The General Assembly’s overwhelming adoption of a resolution calling for a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip was denounced here today as a setback to Middle East peace efforts. A Foreign Ministry spokesman called it a futile move which ignored the basic fact that no settlement can be reached without negotiations and agreement between both sides.
The spokesman said the resolution demonstrated once again that the Arabs can push any anti-Israel action through the General Assembly with their built-in majority of Communist bloc and Third World countries. The resolution, endorsing the report of the 20-member Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, was adopted by a vote of 90-16 with 30 abstentions. Eight countries did not participate in the voting.
The Foreign Ministry indicated that Israel was disappointed that certain countries expected to vote against the resolution had abstained. The spokesman said those countries would be remembered and each case would be examined separately as part of Israel’s general foreign policy review.
Premier Yitzhak Rabin, who was in Geneva today for the 13th conference of the Socialist International, dismissed the resolution as not worthy of comment when asked for his reaction. “I have stopped counting the anti-Israel resolutions. They no longer move me,” he told reporters. (See separate story on Rabin in Geneva.)
B’NAI B’RITH LEADER RAPS UN
(In Washington, David M, Blumberg, president of B’nai B’rith, termed the resolution “a veritable endorsement of the liquidation of Israel” and a repudiation of the “reality of Israel’s sovereignty and its moral character as the homeland and refuge of the Jewish people protected by international law.”
(The decision of the Assembly, Blumberg continued, “defies reason, law and morality. It subverts the UN Charter principle providing for the peaceful and just settlement of international disputes. Indeed, it can only contribute to the exacerbation of tensions and thereby undermine the efforts of those seeking a meaningful and just Middle East peace.”)
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.
