Golda Meir to Address U.N. Assembly Today on Arab-israeli Issues

After three full weeks of debate on the Arab refugee question, a high point of the discussions is expected to be reached tomorrow when a full exposition of Israel’s attitude will be presented here by Mrs. Golda Meir, Israel’s Foreign Minister.

A leading member of the British Commonwealth–New Zealand–publicly “identified” itself here today with the denunciation of Arabic anti-Semitic attacks against Israel. O. P. Gabites, New Zealand’s Consul-General in New York, acting as his country’s representative in the General Assembly’s Special Political Committee, touched on the issue of Arab accusations about alleged Israeli “Nazism” when he took the floor to participate in the Committee’s debate of the Arab refugee problem.

Without repeating the terms in which Denmark had denounced the Arab Nazi accusations here earlier this week as “indecent,” Mr. Gabites told the committee his Government “identified itself fully with Denmark’s statement” on the issue. As a Government that has admitted as immigrants many refugees from Nazism, he said, “New Zealand knows what Nazism is.”

On the principal issue under debate, concerning the Arab refugees, Mr. Gabites rejected the Moslem, pro-Arab resolution calling for a UN custodian over property allegedly left by the refugees when they fled Israel. He called this resolution “a partisan proposal that one side is quite unable to accept.” By “one side,” he meant Israel.

He pleaded with the Arabs “to drop their pretense that Israel doesn’t exist” but also asked that Israel make itself acceptable to its neighboring Arab states.” He suggested that Israel might help matters by admitting “a number” of refugees, so long as its security is not endangered by such token admissions.

Another facet of the Arabic attacks against Israel along distorted lines came up today when Michael S. Comay, Israel’s permanent representative, who has for nearly three weeks attempted to reply to every fabrication dug up by the Arabs, answered a point previously made by Tunisia’s representative, Mohamed Badra. The latter had dragged in the case of a former Jew, converted to Catholicism, who had been denied by Israel’s Supreme Court the right to obtain citizenship as a “Jew,” but was not denied citizenship per se. Mr. Badra called that ruling an illustration of Israel’s “discrimination.”

To straighten the record, Mr. Comay went into “this complex case,” pointing out that “there was no question of this man’s right to remain in Israel and to become a citizen. He is welcome to do so. Israel’s citizens include members of all faiths.”

ICELAND, IVORY COAST, ASK FOR ARAB-ISRAELI PEACE NEGOTIATIONS

Two of today’s speakers, representing, respectively, Iceland and the Ivory Coast, requested passage of the 21 -member resolution presented here earlier this week, calling for direct peace talks between the Arab states and Israel. Iceland flatly rejected the United States stand on that resolution, which the Washington spokesman had called “unrealistic.”

Kristjan Albertsson, of Iceland, maintained he “could not see what harm could be done by an appeal for direct negotiations, since peace could not be attained by any other means. Circumstances change. Never say never in politics.”

Asserting that “the rights of the people of Israel as well as of the Palestine Arabs” have to be considered, he quoted a statement by Secretary-General U Thant in favor of negotiations in general. “U Thant has said,” the Icelandic diplomat declared, “that, when the future of mankind was at stake, no country or interested group could afford to take a rigid stand or claim that duly it was right. No difficult problem could be solved to the complete satisfaction of all concerned, U Thant had said. Imperfect solutions must be found, this is an imperfect world.”

Arsene A. Usher, of the Ivory Coast, made a strong plea for observance of the principle of negotiations, and urged the Arabs to help solve the refugee problem. He derided what he called “efforts to a solution” which rested on “combating Zionism” and on appointing a UN custodian in Israel. He upbraided the Arabs for “picking and choosing”

He upbraided the Arabs for “picking and choosing” among various previous Assembly resolutions which they liked or disliked and even picking portions of a long resolution while rejecting other parts of the same measure. He insisted that peace negotiations were the only way out of the dilemma, telling the Arabs they could proceed to negotiate inasmuch as they had already negotiated directly with Israel when the 1949 Armistice talks were held.

Pakistan, one of the three Moslem co-sponsors of the pro-Arab resolution calling for the appointment of a UN refugee property custodian inside Israel, asked the committee to approve that resolution–a move “viewed here as lost. The speaker for Pakistan, P. F. S. Ataullah, also warmly praised Dr. John H. Davis, Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, whose report to the committee this year has been denounced as outright anti-Israeli and pro-Arab.

Mr. Ataullah brought in a new slur against Jews, heretofore unthought-of even by the Arabs. Denouncing the immigration of Jews to Israel, he told the committee that Zionists “had gathered to Palestine from all parts of the world on a mythical assumption that the bones of some ancient Hebrew patriarchs and kings and warriors lay buried in some obscure parts of the land.” Thus, the Moslem dismissed all of Biblical history.