Canada laid before the United Nations General Assembly today a comprehensive plan for solution of the impasse revolving around Israel’s refusal to date to withdraw from the Akaba area and the Gaza Strip envisioning these principal points:
1. The United Nations Emergency Force is to follow Israel’s withdrawn armed forces into the Akaba area, but at the same time, the Assembly is to affirm that there must be freedom of innocent passage in the Gulf of Akaba and the Strait of Tiran, with Egypt denied continued exercise of its claimed “right of belligerence.”
2. A complicated formula for the Gaza Strip under which Israel would withdraw its armed forces immediately, but there would be a gradual transition from Israel’s present civil administration there to United Nations responsibility for the area. The UN administration, under a United Nations commissioner, would run the Gaza Strip in consultation with both Israel and Egypt but would constitute only “an interim measure pending final agreement as to the proper disposition of the area.”
Mr. Pearson was followed by the Soviet Union’s Arkady A. Sobolev, after whom the delegate from Syria resumed expounding the Arab viewpoint. Mr. Sobolev outlined a “grand conspiracy” between Israel, “oil interests,” and the United States. In this “conspiracy,” he said, Israel is “assigned” the role of troublemaker while the U.S. takes the role of peacemaker, but both countries are working toward implementation of the Eisenhower Doctrine in the Middle East.
Mr. Sobolev announced he will vote for the Afro-Asian resolution introduced last Friday calling for sanctions against Israel, although he said he would have preferred that such a resolution be presented in the Security Council instead of in the General Assembly. Czechoslovakia and Iraq took up the cudgels against Israel, the former following the customary Soviet line and the Iraqi pursuing the traditional Arab policy of denunciation.
CANADIAN DELEGATE OUTLINES SOLUTION FOR THE GAZA-AKABA PROBLEM
Mr. Pearson started by assuring the Assembly that what he is after is not merely withdrawal of Israeli forces but peaceful solution of the crisis. The United Nations has now, he said, reached “a point of no return,” and the problem is to take action that will not, as Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold warned recently, introduce “new elements of conflict.”
Pointing out that Israel had many provocations for the action it took in the Sinai campaign, Mr. Pearson asked for “dissipation of fear” on both Israeli and Egyptian sides. It was in the spirit of bringing about ultimate solution of basic problems, he said, that he originally introduced the resolution calling for creating the UN Emergency Force. Necessary how, he continued, are the following essentials:
First, Israel and Egypt must pledge formally to “observe scrupulously the armistices agreement–not some of its provisions but all of them.”
Second, the Secretary General should make arrangements with the governments concerned to deploy the forces of UNEF on the armistice line in such a way as to: A. Take over some of the duties of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization; B. Assist in prevention of border crossings and retaliatory raids; C. Generally maintain peaceful conditions along both sides of the demarcation line.
Mr. Pearson’s third point related to his proposal for the Gulf of Akaba solution. He then proposed his formula for Gaza. Although at one point he stated categorically that the civil administration in Gaza should be “Egyptian and not Israeli,” his formula also gave Israel leeway to keep a hand in the Gaza administration for some time to come.
Israel, he suggested, should withdraw its armed forces from the Gaza Strip. At the same time, however, the Assembly “should now provide for effective United Nations action to ensure that the area would not be used as a base for raids and incursion against Israel after its withdrawal.” As for the civil administration, he said, “it is perfectly clear that we should not simply command the Israelis to withdraw in a night.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
