Israel Submits Formal Complaint Against Jordan to U.N. Security Council

Israel submitted to the United Nations Security Council this weekend a formal complaint about “renewed acts of violence and sabotage by armed groups penetrating into Israel from Jordan territory.”

Ambassador Michael Comay, Israel’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, asked that the letter concerning forays last week against Israeli settlements near the Jordanian border be circulated among the members of the Security Council but he did not ask for a meeting of that body.

In his latest communication to the Security Council, Mr. Comay noted his letter submitted to that body on March 1 in which he referred to a series of such incursions and in which he stressed that the attacks were gross violations of the Israel-Jordan Armistice Agreement and stressing the urgency and the inescapable duty of the Jordanian Government to prevent such attacks.

Asserting that the Jordanian Government had failed to implement assurances to a special United Nations Commission that it would cooperate in avoiding border incidents, Ambassador Comay cited a number of incidents including the damage to a gas well in an explosion at Har Hakenaim in the Negev, in which tracks were found leading to the Jordanian border; the shooting on March 4 at an Israeli motor vehicle in the Wadi Arava with footprints also in this case leading to the Jordanian border; the throwing of a hand grenade into a chemical tank in Amatzia; and the damage by explosions set off by Arab saboteurs in Ramat Hakovesh and Afulah, with tracks in each instance traced to the Jordanian border. The letter charged that the attack at Ramat Hakovesh was carried cut by the same persons as those who bombed Kfar Hess in February.

The letter said that the Israeli Government had done all it possibly could through United Nations channels to make the Jordanian Government aware of the dangers along with statements by Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, Foreign Minister Golda Meir and Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin. The Israel Government, the letter declared, cannot acquiesce in a continuation with impunity of those “organized and murderous attacks. It regards the Government of Jordan as responsible for putting an end to them immediately.”