Israel advised the United Nations that the thaw in East-West relations resulting from the limited nuclear test ban treaty will not of itself guarantee world peace unless steps were also taken to eliminate “regional tensions.”
Without naming the Arab states surrounding Israel and their hostility to the Jewish State, the Israeli delegate, Gideon Rafael, told the United Nations that “the amassing of armaments in one area, accompanied by a refusal to settle disputes by peaceful means, creates tensions whose repercussions are felt beyond the confines of the area itself. This nourishes actual and potential international tensions, and frustrates the efforts to advance worldwide disarmament.”
The statement was made by Mr. Rafael in the General Assembly’s Political and Security Committee during a debate “on the urgent need for suspensions of nuclear and thermonuclear tests.”
Pointing out that Israel signed the nuclear test ban treaty on the first day it was opened for signature, Mr. Rafael said that while the pact “should inaugurate an era when the atom will serve man’s life and not threaten his very existence, “it was necessary to take a number of simultaneous and interrelated steps.
“We have to build international confidence,” he stated. “The better we prepare the soil in which international confidence and cooperation grow, the greater the yields will be in the fields of disarmament. Dangers to international peace will not subside as long as sensitive areas of tension remain excluded from the trends of international detente. The continuation of such regional tensions or the shifting of centers of international friction from one area to another will not help lower the level of that great reservoir of mistrust accumulated over the postwar years.”
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.
