The Arab states’ problems vis-a-vis the State of Israel are of their own making, Israel Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett today told the United Nations General Assembly here. Rising to participate in the general debate on the world’s problems, the Foreign Minister took some time to reply to an attack on the U. N. by Iraqi representative Fadhil el Jamali who charged that the U. N. had retreated in the face of “Jewish aggression” in its handling of the Palestine problem.
Mr. Sharett made the following points about the current Palestine situation: The Arab states had taken up arms against the General Assembly resolution creating a Jewish state; Z, They had themselves created the problem of the Arab refugees; 3. The Arab states had perpetuated that situation by refusing to make a peace settlement; 4. They had sufficient fertile land for the resettlement of the Palestine refugees but refused to do so; 5. Israel had offered to pay compensation for abandoned Arab lands; 6. Israel had taken in 120,000 refugees from Iraq alone, when the Iraq Jewish community was evacuated to the Jewish state.
On the Anglo-Egyptian dispute over the Suez Canal zone, Mr. Sharett stated that his government does not hold for unilateral abrogation of binding treaties. “And we differentiate between national and world assets,” he emphasized. “We cannot agree that an international water way should be treated as if it were an internal river of the country that happens to lie astride it.”
The Israeli delegation head painted a picture of the world river by conflicts and warned against permitting the clash to get out of hand. The conflict, he said, is “for nothing less than mastery over mankind’s soul,” but its body may be lost in the fury.
He pleaded that the East-West conflict not be permitted to merge with the clash between the awakening nationalism of the Orient and the developing civilization of the Occident. The Orient-Occident issue was not one which permitted of temporary adjustment, he insisted. He urged the Occident to “go more than half-way” to meet the Orient. Mr. Sharett insisted that in bringing its civilization to the Asian continent the Occident had thus far been “hardly aware” of the Orient’s ancient cultures which could complement western science in rich measure.
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.
