The Security Council will reconvene tomorrow morning to act on a draft resolution condemning Israel for its Dec, 2 air raids on terrorist bases in Lebanon, Israel is expected to boycott the session as it did Friday’s meeting of the Security Council to which the Palestine Liberation Organization was invited. The PLO was the first non-government body ever accorded the privilege of participating in a Security Council debate.
Israel’s UN Ambassador Chaim Herzog denounced the invitation to the PLO as a violation of the UN Charter which, he said, contained no provisions for inviting non-governmental bodies to attend Security Council proceedings.
He accused the Security Council of practicing a hypocritical double standard that condemns Israel for defending itself against terrorist assaults but “has not had the courage to pass a resolution condemning the plague of terrorism which has beset the world in recent years” and of which Israel has been a principal victim.
The PLO was brought into the Security Council deliberations at the request of Egypt which, along with Lebanon, had called for a Council meeting on the Israeli air raids. Nine members of the Council supported the invitation, among them Sweden, the only Western European nation to vote with the Arabs and their Soviet and Third World allies on that issue. Last Nov, 10, Sweden was one of the 35 nations that opposed the General Assembly’s resolution equating Zionism with racism.
The United States, Britain and Costa Rica voted against the PLO invitation but the negative votes of the two permanent members of the Council did not constitute a veto of what was technically a procedural rather than a substantive act of that body France, Italy and Japan abstained.
U.S. OPPOSES DRAFT MEASURE
U.S. Ambassador Daniel P. Moynihan made it clear that the U.S. opposed the draft resolution to condemn Israel introduced at Friday’s session by Iraq, Mauritania, Cameroun, Tanzania and Guyana. He said that while the U.S. would “neither condone nor excuse” Israel’s air strikes of last Tuesday, it also condemned the terrorist acts that preceded them. The U.S. supports any resolution condemning violence so long as it is not confined to an isolated occurrence, Moynihan said.
His remarks were interpreted as meaning that the U.S. would veto the draft unless it is amended to include acts of violence such as terrorist attacks on Israel. Several of the 15 member nations of the Council were reportedly trying to persuade the sponsors of the draft to revise its language to make it acceptable to the U.S. As it stands, the resolution would condemn Israel “for its premeditated air attacks” and would warn that any repetition would bring consideration by the Council of other “appropriate steps.”
VOTE FOR SANCTIONS AGAINST ISRAEL
Earlier on Friday, Israel suffered another defeat when the General Assembly adjourned its Middle East debate with the adoption of an Arab inspired resolution calling for sanctions against Israel unless it withdraws from all occupied Arab territories and desists from denying “the inalienable national rights of the Palestinian people.”
The resolution was adopted by a vote of 84-17 with 27 abstentions. The lopsided majority consisted, as in all previous anti-Israel votes of the Arab, Communist bloc and most Third World counties. (See separate story for breakdown of votes.)
Before the measure was adopted, Herzog denounced it as a biased and “one-sided attempt by extremists to wreck the negotiating mechanism that has already brought progress toward peace in the Middle East.” He said his country would not be bound by its terms.
The operative paragraphs of the resolution state that the General Assembly “Reaffirms that the acquisition of territory by force is inadmissible and therefore all territories thus occupied must be returned; condemns Israel’s continued occupation of Arab territories in violation of the Charter of the United Nations, the principles of international law and repeated United Nations resolutions; requests all states to desist from supplying Israel with any military or economic aid so long as it continues to occupy Arab territories and deny the inalienable national rights of the Palestinian people.”
The U.S. strongly supported Israel against both the General Assembly and Security Council actions on Friday. Moynihan called the Council’s invitation to the PLO an outrageous attempt to give “an amorphous terrorist organization” the attributes of a sovereign government. He declared that the U.S. would not acquiesce to an action that would undermine the negotiating process, the only process that could lead to peace in the Middle East.
BITTER ABOUT SWEDEN’S VOTE
At a press conference after the Security Council vote, Herzog observed that any terrorist group including the South Moroccans holding hostages in Holland, could now demand participation in Security Council deliberations. He was particularly bitter against Sweden which provided the crucial ninth vote required for the invitation to the PLO. He called it a “disgraceful betrayal” of the principles by which the Swedish government maintained it was guided and bound.
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.
