.
Malik assailed the United Kingdom’s resistance to any solution of the Palestine problem by negotiation. He added that the Council’s seven-nation sub-committee had proved to be useless and a failure. Finally, he stressed that he would vote only for the section calling for an immediate cease-fire, but would not support the call to implement the November 4 resolution, the convocation of the sub-committee meeting, nor the section on the Conciliation Commission, since the last body was not yet in existence.
Harold Beeley, the British delegate, insisted that the Israelis had no right to state that the latest hostilities were on their territory since the fighting centered about Gaza, Khan Yunis and Beersheba, which had been given the Arabs by the U.N. partition decision. He added that the British Embassy in Cairo had informed him that the Jews had invaded Egyptian territory and captured El Arish.
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