Israel and Gaza
RA'ANAN, URI
By Uri Ra'anan Israel and Gaza: Jerusalem Despite the propaganda that would have us believe otherwise, the facts are that Israel's October 29 Sinai Peninsula attack was legally justified under...
...too...
...On November 2, however, the Assembly did pass a resolution containing several very important measures...
...In compliance with the UN Charter, Israel appealed to the Security Council to correct the injustices...
...Indeed, that was impossible because Israel had fulfilled all of its international responsibilities and merely invoked the final right and duty of any threatened UN member—the right of self-defense...
...Moreover, Egypt violated three major international proclamations: 1. The 1888 Constantinople Convention, which specifically declares in Article 1 that the Canal shall be open to ships of all nations in times of peace and war alike...
...Finally, Paragraph 4 expressly demands that action be taken "to reopen the Canal and insure freedom of passage"—which clearly refers to revoking the blockade...
...It only insists that its withdrawal be accompanied by the simultaneous implementation of the resolution's other provisions...
...Fortunately, the November 2 resolution, which was carefully drafted by U.S...
...Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold also visited the area himself several times to convince Cairo that the ceasefire meant an end to all frontier raids...
...Until now, Egyptian troops have been following close on the heels of the UNEF and taking up their old positions...
...True, the resolution does require Israel to withdraw from Egyptian territory...
...The UN would then be ordering Israel to let the Egyptians return to the positions from which they carried out their unlawful activities in the face of all the international injunctions prohibiting them...
...In these circumstances, according to the UN Charter and all other international law, the aggrieved country has no choice but ISRAELI SPOKESMAN GOLDA MEIR to invoke the right of self-defense that is specifically provided for such situations...
...This act of war (to use the legal definition) affected both the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Aqaba, Israel's Red Sea outlet...
...How much more would it do against Canadian bands that were organized in Ottawa and operating in New England...
...and Paragraph 3 urges UN members to "refrain from sending arms shipments into the region...
...Both of these are clearly aimed at preventing the marshaling of superior forces for Israel's destruction...
...The UN's Israeli-Egyptian Mixed Armistice Commission passed countless resolutions condemning Egypt for these acts and demanding that they be halted immediately...
...is the resolution's goal...
...No step was taken by the UN, Who is Complying with the UN...
...Some days later, too, when it set up the United Nations Emergency Force for the Middle East, it specifically referred to these provisions as the program to be implemented and supervised by the new force...
...But Cairo continued its defiance, again stressing that it was at war with Israel, and the international organization made no attempt to enforce its own decision...
...Still the fedayeen raids continued, with men, women and children being slaughtered on open roads and in schools, synagogues and private homes, to the very suburbs of Tel Aviv...
...Were this true, it would undoubtedly rank among the major absurdities of history...
...Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, is hardly that self-contradictory...
...Thus Israel's use of force against Egypt any time after September 1951 to gain passage through the Suez Canal and Gulf of Aqaba for its ships could not possibly be defined as aggression...
...however, to defend Israel or force Egypt to stop its wanton killing and destruction...
...Now, according to Israel's foes, the November 2 resolution simply called for Israel's withdrawal behind the 1949 armistice lines and nothing else...
...Israel, therefore, is the country that is demanding complete compliance with the November 2 resolution...
...On December 2, and many times thereafter, Colonel Nasser's Cairo radio openly boasted that Israeli ships will never pass through Suez, fedayeen raids will be intensified (as they have been), and the Gulf of Aqaba blockade will be resumed as soon as Egypt resumes its strategic positions in the Straits of Tiran...
...This is why: A UN member, Egypt, claiming to be in a state oj war with another UN member, Israel, utilized this excuse to impose a blockade on shipping under any flag bound to or from the latter's ports...
...3. The 1951 Security Council resolution that called for an immediate end to the Egyptian blockade...
...But in the very same sentence of Paragraph 2 it "calls upon the sides to desist from raids across the armistice lines into neighboring territories"—which clearly refers to the jedayeen campaign...
...This is why the Security Council and the General Assembly never passed a resolution labeling Israel an aggressor after the Sinai attack...
...Words alone, Jerusalem has learned through bitter experience, are not enough...
...By Uri Ra'anan Israel and Gaza: Jerusalem Despite the propaganda that would have us believe otherwise, the facts are that Israel's October 29 Sinai Peninsula attack was legally justified under the terms of the United Nations Charter and all other international law...
...Similar conditions exist with regard to the incredible wave of murder and destruction carried out against Israel by para-military gangs openly organized, armed and directed by Egypt...
...Paragraph 1 also states that the parties concerned must "stop the movement of armed forces and arms into the region...
...if bands of Mexican marauders roamed around Texas or New Mexico...
...How long could any nation be expected to sit by while a great power armed its warlike neighbor with huge supplies of ultra-modern arms and equipment, and the dictator of this neighboring state told his people every day that the arms would be used to wipe out every soul in that nation...
...In the last instance, it amounted to piracy on the open seas because the Gulf is bordered by four sovereign states and is not an inland waterway...
...And this, after all...
...For a country of 1.6 million, which knows very well that the whole world could not stop another dictator from exterminating 6 million of its brethren, this is not hard to believe...
...By refusing to quit the Gaza Strip (the main and most dangerous fedayeen base) and Sharm el-Sheikh (in the Straits of Tiran) unless firm steps are taken to implement the entire resolution, Israel is merely trying to prevent a return to the conditions responsible for the Sinai attack...
...And what was Israel to do when Egypt's dictator Carnal Abdel Nasser encircled it by setting up a joint command with Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria for the avowed purpose of wiping it out...
...What would the United States do (what did it do in 1916...
...Doesn't the UN Charter expressly forbid warlike threats...
...On the contrary, it has already relinquished almost all of the Sinai Peninsula...
...2. The 1949 Armistice Agreement, which, in Paragraph 1, specifically demanded the cessation of all warlike threats and acts on land and sea, and looked forward to a peace settlement...
...Israel has never refused to adhere to the resolution's withdrawal order...
Vol. 40 • January 1957 • No. 4
