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Lebanon Responsible if Innocent Civilians Hit in Raids, Israel Says

June 20, 1974
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Israel replied sharply today to a Lebanese allegation that Israeli air raids on terrorist strongholds in southern Lebanon were an attempt to terrorize the Lebanese people and Palestinian refugees. Ambassador Jacob Doron, Acting Permanent Representative of Israel, charged that the Lebanese complaint was an attempt to “evade responsibility and to gloss over the facts” that Lebanon was the host country to “Palestinian murder organizations” that commit atrocities against Israel and its citizens.

In a letter addressed to Ambassador Moulaye El Hassan, of Mauritania, this month’s President of the Security Council. Ambassador Doron said that Israel would continue “to take all the appropriate measures in order to defend itself and foil terror attacks that are carried out against it from Lebanese territory.” The letter said that “If as a result of these defensive actions Lebanese civilians who are not connected with the aggressors are also hit in addition to members of the Palestinian murder organizations…then this is regrettable, but the responsibility falls squarely on the government of Lebanon which knowingly enables atrocities to be carried out from its territory against Israeli civilians.”

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