U.N. mediator Count Folke Bernadotte and Foreign Minister Moshe Shertok will meet here Thursday, it was learned today. Bernadotte is expected to arrive at the Haifa headquarters of the U.N. Wednesday from Amman, Transjordan.
Aubrey S. Eban, Israeli representative to the U.N., who arrived here Saturday, today told a press conference that the U.N. will be failing in its duty if it does not exercise the maximum of pressure on the Arab states to meet with the Jews in peace negotiations. Outlining the policy Israel will follow at the Paris meeting of the General Assembly, Eban assailed the indefinite continuance of the truce as “intolerable,” asserting that the “war is in progress mitigated only to the extent that the firing has been cut down.”
Declaring that the “best way to end the truce is by direct Arab-Jewish negotiations,” Eban asserted that the U.N. must force the Arabs to enter such negotiations since they have shown themselves to be reluctant to do so. He added that those who think that the truce can continue indefinitely and do not take action to place it by a permanent peace” lack realism.
U.S. PLEDGED TO SUPPORT ISRAELI U.N. MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION, EBAN SAYS
Eban told the conference that Israeli’s bid for membership in the U.N. has the pledged support of the United States. He said that if Sir Alexander Cadogan, British chairman of the Security Council, at which the application will first be considered, does not invite the state of Israel directly but uses a “euphemistic” device; Israel will not attend the Council sessions. He also denounced the American refusal to permit displaced Jews of military age to leave Germany for Israel and Britain’s detention of refugee immigrants on Cyprus as violations of the truce.
Arieh Altman, head of the Palestine Revisionist Party, which is meeting here now, today called on Shertok not to meet with Bernadotte. It is expected that the conference will adopt a resolution backing Altman’s call. Meir Grossman, head of the American Revisionists said that in the future the right-wing movement will devote itself to constructive work in the fields of economics and the establishment of settlements. The World Revisionist Convention opens here tomorrow.
Congressman Andrew Somers of Few York and Prof. Harper V. Fowler of the American League for a Free Palestine narrowly escaped death this week-end when an Arab mortar shell exploded near a jeep in which they are touring the country. Somers ?ater told a press conference that Israel needs not a $100,000,000 loan from the U.S. but $300,000,000 because if the indefinite truce continues much longer the country faces bankruptcy.
David Horowitz, under-secretary of the Treasury, declared today that despite the total economic war being waged by the seven Arab states and Britain against Israel “we can hold out indefinitely with a clever economic policy.” He added that Arabs are wrong when they hope to “beat us economically,” He also announced the acquisition of two more ships by Zim, the first Israeli steamship line, thus bringing the line’s immigrant passenger capacity to 3,000 persons a month.
U.N. observers in the Ras el Ein area were yesterday fired on by Arabs and early killed. Otherwise, U.N. observers in Palestine report that all fronts are fairly quiet. (In Rhodes Bernadotte labelled the blasting of the water pumping equipment at Latrun last month a flagrant violation of the truce by the Arabs.) The U.N. staff handed out decisions today in six alleged truce violations, holding the Arab Legion and the Israeli Army responsible for one violation each.
The ?ain street of a veteran’s housing project in Tel Aviv was formally ?amed in honor of the late Mayor of New York, Fiorello LaGuardia today at a ceremony ## which Tel Aviv’s Mayor Israel Rokach, special U.S. representative James G. MacDonald, Prof. James Sheldon of the “One World” Award Committee and Dr. Israel Goldstein American member of the Jewish Agency, were present All the speakers emphasized LaGuardia’s spiritual affinity with the principles on which Israel is based.
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.
