The Cabinet today angrily rejected the United Nations Security council’s resolution adopted lost Thursday Condemning “the assassination attempts” against West Bank mayors and accusing Israel of failure “to provide adequate protection to the civilian population in the occupied territories.”
A Cabinet statement, read to reporters and television cameramen by Premier Menachem Begin after today’s session, accused the Security Council of using the bomb attacks against the mayors of Nablus, Ramallah and El Bireh on June 2 as a pretext to renew its demands for Israel’s total withdrawal from the West Bank and the redivision of Jerusalem. charging that the latest anti-Israel resolution was in contravention of Security Council Resolution 242, Begin declared, “This will never do.”
U.S. Ambassador Samuel Lewis said Friday that the U.S. would have vetoed the resolution had it contained a clause contradictory of Resolution 242. In the opinion of the U.S. it contained no such clause, Lewis told reporters after a meeting with Begin. The U.S. abstained in Thursday’s vote.
The formal statement read by Begin contended that “There was no need for the Security Council’s condemnation of the (bomb) attacks nor for it to urge a prompt investigation be held and the miscreants apprehended, tried and punished by due process.” All of this was already promised by “Israel’s authorized spokesmen” 72 hours before the Security Council went into session, Begin said.
SHARON’S SETTLEMENTS EXPANSION PLANS APPROVED
The statement imputed hypocrisy to the Council. It detailed a long list of Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israelis and others, from the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre to assaults in Athens, Brussels and various parts of Israel, up to the May 2 ambush killing of six yeshiva students in Hebron. On none of those occasions was the Security Council called into session nor was any condemnation forthcoming from the Council against the perpetrators of those attacks, the statement said.
Meanwhile, the Cabinet gave its full approval today to plans by Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon to expand the land holdings of Kiryat Arba and seven other Jewish settlements on the West Bank. the plans, drawn up by a ministerial sub-committee headed by Sharon, reportedly does not call for the confiscation of privately owned Arab land.
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.
