Defiant Israel
six—It is difficult to understand why you persist in your vendetta against the State of Israel because it refuses to agree to the inter-
nationalisation of Jerusalem. You base your latest attack on the supposi- tion that it wants to retain the new city for strategic reasons, "as a springboard pointing east." If that is the case, why do you not at the same time suggest that King Abdullah wants to keep the old city also for strategic reasons, "as a springboard pointing west" ? The Jews in Israel, and indeed throughout the world, are opposed to internationalisa-
tion because Jerusalem has played a central and dominating part in the two-thousand-year-old yearning for the return to the Holy Land, and because the Jewish State would be incomplete without the Holy City. It would be Zionism without Zion.
You accuse the Israeli politicians of defying "the rest of the world." You know perfectly well that this is not the case. They are strongly supported by the Governments of Great Britain, the United States, Canada, South Africa and several other States, none of which will have anything to do with a plan for internationalisation. The "rest of the world" consists mainly of the Kremlin, the Vatican and a number of Moslem States, which have formed an unholy alliance for diverse reasons. Since your main concern apparently is to ensure the safeguarding of the Christian holy places and free access to them, and most of these are in the territory held by the forces of Abdullah, who is also firmly opposed to internationalisation, why have you nothing to say about "defiant Jordan " ?
The plan recommended by the majority of the General Assembly is entirely impracticable, and any attempt to impose it would need a force which the United Nations does not possess, and which, even if, after months of exploration and negotiation, it were brought into existence, would find itself faced by the united hostility of Israel and Jordan. It must also be plain to all well-informed students of the question that any scheme for an international regime of Jerusalem would let loose a formidable complex of political rivalries and religious passions, which would soon convert the "City of Peace" into a cockpit of war. It would surely be best, both for the inhabitants of Jerusalem itself and for all other interests involved, if the General Assembly would recognise its blunder and take early steps to remedy it.—Yours faithfully, [Jerusalem is a bulge in the Israeli lines and a dent in the Arab lines ; a dent can hardly be called a springboard. As Jordan's application for membership of the United Nations has been rejected, the responsibilities as well as the privileges of membership have presumably been refused her. The partition of Palestine was secured by a voting alliance between the United States, Moscow, Latin America and some others, with Britain, France and others abstaining. This alliance was not called " unholy " by Mr. Cohen. There is no evidence that the British and American dele- gates to the Trusteeship Council have instructions to sabotage its efforts to draw up a statute for Jerusalem.—ED.. Spectator.]
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