Extracts from a confidential report from Frederick H. Boland
to Seán Murphy (Dublin)
(Confidential)

The General Assembly has devoted the last three days to a further debate on the Egyptian situation. The basis of the debate was a resolution put down by 25 Afro-Asian countries calling on the Secretary-General to secure the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Egyptian territory and to report to the Assembly within five days. This resolution, which was put down on the morning of the 17th, was a consequence of a report made to the Assembly by the Secretary-General explaining what the existing position was as regards the withdrawal of the Israeli forces. A copy of the resolution, and of the Secretary-General’s report, are attached herewith.²

From the beginning, the resolution obviously commanded a very large measure of support in the Assembly. To a great extent, this was due to the fact that, on the day before it was introduced, the Arab States had made a determined effort to get the Afro-Asian group to sponsor a resolution in which more severe and drastic terms were employed: they had only been deflected from their purpose by the insistence of Japan, the Philippines, Pakistan and a few other more moderate members of the group that a more temperately-worded resolution would command a larger and more convincing majority in the Assembly. Among the countries who were in favour of the resolution from the beginning were Great Britain and the United States – the latter’s attitude being said to be influenced by the fact that the State Department is particularly concerned at the moment to improve relations with the States of the Middle East.

Looking at the resolution strictly on its merits, we were by no means so convinced of either its justice or its timeliness. The logical and inevitable consequence of the resolutions previously passed by the Assembly was, of course, that Israel should retire completely from Egyptian territory. We did not doubt or question the necessity of this for a moment. What concerned us, however, was the question whether the United Nations was wise in pressing Israel to withdraw without further ado from all Egyptian territory, including the Gaza Strip and the Sharm-el-Sheikh area on the Straits of Tiran, without making due provision for peace and security in these areas when the Israeli forces had withdrawn. To do so seemed to us tantamount, to a large extent, to simply returning to the position which existed before the Israeli attack on Egypt took place at all.

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The resolution of the 25 Afro-Asian countries seemed to us somewhat one-sided and unrealistic against this background. If the only result of the action of the United Nations in relation to the Egyptian situation were to be a return to the sporadic fighting which characterised the period before last October, the United Nations would cut a rather poor figure in the eyes of world opinion. It seemed to us rather inequitable, too, that the resolution should call for strict compliance by Israel with the previous resolutions of the Assembly while saying nothing about compliance by the Egyptian Government with previous resolutions of the Security Council about the denial of passage through the Suez Canal to Israeli ships and cargoes. What would be even more serious, it seemed to us, from the point of view both of the United Nations and the relations between Egypt and Israel, would be if Egypt were to be placed in a position again to deny Israel access to the Gulf of Aqaba by means of her gun emplacements on the Gulf of Tiran, in exercise of what the Egyptian Government claims to be legitimate belligerent rights. From Israel’s point of view, this would be particularly serious because she is on the point of completing an 8-inch pipeline from the point of Egypt to a point between Tel-Aviv and Haifa on the Israeli coast, and a contract has been placed for the building of a larger 18-inch pipeline, over the same route, within the coming year. In brief, our feeling was that the withdrawal of Israel’s forces from the Straits of Tiran and the Gaza Strip, as well as the Sinai Desert as a whole, should properly form part of a larger arrangement which would either achieve some stability in the relations between Egypt and Israel or provide for the stationing of United Nations forces in the two notorious danger spots – the Gaza Strip and the Straits of Tiran – until such a settlement was reached.

These views found expression in most of the European, American and Commonwealth speeches made in the course of the debate. We put them forward briefly in a statement made by Mr. Murphy in the Assembly this morning of which a copy is attached.³ As indicated in Mr. Murphy’s speech, we voted for the resolution as a whole but abstained in the vote on the 1st operative paragraph. In the vote on the resolution itself, there were only two delegations opposed (France and Israel) and only two abstained (Costa Rica and Cuba). There were about eight abstentions in the vote on the individual paragraphs.

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Some comment was occasioned in the corridors of the UN building by Mr. Anthony Nutting’s statement in the course of one of his recent articles that he did not think much of the idea of partitioning Cyprus because ‘as a Southern Irishman myself, I am opposed on principle to Partition’. When I drew the attention of Mr. Crossthwaite, of the British delegation, to the remark, he said: ‘Well, of course, that is how we all feel. We are all opposed to the partition of Ireland; but the question is how are you going to get rid of it?’

Mr. Kennedy made a statement in the course of the debates in the Second Committee the other day in connection with the proposal of Senator Humphrey that members of the United Nations should consult together with a view to establishing national food reserves for use for relief and other purposes in under-developed countries. Mr. Kennedy expressed the legitimate anxiety which we feel, in company with Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand and other countries similarly placed, about the effect on world agricultural markets and prices of the building up of large un-useable stocks of foodstuffs such as those which at present exist in this country. I enclose copies of Mr. Kennedy’s statement.⁴

I saw Mr. Hugh Gaitskell the other day during his brief stay in New York on his way home to Britain. Our conversation was a rather hasty one and was interrupted before it had concluded but I used the opportunity to impress on him very strongly the idea that the Six County authorities should use the present juncture to get rid, once and for all, of the provocative measures of discrimination it has been exercising for years against the Nationalist majority, particularly in the matter of housing. I urged him to consider the possibility of the allocation of housing in the Six County area being taken out of the hands of local authorities altogether and entrusted to some kind of impartial, fair-minded, tribunal or series of tribunals in whose decisions the minority could have some confidence.